From a world history perspective, the most noticeable trend in the history of the late 19th century was the domination of Europeans over Non­Europeans. This domination took many forms ranging from economic penetration to outright annexation. No area of the globe, however remote from Europe, was free of European merchants, adventurers, explorers or western missionaries. Was colonialism good for either the imperialist or the peoples of the globe who found themselves subjects of one empire or another? A few decades ago, the answer would have been a resounding no. Now, in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the more or less widespread discrediting of Marxist and Leninist analysis, and the end of the Cold War, political scientists and historians seem willing to take a more positive look at Nineteenth Century Imperialism. One noted current historian, Niall Ferguson has argued that the British Empire probably accomplished more positive good for the world than the last generation of historians, poisoned by Marxism, could or would concede. Ferguson has argued that the British Empire was a \" liberal \" empire that upheld international law, kept the seas open and free, and ultimately benefited everyone by ensuring the free flow of trade. In other words, Ferguson would find little reason to contradict the young Winston Churchill's assertion that the aim of British imperialism was to: give peace to warring tribes, to administer justice where all was violence, to strike the chains off the slave, to draw the richness from the soil, to place the earliest seeds of commerce and learning, to increase in whole peoples their capacities for pleasure and diminish their chances of pain. It should come as no surprise that Ferguson regards the United States current position in the world as the natural successor to the British Empire and that the greatest danger the U.S. represents is that the world will not get enough American Imperialism because U.S. leaders often have short attention spans and tend to pull back troops when intervention becomes unpopular. It will be very interesting to check back into the debate on Imperialism about ten years from now and see how Niall Ferguson's point of view has fared! The other great school of thought about Imperialism is, of course, Marxist. For example, Marxist historians like E.J. Hobsbawm argue that if we look at the l9th century as a great competition for the world's wealth and …

The New Imperialism

Urban planning in many parts of the world reflects an increasing gap between current approaches and growing problems of poverty, inequality, informality, rapid urbanisation and spatial fragmentation, particularly (but not only) in cities of the global South. Given past dominance of the global North in shaping planning theory and practice, this article argues that a perspective from the global South can be useful in unsettling taken-for-granted assumptions about how planning addresses these issues. The article takes a first step in this direction by proposing a ‘clash of rationalities’, between techno-managerial and marketised systems of government administration, service provision and planning (in those parts of the world where these apply) and increasingly marginalised urban populations surviving largely under conditions of informality. It draws together theoretical resources beyond the boundaries of conventional planning theory to understand the nature of this conflict, and the nature of the ‘interface’...

Seeing from the South: Refocusing Urban Planning on the Globe’s Central Urban Issues:

Relocating Participation Within a Radical Politics of Development: Insights from Political Action and Practice

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1057%2Fbm.2000.20.pdf

‘Trust — the social virtues and the creation of prosperity’

The inequality of social capital and the reproduction of chronic poverty

Until the mid-1980s post-World War II development thinking shared three basic paradigms, ie essentialising the Third World and its inhabitants as homogeneous entities, an unconditional belief in progress and in the makeability of society, and the importance of the (nation)state in realising that progress. Development theories (from modernisation to dependencia) as well as the international development aid industry all shared these paradigms. From the mid-1980s onwards these three paradigms increasingly lost their hegemonic status and are currently, on the threshold of the twenty-first century, being replaced by a loose set of partly descriptive, partly heuristic notions like civil society, social capital, diversity and risk. This article is an attempt to analyse the most important reasons for the loss of the central paradigms in development thinking. It tries to assess the importance for development studies of several postmodern, post-development and globalisation-inspired notions and insights.

Paradigms lost, paradigms regained? Development studies in the twenty-first century.

Since the middle of the 1990s the concept of social capital has provoked rapidly growing interest. Social theorists, policy makers and those ngos working on the edge of theory and practice became fascinated with social capital. International organisations like the World Bank, undp and the oecd upgraded social capital to the ‘missing link’ in understanding (under)development. However, it did not take long before the critique cast shadows on this euphoria. Initially the critique was concerned with problems of defining and measuring social capital and its inadequate theoretical elaboration. In a later stage the critique accused social capital of forming part of the anti-politics machine of the post-Washington consensus. Social capital would reflect a point of view in which there was no room for an analysis of power inequality and struggle over access to resources. This article starts with an overview of the most important problems attached to the notion of social capital. The focus is then shifted to the con...

Social Capital: the politico-emancipatory potential of a disputed concept

Since the onslaught of neoliberal triumphalism from the 1980s onwards, critical development theory increasingly found itself in a sort of academic twilight zone. With few exceptions development research became characterised by an emphasis on empiricism, quantitative methodologies and policy-oriented project evaluations. Interpreting Third World problems in terms of the inner logic and shifting contradictions of a globalising capitalism was limited to those situated in the critical theory twilight zone. However, a process of rethinking development research set in some time ago. This process has been accelerating since the end of 2008, when neoliberalism started to lose most of its triumphalism because of the globalising financial and economic crisis. The current article focuses specifically on a number of challenges which have to be faced by critical theory when leaving the twilight zone.

Critical Development Theory: moving out of the twilight zone

Since the end of the 1980s there has been rapidly increasing global interest in the topics of decentralisation and local government. This interest is present among policy-makers, political parties, international financial organisations such as the World Bank and IMF, Northern NGOs engaged in development aid, grassroots organisations, and, of course, social scientists. The decentralisation euphoria is not limited to newly democratised countries in the South but is also present in the urban-industrial North. In many Latin American countries and in Africa decentralisation seems a very popular policy tool. The question addressed in this contribution is whether decentralisation and local government should be regarded as part of a progressive political project benefiting the poor in the Third World, or as part of a globalised neo-liberal project to disempower progressive elements in civil society and thereby remove the remaining obstacles to the global presence of capitalism. The discussion focuses on the Third World in general, with specific examples from Latin America.

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1080%2F09578819708426681.pdf

The Decentralisation Discourse: Post-Fordist Paradigm or Neo-liberal Cul-de-Sac?

The author uses the intra-urban migration model developed by John Turner in the early 1960s to examine population movements in the city of Arequipa, Peru. Ways in which the model applies in the case of Arequipa are summarized, as are quantitative and qualitative differences between the model and the Arequipa study. The Turner model employs economic (industrialization level), demographic (level of rural-to-urban migration), and political (housing policy) criteria to distinguish a city's transitional phase. "According to these criteria Arequipa clearly belongs to the mid-transitional phase. The pattern of intra-urban migration, however, shows a mixture of Turner's mid and late transitional phases (e.g. center acts still as a reception area, but at the same time a major number of migrants settle directly in the periphery).... The town itself has a limited industrial development and hardly any municipal housing policy worth mentioning.... It is above all the demographic factor in combination with the town's morphology (a large colonial-type center, etc.) which in the case of Arequipa regulates the pattern of intra-urban migration."

Frans J Schuurman

Papers

Paradigms lost, paradigms regained? Development studies in the twenty-first century.

Social Capital: the politico-emancipatory potential of a disputed concept

Critical Development Theory: moving out of the twilight zone

The Decentralisation Discourse: Post-Fordist Paradigm or Neo-liberal Cul-de-Sac?

John turner revisited an intra-urban migration model for colonialtype cities in latin america