The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing, and the Human Condition

We argue that the global digital divide, as measured by cross-national differences in Internet use, is the result of the economic, regulatory and sociopolitical characteristics of countries and their evolution over time. We predict Internet use to increase with worldsystem status, privatization and competition in the telecommunications sector, democracy and cosmopolitanism. Using data on 118 countries from 1997 through 2001, we find relatively robust support for each of our hypotheses. We conclude by exploring the implications of this new, powerful communication medium for the global political economy and for the spread of democracy around the world. The Internet has developed unevenly throughout the world, creating what has become known as the “global digital divide” (Castells 2001; Kirkman et al. 2002; Mosaic Group 1998; Norris 2001; Rogers 2001). The number of Internet users is one of the most widely used indicators of development of this emerging medium of communication. Less than 10 percent of the world’s population uses the Internet, and the gap between developed and developing countries has continued to widen since the early 1990s (see Figure 1). Differences by country are remarkable. Statistics compiled by the International Telecommunication Union as of the end of 2002 indicate that Internet use as a proportion of the population ranges from less than one percent in many underdeveloped African, Central American, and South Asian countries to between 50 and 60 percent in Iceland, the United States, Scandinavia, Singapore or South Korea (ITU 2003).1 The growth of the Internet has captured the imagination of users, policymakers, entrepreneurs, corporate managers, military strategists, social commentators, scholars, and journalists. Some early optimistic analyses envisioned the Internet as a “decentralizing, globalizing, harmonizing, and empowering” medium (Negroponte 1995:229), as a new communication technology that would bring about a “smaller, more open world.” (Tapscott and Caston 1993:313) The most enthusiastic visionaries have argued that the Internet means the “triumph over time and space,” the rise of the “netizen,” and the crowning of the “customer as sovereign” (Gilder 2000). According to the cyber-optimists, the Internet can create a public sphere in Habermas’s (1989) sense, one that is not regulated by the state or by commercial interests but rather owned and controlled by the participants themselves (Schneider 1996). While some of the cyber-optimists recognized the looming issue of inequality in access to the Internet (e.g. Tapscott and Caston 1993:312), it was not until the late 1990s that international organizations, governments, think tanks, and universities started to warn about the existence of a yawning digital divide, both within and across countries (e.g., U.S.

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Explaining the Global Digital Divide: Economic, Political and Sociological Drivers of Cross-National Internet Use

The final decade of the last millennium opened with the demise not only of soviet-style socialism and of apartheid. In addition, shock troops of the neoliberal right and the cultural left confidently declared the Death of Development. This was no mere impasse, as some had suggested in the 1980s. Development was definitively dead, and sending out noxious fumes that could only be dissipated either by market rationality or by New Social Movements. With the dawning of Y2K, Development is back on the agenda with a vengeance. A flourishing industry centered on social capital and social development has arisen in the World Bank, the UNDP and other multilateral institutions, as well as in Tony Blair’s Department for International Development. Questions of development are also back in the guise of ‘globalization’ and the rise of oppositional movements that are both reminiscent of the 1960s and yet startlingly new. A revealing article on recent anti-capitalist protests in The Economist expressed grave concern that a motley assortment of protestors and NGOs, ranging from the League for a Revolutionary Communist International to Oxfam, are ‘extorting admissions of fault from law-abiding companies and changes in policy from democratically elected governments’ (The Economist, 23 September 2000: 87). What is more, The Economist complains, the IMF and particularly the World Bank are bowing to these pressures; the latest World Development Report, for example, blathers on about poverty as encompassing not only lack of food, shelter and other material necessities, but also powerlessness, voicelessness, vulnerability and fear. (The article omits mention of the resignation of economist Ravi Kanbur from the World Bank when, at the prompting of Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, he was ordered to rewrite the report with a stronger pro-growth message.) Whether ‘the developing countries’ will benefit from pervasive soft-headedness is very much in doubt: ‘Empowerment, supposing the idea Progress in Human Geography 25,4 (2001) pp. 649–658

Development critiques in the 1990s: culs de sacand promising paths

This article is an ethnographic study of the effects of micro-credit on gender relations in rural Bangladesh. Focusing on the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner, the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh and three other leading non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the country, I analyze the role of gender in the expansion of globalization and neoliberalism in Bangladesh. The Grameen Bank has become a global symbol of poor women’s empowerment and is celebrated for its 98 percent loan recovery. In this article, I examine some of the NGO tactics behind the loan recovery programs. In particular, I examine how Bangladeshi rural women’s honor and shame are instrumentally appropriated by micro-credit NGOs in the furtherance of their capitalist interests.

https://rug.nl/research/globalisation-studies-groningen/research/conferencesandseminars/conferences/eumicrofinconf2011/papers/7a.karim.pdf

Demystifying Micro-Credit The Grameen Bank, NGOs, and Neoliberalism in Bangladesh

Sonia Alvarez reconsiders what she had earlier labelled ‘the Latin American feminist NGO boom’ of the 1990s. She offers reflections on how and why, at least in that region of the world, we may be moving beyond it. Alvarez revisits the notion of NGO‐ization, then reviews the crucial ‘movement work’ performed by NGOs that was often obscured by that notion. She proposes that Latin American feminisms and other social movements may be moving away from the particular organizational forms and practices – actively promoted and officially sanctioned by national and global neo-liberalism – that characterized NGO‐ization in the past.

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1057%2Fdev.2009.23.pdf

Beyond NGO‐ization?: Reflections from Latin America

Anthropologists inspired by the works of Michel Foucault have described development as a discourse imposed on the Third World by powerful western institutions. In defining the power of such agencies (especially the World Bank) these authors focus not on the practices of actors or sets of actors, but rather on the ability of such institutions to shape perceptions of Third World peoples and to limit ways of thinking about the world and imagining change. While the focus on language is helpful to understanding how development agendas are "deployed" throughout the world, many critics overlook the important role of local elite groups as well as the agency of development's "target populations." The uses of, and popular responses to, "sustainable development" and other development strategies in Bogota, Colombia, show that the development discourse is neither so monolithic nor so hegemonic as some critics suggest. Because of sustainable development's vague mandate and imprecise terminology, it has been easily manipulated and rewritten at the local level. [development, environment, agency, poststructuralism, Latin America] Recent works in anthropology and other social sciences have advanced the important task of unraveling development practice and malpractice from Bretton Woods to present-day interventions including "Women In Development," "Sustainable Development," and "Participatory Planning."1 These critics describe development as a powerful discourse, or as a "regime of representation," which imposes itself on Third World peoples. This discourse facilitates not only the governance and control of the "Third World" by "the West," but also imposes a hegemonic view of reality which defines non-western peoples as underdeveloped. The consequence of this discourse for those who are its target, critics say, is the perpetuation and expansion of global inequalities, and the "disqualification of non-Western knowledge systems" (Escobar 1995a 13). In other words, development, as both an idea and a set of practices, has become so pervasive and so powerful, that it is increasingly difficult to imagine alternatives that are outside of the development framework. Such critiques have shown the ways in which the development community shapes perceptions of Third World peoples while systematically failing to meet most of its own stated objectives. Yet these critiques lack, to varying degrees, a meaningful sense of agency or process. We still know very little about who the practitioners of development are, and how policies are shaped by struggles and conflicts within and between institutions. For some, resistance on the part of development's subjects is a way out of the development "nightmare." Yet, in-depth discussions of how target groups have resisted and reshaped development programs to date are lacking in such critiques. In fact, arguments of poststructural or postmodern critics of development share many of the weaknesses of those of their Marxist predecessors, in that they tend to portray "subject peoples" as incapable (or nearly so) of autonomous intellectual thought (reminiscent of the "false consciousness" concerns of some Marxists), and especially in that they tend to ignore the important role of local and national elite groups in importing and redefining "western" development strategies? A look at the uses of sustainable development and ecology claims in Bogota suggests that local actors (planners, environmentalists, politicians, neighborhood residents, activists) are conscious participants in the development encounter. While the poststructuralist critique of the teleological Marxist analyses of development in the 1970s is a useful step in recognizing the unintended consequences of development, I do not agree with the view of development as a "subject-less" process. This decentered approach to development (most notable in the works of Ferguson 1990 and Escobar 1995a, discussed below) is based on the assertion that events unfold not by the will of knowing subjects, but rather "behind the backs of or against the wills of even the most powerful actors" (Ferguson 1990: 18). …

The Ghost in the Machine: Agency in "Poststructural" Critiques of Development

http://web.pdx.edu/~b5me/text_files/articles/SocialScienceMedicine.pdf

The Social Life of Genes: Privacy, Property and the New Genetics

Increasingly, aid agencies are turning to information technology as a key to promoting development and political reform. Internet proponents view information as critical to solving such problems of environmental destruction, disease, and authoritarianism. While the Internet poses intriguing possibilities for enhancing economic competitiveness and political pluralism, it is also creating new forms of exclusion and may lead to the neglect of other basic development issues. Moreover, the proponents of the Internet expansion in the Americas risk exacerbating rather than diminishing the dependency and uneven growth of previous development schemes. This article explores the current state of the Internet in Latin America and identifies some of the contradictions which are apparent in the discussion and use of this new technology in the region.

Latin America On-Line: The Internet, Development, and Democratization

Evictions and human rights: land disputes in Bogotá, Colombia

This paper reviews the literature on genetic privacy, especially since 1995 and the first proposal for national genetic privacy legislation. Since that time, a majority of states have passed some form of genetic privacy legislation, and efforts to pass federal legislation are ongoing. Such new laws, however, remain untested in the courts and their effects are unclear. If they fail to provide additional protections against discrimination for most people, their most significant impact may be in their ability to either diminish or enhance the power of genetic information and to influence the way individuals view themselves and others. How does “genetic exceptionalism”—the idea that genetic information is different from other types of medical information—relate to “genetic essentialism”—the idea that we are to a large extent shaped by our genes? Anthropological views on genetics and personhood bring a new perspective to this ongoing debate. Implications for counseling practices are also explored.

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Margaret Everett

Papers

The Ghost in the Machine: Agency in "Poststructural" Critiques of Development

The Social Life of Genes: Privacy, Property and the New Genetics

Latin America On-Line: The Internet, Development, and Democratization

Evictions and human rights: land disputes in Bogotá, Colombia

Can You Keep a (Genetic) Secret? The Genetic Privacy Movement