Showing papers on "Underdevelopment published in 2004"

Transnational spaces and everyday lives

Abstract: This paper discusses some of the limitations of the global city hypothesis, in particular its economistic tendencies, the suppression of political and cultural domains, and the underdevelopment of human agency and everyday life. It tries to establish more fully the identities of global subjects. Examining two sets of global actors, transnational businessmen and cosmopolitan professionals, it argues that the expansive reach and mastery imputed to global subjects, their flight from the particular and the partisan, their dominance and freedom from vulnerability, are far from complete. The separation of the global and the local and the ascription of mobility and universalism to the global and stasis and parochialism to the local is an oversimplification, for an optic of transnational global spaces should not conceal the intersecting reality of circumscribed everyday lives.

Technological Revolutions, Paradigm Shifts and Socio-institutional Change

Abstract: The expert contributors gathered here approach underdevelopment and inequality from different evolutionary perspectives. It is argued that the Schumpeterian processes of ‘creative destruction' may take the form of wealth creation in one part of the globe and wealth destruction in another. Case studies explore and analyse the successful 19th century policies that allowed Germany and the United States to catch up with the UK and these are contrasted with two other case studies exploring the deindustrialization and falling real wages in Peru and Mongolia during the 1990s. The case studies and thematic papers together explore, identify and explain the mechanisms which cause economic inequality. Some papers point to why the present form of globalization increases poverty in many Third World nations.

In what sense ‘regional development?’: entrepreneurship, underdevelopment and strong tradition in the periphery

Abstract: This paper explores whether entrepreneurship can help less successful regions to improve their regional economic situation, without all the benefits that entrepreneurship brings when being ‘stripped out’ to more successful regions. The paper uses the idea that peripheral regions possess qualities of tradition and underdevelopment, and that these help to anchor new firms into these regions, resistant to their concentration in core regions. The paper explores whether particular entrepreneurial events can be regarded as ‘densifying’ the regional entrepreneurial environment, thereby making a positive contribution to its economic development. The paper explores the role of these negative anchors to the entrepreneurial events and the densification process by following a sequence of high-technology spin-out firms in the North East of England. Using a realist methodology attempting to interview all the firms within the sequence which could be found, the paper discovers that quite positive advantages exist within ...

Alternative Design Scholarship: Working Toward Appropriate Design

Abstract: Design scholars from diverse fields have attempted to assist marginalized social groups by redirecting design thinking toward their needs. By offering alternatives to dominant design activities, “alternative design” scholarship seeks to understand how unequal power relations are embodied in, and result from, mainstream design practice and products. Alternative design scholars analyze how technologies and other designed artifacts are implicated in larger social problems, such as rampant consumerism, sexism, ecological abuse, lack of user participation and autonomy, and restricted access to built environments, among others. Through these efforts, alternative design scholarship offers designers an opportunity to think about how their work might be directed as wisely and fairly as possible. Efforts to redirect technologies toward the needs of marginalized people have a long and varied history. Dating back to the 1960s and before, technology transfer advocates argued for transferring Western technologies to the third world.1 They hoped to take advantage of the intellectual and financial resources already invested by the West to benefit those who seemed to need technology the most. But it soon became evident that the transferability of technology among contexts is far from straightforward. Limited resource availability (capital, expertise, spare parts, etc.), different perspectives on the nature of the problem/solution, and a lack of familiarity with similar technological systems led to dashed hopes and expensive failures for technology transfers, such as the numerous decentralized power systems fallen into disuse throughout the developing world.2 Technology scholars came to realize that differences between a technology’s developmental context and its use context were significant. In part as a response to failures of technology transfer approaches, “appropriate technologists” argued that context suitability should be central to identifying technologies relevant to poor people of the Third World and other marginalized social groups.3 Developing appropriate technologies required accounting for the needs of others by paying careful attention to the use context of that technology, as well as to local perspectives on the problem to be solved. Attention to contextual particularities became one of the guiding approaches to appropriate technology and, hence, unlike technology transfer scholars, appropriate technology thinking took design as the point of intervention. Through the 1970s, appropriate 1 Werner J. Feld, “The Transfer of Technology to Third World Countries: Political Problems and International Ramifications” in Mathew J. Betz, et al., eds., Appropriate Technology: Choice and Development (Durham, North Carolina: Duke Press Policy Studies, 1984), 49–63. 2 Frances Stewart, Technology and Underdevelopment (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1977). 3 E. F. Schumacher was early to make this observation in Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered (New York: Harper & Row, 1973). A generation of scholars and practitioners followed.

Development and Freedom

Abstract: This paper is an attempt to understand how Amartya Sen's thinking on development and freedom has evolved from his critique of welfare economics and his concern with underdevelopment and poverty. It is argued that Sen has done a great deal to rescue welfare economics from the consequences of methodological individualism by seeking an objective basis for comparisons of well‐being, by insisting on the need for interpersonal comparability and by creating a space for normative evaluations. Sen's contribution to the human development approach with its emphasis on positive freedom has also helped to provide a valuable counterweight to the dominant free market approach. However, some concerns are expressed that the approach does not give sufficient attention to long‐run dynamics and that the conception of capability employed is not helpful for the understanding of development

Haiti: The Breached Citadel

Abstract: CONTENTS: Introduction The Nature of Haiti: Land and Society The Context of Haitian Development and Underdevelopment Modernisation and Dependence: Twentieth-Century Haiti The Haitian Economy and the National Security State Politics and Government Heralding the Bicentennial: Breaks and Continuity Conclusion.

It is possible to just give money to the poor

Abstract: About the book: This volume presents a state-of-the-art debate on the controversial topic of development aid. For several decades, the need to provide aid to low income countries, in order to stimulate and promote their economic and social development, was widely accepted. In recent years, however, the issue of aid and the question of its role in development have become matters of controversy. In this collection of essays, development aid is put under the microscope, as the contributors examine its history, its rationale, and its effectiveness, and reach some quite different conclusions as to the part it plays in catalysing, or indeed in stifling, development. While some argue that aid remains vital, and must be maintained or increased, others are more sceptical, and fear that it may even prolong underdevelopment in certain circumstances. These essays, from a select group of commentators representing different analytical perspectives, first appeared as an academic debate in the journal Development and Change, in response to an article by Jan Pronk, former Minister for Development Co-operation of the Netherlands.

Resource Abundance, Poverty and Development

Abstract: The negative correlation between resource endowments and GDP growth remains one of the most robust findings in the empirical growth literature, and has been coined the “resource curse hypothesis”. The policy consequences of this result are potentially far reaching. If natural resources are an inescapable curse, this may imply that countries richly endowed with natural resources can only develop by turning their backs on their comparative advantage and diversifying into other non-resource based activities. This papers analyzes whether the negative statistical relationship between natural resource abundance and economic growth spills over to other important economic and social indicators. The impact of resource wealth on several proxies of economic underdevelopment and welfare are scrutinized. While underdevelopment and welfare are clearly not independent of economic growth, it is known that there exist important differences between these variables. The research presented in this paper represents a step forward in the understanding of the resource curse, and the channels through which it is manifested.

The evolution of development economics and globalization

Abstract: The legacy of the last 50 years of development economics is not very inspiring. In the 1960s and 1970s, instead of looking at the real causes and viable solutions to poverty and underdevelopment, development economics was preoccupied with the politically‐charged debate over the superiority of either state‐controlled or market systems. In the 1980s and 1990s, economists expected that globalization would come to be a panacea for all developing countries. They advocated the abandonment of traditional industries and occupations and their replacement by modern sectors modelled after or imported from the developed countries. Such policies have generally failed with few exceptions–those being countries which chose to implement their own specific policies of development. These countries skillfully combined government interventionism with market system incentives. Despite its past problems, development economics has recently evolved to better reflect the realities of developing countries. For the first time, development economics is on the verge of becoming a real social science in which analysis of traditional institutions, community life, and religious and ethnic factors is not only important but decisive in developing new social and economic growth objectives and economic policies.

Moving mountains : the race to treat global AIDS

Abstract: In dispatches written from around the world, Anne-christine d'Adesky reports on the greatest challenge facing us today: the global effort to provide lifesaving medicines and care to 40 million people living with HIV and AIDS in resource-poor countries, the great majority in sub-Saharan Africa. She analyzes the obstacles to providing universal access to antiretroviral drugs whose cost has been out of reach to millions until now, and she exposes the underlying and often competing agendas of donor and recipient governments, funders, activists and individuals with HIV who are struggling to survive. In lively, in-depth field reports from Cuba, Brazil, Russia, Haiti, Thailand, South Africa, China and Haiti, pilot and national treatment programs are serving as models and provide a litmus test of the feasibility of HIV and AIDS treatment in settings of abject poverty, underdevelopment, economic and political instability. Looking ahead, Moving Mountains discusses the potential of AIDS treatment programs to bolster prevention efforts, and help rebuild shattered nations and economies. It also warns of the consequences that could face individuals, nations and the world if we fail to achieve this monumental task.

The Other Canon: The History of Renaissance Economics

Abstract: The expert contributors gathered here approach underdevelopment and inequality from different evolutionary perspectives. It is argued that the Schumpeterian processes of ‘creative destruction' may take the form of wealth creation in one part of the globe and wealth destruction in another. Case studies explore and analyse the successful 19th century policies that allowed Germany and the United States to catch up with the UK and these are contrasted with two other case studies exploring the deindustrialization and falling real wages in Peru and Mongolia during the 1990s. The case studies and thematic papers together explore, identify and explain the mechanisms which cause economic inequality. Some papers point to why the present form of globalization increases poverty in many Third World nations.

Using and abusing the concept of the Third World: geopolitics and the comparative political study of development and underdevelopment

Abstract: This article argues that, while the notion of a ‘Third World’ retains relevance and usefulness in the context of geopolitical analysis, generalisations about Third World politics are no longer helpful or justifiable. It begins by reviewing the historic rationales for the notion of the Third World together with criticisms made of these arguments. It then considers reasons why the term may retain some value at a geopolitical level: in signalling a major axis of inequality, providing a symbolic basis for collective action and, possibly, as an alternative to less attractive perspectives. The article then turns more specifically to the field of comparative politics, suggesting that in the past the notion of a Third World could be justified pragmatically as a response to the insularity of Western political science and because there was, up to a point, a common paradigm of Third World politics. Such justifications have been undermined by the growth in specialist knowledge of individual Third World countries or r...

Globalization, Economic Development and Inequality

Abstract: The expert contributors gathered here approach underdevelopment and inequality from different evolutionary perspectives. It is argued that the Schumpeterian processes of ‘creative destruction’ may take the form of wealth creation in one part of the globe and wealth destruction in another. Case studies explore and analyse the successful 19th century policies that allowed Germany and the United States to catch up with the UK and these are contrasted with two other case studies exploring the deindustrialization and falling real wages in Peru and Mongolia during the 1990s. The case studies and thematic papers together explore, identify and explain the mechanisms which cause economic inequality. Some papers point to why the present form of globalization increases poverty in many Third World nations.

Genetic Services in Latin America

Abstract: This special issue of Community Genetics reviews some of the most important developments in medical genetics in key countries of Latin America. Contributions to this issue were prepared for a special consultation of the World Health Organization held in Porto Alegre, Brazil, on June 19, 2003. Latin America is a region of medium- to low-income countries characterized by socioeconomic problems, with large segments of the population living in poverty and extreme disparities in the distribution of wealth. A rise in chronic diseases typical of the processes of industrialization and urbanization coexists with the persistence of nutritional and infectious diseases characteristic of poverty and underdevelopment. Over the last 2 decades of the 20th century, birth defects and genetic disorders have increased their share of morbidity and mortality, and tertiary-care-based genetic services have developed in urban areas. Although privatization of health care is eroding the public sector, the public institutions continue to be the main providers of genetic services for the bulk of the population and the leaders in research. The development of clinical genetics in the region is concentrated in tertiary-care centers in large cities, although a recent trend began extending genetic services to the community.

Globalization in the Periphery as a Morganthau Plan: The Underdevelopment of Mongolia in the 1990s

Abstract: The expert contributors gathered here approach underdevelopment and inequality from different evolutionary perspectives. It is argued that the Schumpeterian processes of ‘creative destruction' may take the form of wealth creation in one part of the globe and wealth destruction in another. Case studies explore and analyse the successful 19th century policies that allowed Germany and the United States to catch up with the UK and these are contrasted with two other case studies exploring the deindustrialization and falling real wages in Peru and Mongolia during the 1990s. The case studies and thematic papers together explore, identify and explain the mechanisms which cause economic inequality. Some papers point to why the present form of globalization increases poverty in many Third World nations.

Population growth, ecological degradation and construction in the western region of China

Abstract: China's most serious ecological crisis seems to be in its western region where the ecological environment is the weakest. This paper analyzes the population growth, underdevelopment and ecological degradation in western China based on a conceptual framework of population, development and ecological system. The existing problems of underdevelopment and ecological degradation are examined. The on‐going ecological construction projects in western China are used to illustrate how the state has attempted to mediate the conflict between survival and ecological conservation.

Globalisation? Internationalisation and Monopoly Capitalism: Historical Processes and Capitalist Dynamism

Abstract: Globalization? internationalism monopoly capitalism global finance industry culture labour welfare states trade development and underdevelopment regulation regionalization concluding remarks.

The Shattered Microcosm: Imperatives for Improved Family Therapy in Africa in the 21st Century

Abstract: This paper provides an in-depth socio-political analysis of the basis for the limits of family therapy in Africa in the last 40 years. The goal is to make more visible the economic, social, political, and cultural factors that have combined to complicate and frustrate our macro-environments of practice. The conclusion is that family therapy in Africa cannot achieve any meaningful progress in the present millenium unless the structures of underdevelopment under which we live and work are dismantled and in their place the important preconditions for successful practice of modern family therapy are entrenched. The list of imperatives to be addressed is offered to suggest the direction along which we must move if we are to effect this adaptation.

The Other Canon: The History of Renaissance Economics

Abstract: The expert contributors gathered here approach underdevelopment and inequality from different evolutionary perspectives. It is argued that the Schumpeterian processes of ‘creative destruction' may take the form of wealth creation in one part of the globe and wealth destruction in another. Case studies explore and analyse the successful 19th century policies that allowed Germany and the United States to catch up with the UK and these are contrasted with two other case studies exploring the deindustrialization and falling real wages in Peru and Mongolia during the 1990s. The case studies and thematic papers together explore, identify and explain the mechanisms which cause economic inequality. Some papers point to why the present form of globalization increases poverty in many Third World nations.

Enforcement of Property Rights and Underdevelopment

Abstract: The authors formalize the role of legal infrastructure in economic development in a general-equilibrium model with endogenously determined property rights enforcement. The mutual importance of property rights protection and market production is illustrated by the model's multiplicity of equilibria. In one equilibrium, property rights are enforced, and market activity unhampered. In the other, property rights are not enforced, discouraging economic activity, which leaves the economy without the resources and the incentives to enforce property rights. Even identically endowed economies may therefore find themselves in very different equilibria.

Le Soudan d’un conflit à l’autre

Abstract: [Sudan. From one conflict to the next] The peace agreements that were signed in May 2004 may imply the end of the war in South Sudan. In order to assess the likelihood of success, one has to discuss the changes after the Islamists were brought to power in 1989 by a military coup. Of special interest are the impacts of their internal divisions, the emergence of oil money as significant revenues for the State and the consequences of 9/11 in the Middle East. Moreover, difficulties to implement the agreements in South Sudan should not be underplayed. The underdevelopment of this region, the existence of militias still supported by Khartoum and the history of the civil war among Southern Sudanese could give room to bitter divisions and proxy wars involving Khartoum's government. The current crisis in Darfur reflects the weaknesses of the peace process despite a strong international involvement. Structural issues such as citizenship have not been addressed and this very crisis shows how little the regime intends to reform itself.

Communal Values, Cultural Identity and the Challenge of Development in Contemporary Africa

Abstract: Given the urgency to transcend its image as a "dark continent," every African should be concerned about the need to arrest the level of disorder which has made corruption and ethnic warfare the trade mark of most African states. The problem of African development has been traced among other factors to political instability, economic crises, societal breakdown, demographic pressures, Christian, Moslem and pagan religious conflicts, and the incompatible ethnic configuration of African states due to amalgamation of diverse tribal and ethnic groups within political borders established under colonial rule. We therefore argue that the traditional African emphasis on communal values needs to be reinvigorated while remembering that African leaders need to be more ready to adopt new values and ideas such as will promote future development. Key Words: Africa; Societal breakdown; Corruption; Communal values, Personal identity; Economic development. Africa's Developmental Crisis In the last four decades, African scholars have identified various factors responsible for the present state of underdevelopment of Africa, but the level of underdevelopment of Africa still defies rational explanation given the abundant human and material resources with which Africa is endowed. The widespread poverty, malnutrition and disease as exemplified in the HIV/ AIDS pandemic, malaria fever and other killer diseases has been linked to the prevalent level of corruption in most African states. For example: When Nigeria's president Sani Abacha died, he left behind an oil-flush nation where few of the proceeds seem to trickle down to the people and where gasoline shortages are crippling daily life (Time, 1998:20). In similar vein: The world champion grafter had to be Zairean dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. Until his overthrow ... he has plundered his country's treasury to the extent of perhaps more than $1 billion during the 32 years he ruled and bankrupted his country (Ibid.) Although no society is insulated from corruption, the dimension it has taken in most African states, especially on the part of leadership, has frustrated development. Of course, corruption is not to be treated as a cause of its own, it is also in part the result of certain cultural and structural imbalances among African nation states involving factors such as multi-ethnicity, injustice, marginalization and the concept of the state as an entity to be milked dry. This is aptly captured in Peter Ekeh's (1975' 1980) analysis of 'two cultures and two publics' in which the public servant exhibits a double morality when it comes probity. His fellow tribesmen would see a public servant who defrauds the state as a hero, but a public servant who defrauded his tribal community would be treated as an outcast. This trend has even acquired an even more frightening dimension today. According to Ade Ajayi (1999:16), the urban, political elite of Africa has alienated itself from its own people such that in those African states which purport to maintain a measure of representative government, the political leaders only go to their supporters during election when they need votes. It is a pathetic picture: The elite, like the colonial state, which they inherited, has grown apart from the society. Increasingly the state and the elite who control the state, have become predators of the society.(Ibid.). The Problem of Multi-Ethnic States In the period following World War II, hasty decolonization created artificial multi-ethnic states when independence was granted to the former colonial territories without any attempt to tailor the new states in accordance with ethnic and cultural realities. Indeed, because the boundaries of the new African states merely reflected the borders of the former colonial territories, few of today's African states represent homogenous ethnic or cultural entities. The result has been a legacy of widespread conflicts often amounting to civil war, when smaller ethnic entities attempt to free themselves from domination by more powerful groups. …

Building social capability for economic catch-up: the experience and prospects of the post-socialist countries

Abstract: Book description: In this collection of essays David A Dyker explores some of the most difficult and fascinating aspects of the process of transition from autocratic “real socialism” to a capitalism that is sometimes democratic, sometimes authoritarian. The stress is on the economic dimension of transformation, but the author sets the economic drama firmly within a political economy framework and a historical perspective. Trends in key economic variables are analysed against the background of the struggle between different social and political groups for power and command over resources. While the book pays due attention to topical issues like EU enlargement, the underlying perspective is a long-term one. Transition is viewed not as a set of once-and-for-all institutional changes or a process of short-term stabilisation, but as a historic opportunity to solve the inherited problem of poverty and underdevelopment in Central-East Europe and the former Soviet Union. The book ends with a critical assessment of how economics, as a discipline, has coped with the challenge of that historic opportunity.

Explaining anglo-german productivity differences in services since 1870

Abstract: Germany overtook Britain in comparative productivity levels for the whole economy primarily as a result of trends in services rather than trends in industry. Britain's productivity lead in services before World War II reflected external economies of scale in a highly urbanised economy with an international orientation. Low productivity in Germany reflected the underdevelopment of services in an economy that was slow to move out of agriculture. As German agricultural employment contracted sharply from the 1950s, catching-up occurred in services. This was aided by a sharp increase in human and physical capital accumulation, underpinned by the institutional framework of the postwar settlement.

Financial Development in Asia: The Way Forward

Abstract: Data shows that Emerging Asia relies less on bonds and more on banks than developed countries. What costs, if any, do Asian countries incur as a result of their heavy dependence on bank finance and the underdevelopment of their bond market? Barry Eichengreen addresses the questions: what benefits will flow from better bond markets and will initiatives now being taken be adequate for achieving this end.

Method and passion in Celso Furtado

Abstract: If there was an intellectual who, in the second half of the twentieth century, gave a most decisive contribution to the understanding of Brazil, I would not hesitate in stating that this intellectual was Celso Furtado. He did not just offer economic explanations for our development and underdevelopment. More than that, he situated Brazil in a world context, analyzed its society and its politics, and offered solutions for the major problems it faced. In order to achieve this task, as ambitious as frustrating – because, ultimately, Brazil fell short of his great expectations – Furtado used method as well as passion. He was rigorous in his method, but this did not prevent him from viewing with passion the subject matter of his study, which has always been a republican project of life as well: the development of Brazil.

Income Inequality in Changing Techno-economic Paradigms

Abstract: The expert contributors gathered here approach underdevelopment and inequality from different evolutionary perspectives. It is argued that the Schumpeterian processes of ‘creative destruction' may take the form of wealth creation in one part of the globe and wealth destruction in another. Case studies explore and analyse the successful 19th century policies that allowed Germany and the United States to catch up with the UK and these are contrasted with two other case studies exploring the deindustrialization and falling real wages in Peru and Mongolia during the 1990s. The case studies and thematic papers together explore, identify and explain the mechanisms which cause economic inequality. Some papers point to why the present form of globalization increases poverty in many Third World nations.

Natural versus Social Sciences: On Understanding in Economics

Abstract: The expert contributors gathered here approach underdevelopment and inequality from different evolutionary perspectives. It is argued that the Schumpeterian processes of ‘creative destruction' may take the form of wealth creation in one part of the globe and wealth destruction in another. Case studies explore and analyse the successful 19th century policies that allowed Germany and the United States to catch up with the UK and these are contrasted with two other case studies exploring the deindustrialization and falling real wages in Peru and Mongolia during the 1990s. The case studies and thematic papers together explore, identify and explain the mechanisms which cause economic inequality. Some papers point to why the present form of globalization increases poverty in many Third World nations.