SOCSC12 - Module 3

Discourse

• structured ways of thinking, speaking, and producing knowledge about a particular subject

  • How knowledge is created and shared —> also the social habits, identities, and power dynamics connected to that knowledge

  • System of statements, ideas, and practices

  • Used as mechanism of power

Panopticon

Symbol of how power operates through visibility and self regulation

• Inmates behave through surveillance

Discourse

Ideas make people monitor and judge themselves—even without direct supervision

Harry Truman’s Fair Deal

Solve the underdeveloped areas of the globe

• Greater production is key to prosperity and peace

• main ingredients

  • Capital

  • Science

  • Technology

• Replicating the world over the features that characterized the “advanced” societies of the time

• Result of the specific historical conjuncture at the end of the Second World War

Underdeveloped Continents

Asia, Africa, Latin America

Development as discourse

Development isn’t just about economic growth

• Inspired by Michel Foucault

• Created categories like “underdeveloped” and “third world” —> shaped how people saw themselves and how the west controlled the narrative

3 axes of development

1. Forms of Knowledge

2. Systems of Power

3. Form of Subjectivity

Forms of Knowledge

Objects, concepts, theories

• Development produces and relies on specific kinds of knowledge to define what counts as progress

Systems of Power

Government, international organizations, verbal discourse, media, religion, curriculum

• Regulate - who gets to act, what interventions are acceptable, and which countries or communities receive aid and guidance

• Power is unequal

Forms of subjectivity

People see themselves as developed or underdeveloped

• Intervention of science, technology, capital

• We neglect what we have as resource (agriculture)

Chandra Mohanty

1. Third World Women

2. Western Women

3. Representation as a form of Power

4. Effects of Development

Third World Women

• has needs and problems with little agency

  • Helpless, without choices or the power to act

  • Ignorant, poor, uneducated, tradition-bound, domestic, family oriented, victimized

Western Women

educated, modern, in control of their bodies and sexualities, and free to make their own decisions

• Western women are liberated and progressive, while Third World women are trapped by their cultures

Representation as a form of Power

Western feminist position themselves as saviors

Effects of Development

poverty, inequality, and exploitation

• Debt crisis, famines, and malnutrition to show how development policies failed many countries

Colonial roots and representation

comparing to Edward Said’s Orientalism

• Development framed the 3rd world as helpless and needing western intervention —> ignoring local knowledge and solutions

Resistance and alternatives

communities resist these interventions

• Create alternative ways of living and organizing

• Suggests studying social movements to understand how people reclaim their identities and push for different futures

Escobar’s Way of Thinking

1. Development as discourse

2. Deconstruction of Development

3. Alternative Knowledge Systems

4. Focus on Local Struggles and Resistance

5. Imagining a Post-Development Future

Development as discourse

it is NOT a neutral and practical effort to help poor countries

• System of knowledge and power that shapes how we understand the world

• See it as constructed development —> question who benefits and gets left behind

Deconstruction of development

exposing how policies create undeveloped identities

• More poverty and control than empowerment

Alternative knowledge systems

valuing local, non-Western knowledge systems

• Development often silences these alternative ways of knowing

Focus on Local Struggles and Resistance

highlights local resistance and social movements as sources of new ideas and strategies
* Learn from these movements, not impose solutions on them

Imagining a Post-Development Future

radical rethinking of what progress and well-being look like

• Moving away from the idea that all societies should follow a Western path

• Exploring plural, localized alternatives that prioritize culture, ecology, and community well- being

Wallerstein’s World Systems

• Way of understanding how the world works as a single, interconnected system rather than isolated countries —> global network

• Countries are not independent, but part of a global economy where some regions benefit more than others

Unequal exchange

facilitated by geopolitical alliances, military power, economics

• Core

• Peripheral

Core

dominate by controlling technology, finance, and industry

Peripheral

supply raw materials and cheap labor  but don’t share equally in the profits

Macrosociology

Big-picture approach to studying society

• Large scale social structures —> economies, states, and global power relations

  • Inner working of capitalism —> specific patter = class difference

Historical Sociology

Rooted in history —> how global inequality developed over centuries

• Colonialism, industrialization, global capitalism created and maintained unequal system

Boundaries

core, periphery, semi- periphery

Structures

systems of production, trade, and political control that keep the system running

Member groups

Nations, corporations, social classes, international institutions

Rules of legitimation

ideas and beliefs that justify and maintain the system’s structure

• Capitalism, democracy or development

Coherence

holds together and keeps functioning as one global network

Forces holding world systems together

The core benefits from the periphery’s labor and resources

• International institutions (like the IMF or World Bank) stabilize the system.

Forces tearing world systems apart

Social movements, revolutions, economic crises, and the rise of new powers

• Constantly challenges the system’s structure

Core

maintain dominance

Peripheral

push for better terms of trade, development, or even revolution

Semi-peripheral

try to climb into the core

Neomarxist

there is a global class struggle

• Conflict between those who control means of production and those with no access to resources

• Core: like global bourgeoisie

• Periphery: global proletariat

• Semi-periphery: in between

Hegemony

one state dominates the global system

• Sets the rules that govern how the world operates

• Global trade & finance, military power, technology & industry, ideology & culture

• Temporary —> declines as other states rise in power and challenge the system

• Ex: Dutch, British, American

Kondratieff Cycle

capitalism rises and falls in waves

• Phase A: upward mobility

  • Core innovate and prosper, while periphery countries supply cheap labor and resources

• Phase B: downward mobility

  • Core offload the crisis onto the periphery (e.g. debt crises, resource extraction)

• Multipolar: many states share global influence

Core states

strong state machinery coupled with a national culture

Semi-periphery states

Share characteristics of both core and periphery states

Periphery states

primarily concerned with exporting raw materials to the core and semi-periphery

Dependency

when one country’s economy is shaped and controlled by the economy of a more powerful country

Lumpenbourgeoisie

the merchants, moneylenders, landlords, and speculators —> don’t invest productively

Domestic industrial producers

producers face weak markets, lack of technology, or foreign competition —> often can’t reinvest enough to create lasting economic growth

• Local manufacturers and business owners

• Monopolizes market —> secure profit

Foreign enterprises

extract profits from local labor and resources —> repatriate the wealth back to core countries

• Exports (40% total share)
  

State

Government also takes share of surplus

• Reinvests surplus

• Waste surplus

Reinvest surplus

Education, infrastructure, or health

Waste surplus

Steal, military power and bureaucracy

Metropolis-satellite model

Wealth systematically flows from peripheral, underdeveloped countries to the developed, capitalist core

Emergence of Comprador class

Came from the indigenous population

• Local businesspeople, landlords, and politicians who cooperated with foreign powers

Role of Comprador Class

manage and organize the local economy

• Became essential to keeping the system running

• Collected wealth and influence because they handled the day-to-day economic operations for foreign investors

• Became so powerful that they started to dominate local politics and society

• Stepped into power when colonizers left —> independent governments —> Friendly with foreign companies