Final Exam Study Guide
Final Exam Study Guide POLB90 PART A: Identify and explain the significance Franz Fanon: Fanon was a black psychiatrist from Martinique who was involved in the Algerian struggle for independence from France. Fanon’s critical work has established him as an outstanding theoretician of a wide range of issues, such as identity, nationalism, black consciousness, the role of violence in the struggle for decolonization, and language as an index of power. His body of work has been influential for fields like philosophy, politics, psychiatry, cultural studies, and gender studies, as well. Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth –two books that state Fanon’s anticolonial revolutionary thoughts- made him an important contributor in the field of postcolonial studies. Fanon became aware psychological and cultural impact of colonialism. He argued that what it did was inculcated the notion that everything “European” was superior. Fanon argued that the colonized were not only weighted down by economic notions, but the idea of cultural inferiority of the colonized. He encourages the concept of a nation based on political agency Violent revolutionary struggle was necessary in removing the deep psychological impact of colonialism. Meroe Empire: Meroe was an empire existed in the 8th century BC on what is now considered the territory of Sudan. Meroe was significant because it was the center of trading in during the time of the ancient Egyptians. Meroe was the base of a flourishing kingdom whose wealth was due to a strong iron industry and trade with India and China. The technological advances of the Meroic Empire and its development of an alphabet consisting of 23 letters disputes the pre-colonial idea that all other non- European civilizations were primitive. Zamindars: To extract revenue from its colony, the British implemented major land tax systems and fundamentally altered the nature of existing property rights in India. In some regions, property rights and taxes were assigned to zamindars or landlords – aristocrats who held enormous tracts of land and held control over peasants from whom they reserved the right to collect tax from. Using these representatives, Britain reorganized cultural production in a way which was no longer for domestic consumption, but for economic purposes of Britain. Indirect Rule: A system of government of one nation by another in which the governed people retain certain administrative, legal, and other powers. It is the rule through local institutions, leaders and customary laws. It is one of the types of rule Europeans used during the colonial period. It was significant because it was the most effective type of rule. It utilized local leaders, institutions and customary laws. It used them to collect taxes, adjudicate cases and impose punishment. It legitimized colonial rule this causing the least amount of disturbance to the status quo. By doing this you are making the local leader accountable to not only to his people but to colonial power. Whereas the system was thought merely to integrate existing polities into the colonial state, it often created, and always deeply transformed, local political structures. As a consequence, indirect rule changed the political order and the relation between state and society in many colonized countries and contributed to the increasing role of ethnicity and patronage. PRSPs (poverty reduction strategy papers): Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) were formally endorsed by the Executive Boards of the World Bank and IMF in September 1999 as the mechanism for distributing HIPC (or debt relief) funds and as the basis for IFI concessional lending. The PRSP approach was developed out of best practice on how to tackle poverty and includes some innovative practices; most significantly the requirement that the PRSP must be nationally owned and drawn up in consultation with national stakeholders. The conditions surrounding the PRSPs are similar to that of the previous structural adjustment programmes which we now know are not necessarily beneficial. Some of the conditions don’t produce development or
Final Exam Study Guide POLB90 jobs and contribute negatively to politics as was the case in Tanzania in 2011 whereby the PRSPs asked leaders to promote domestic and international investment in mining, which we know is not a sustainable source of revenue. Labour Flexibilization: Refers to the changing work practices by which firms no longer use internal labor markets or implicitly promise employees lifetime job security, but rather seek flexible employment relations that permit them to increase or diminish their workforce, and reassign and redeploy employees with ease. This flexibility of the job market can have many negative consequences especially for those in developing nations. Capital is mobile, and labour is not. Labour flexibilization means that there is no guarantee that jobs are stable, and although many are working long hours for minimum pay this is their main source of income for themselves and their families. The FARC: The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—People’s Army are a Marxist–Leninist terrorist organization involved in the continuing Colombian armed conflict since 1964. The FARC-EP claim to be a peasant army with a political platform of agrarianism and anti-imperialism. The FARC say that they represent the poor people of rural Colombia against the monopolization of natural resources by multinational corporations. In municipalities where the extractive multinational corporations operated, their grievances were accentuated, providing better grounds for the armed insurgency to increase its recruitment. The FARC is an ideal example of how MNC’s can fuel conflict within developing nations especially if they are resource rich. Autotrim: Autotrim was established in Matamoros in 1985, as a subsidiary of the Canadian company Custom Trim. The struggle to improve the health, environmental, and wage conditions in the maquiladoras grew from a local struggle to an international campaign due to the practices of Autotrim de Mexico - a car parts maquiladora location in Matamoros.Their experience over more than eight years highlights some of the ways in which the maquiladoras promote the intensive use of labour and impose a double standard for wages and labour rights in the different countries where the parent companies operate, and how the maquiladora model promotes productivity at the cost of the physical and psychological integrity of the workers without granting them fair compensation for their labour.The experience of the Autotrim workers presents the human side of many of these problems. It clearly shows the prevalence of difficultand sometimes dangerous-working conditions. It also shows the tremendous obstacles workers face when they try to defend themselves through collective action. At the hands of the company, they suffer firings, hostilities, and threats. From the official union leaders, they face corruption and collusion with the company. From government authorities in charge of applying labour laws, there is little enforcement of worker protections and, on occasion, complicity with illegal corporate actions. Rodrik’s concept of “hyperglobalization”: The move towards hyperglobalization in the last two decades, meaning the removal of all border controls to trade and financial capital, has led to a reduction of policy space for governments. Democracy has been affected, as in many cases constituencies have lost their access to points where policies were being made, leading to a situation where a trilemma exists between national sovereignty, democracy and (hyper) globalisation. The trilemma means that we cannot, as he argues in The Globalization Paradox, simultaneously pursue democracy, national determination and economic globalization. If we were to push further with globalization, he clarifies, we have to give up either the nation-state or democratic politics. We are forced to choose two of the goals instead, limiting our pursuit for the third one. As Rodrik further argues, since democracy is and remains one of humanity’s greatest achievements and one can hardly imagine a global government, economic globalization is what has to be constrained.
Final Exam Study Guide POLB90 PART B: Short Essay Question One: “You are the president of the Republic of Mineria. Fifty percent of your population live in poverty; unemployment is high. You want to increase taxation on the multinational companies that control your petroleum and mining industries and use these revenues to improve the lives of your people and the productivity of your economy over the long term by ensuring an educated and healthy population. You also wish to launch an employment generating industrialization program to provide jobs for your population. Your country is highly indebted. Write any essay outlining the challenges you face in the achievement of your goals. Are you likely to achieve them? Thesis: When leaders of developing nations attempt to bring their country out of poverty and into the “developed” world, there are certain challenges they may face in the achievement of this. The first challenge I would expect to face is MNC’s creating a situation where the potential of conflict is possible. The second challenge would be structural adjustment and conditionality’s surrounding my debts limiting my ability to put funds into the social sector. And the third challenge I expect to face would be the introduction of large MNCs generating more problems in the industrial sector. All of these challenges perpetuate the cycle of poverty which exists within my country, thus making development highly unlikely but not impossible. Paragraph One: MNC’s and Conflict My nation has the unfortunate luck of being rich in petroleum. Oil and the Production of Competing Subjectivities in Nigeria - Omolade Adunbi Oil drilling fields can be considered “platforms of possibilities” because, in the perception of the subject population, the presence of oil platforms and flow stations in their village creates an illusion of wealth for community members.
But they are also “pipelines of conflict” because they create antagonism within and between communities based on claims of natural resource ownership The nation-state have transformed this prized asset of the communities into properties of the Nigerian state because of the abundance of natural resources in the region, many subject populations both confront and cooperate with the state and multinational corporations to reclaim ownership of what they consider to be “their” properties. These forms of contestation create different layers of practices that transform oil platforms from possibilities— possibilities of wealth generation for individuals, communities, and the Nigerian state—to pipelines of conflict that pitch individuals and communities against each other in an attempt to control wealth generated by natural resources. o These conflicts are further amplified by the categorization of community members into “host families,” “host communities,” and “oil producing” communities. o This form of power rekindles colonial tradition within communities rich in natural resources. These practices reshape the “art of governance” within communities of the Niger Delta in ways that privilege corporations by rendering their powers invisible while promoting local actors as the most powerful entity that is capable of governing spaces.
Multinational Corporations, Rentier Capitalism, and the War System in Colombia- Nazih Richani The extractive companies contributed to the war system by exacerbating conflicts over land and by deepening the crises of the rural economy by injecting the Dutch disease, which put inflationary pressure on wages, accelerated deagriculturalization and deindustrialization processes, and contributed to the erosion of the traditional social fabric.
MCs created in their areas of operations a rentier-based economy, which accelerated the decomposition of the subsistence peasant economy, as demonstrated in the cases of Casanare, Arauca, and south Bolívar.
Rentier capital penetration also assumed a violent form in Guajira and south Bolívar, where the lands of poor peasants, colonos, indigenous people, and miners became valuable commercial commodities for resource extraction; oil, coal, and gold, respectively.
Final Exam Study Guide POLB90 Paragraph Two: Structural Adjustment and Conditionality In order to repay our debts the IMF determined that we had to sign on with their stabilization agreements in order to get funding. Then they notices that this policy was not working Policy conditionality o Stabilization agreements (IMF) The Washington consensus Credit restriction Devalue currency Trade liberalizations Reduction in global spending Privatization To repay debt, stimulate exports. o Sell off your companies Deregulation of foreign investment If they didn’t agree, they could not get loans from the World Labour flexiblization Bank. Results? removal of subsidies removal of restrictions on capital flow Constrict economy o instrumental in GS o Rising unemployment Negative social consequence o No public spending The Promise of Global Institutions – Joseph Stiglitz The fact that trade liberalization all too often fails to live up to its promise-but instead simply leads to more unemployment-is why it provokes strong opposition.
The Hypocrisy - The Western countries pushed trade liberalization for the products that they exported, but at the same time continued to protect those sectors in which competition from developing countries might have threatened their economies. The Western countries have pushed poor countries to eliminate trade barriers, but kept up their own barriers, preventing developing countries from exporting their agricultural products and so depriving them of desperately needed export income.
Paragraph Three: MNCs and the Industrial sector In order to stimulate my economy, attracting international companies to open up plants in my country will seem to be the most plausible option. However, there are also other problems associated with MNCs. The Struggle for Justice in the Maquiladoras - Pastoral Juvenil Obrera Export assembly industries have a very small effect on other areas of production, generating little indirect employment, and largely failing to stimulate the rest of the economy. In part this is because they use very few domestic inputs, aside from labor.
Labour flexibilization - This flexibility of the job market can have many negative consequences especially for those in developing nations. Capital is mobile, and labour is not. Labour flexibilization means that there is no guarantee that jobs are stable, and although many are working long hours for minimum pay this is their main source of income for themselves and their families. The high mobility of the enterprises and the related obstacles to establishing unions makes it difficult to improve wages and working conditions. The general numbers about the growth of employment in the maquiladora l sector also hide the fact that companies are constantly moving. E Even though the number of jobs may be reported as stable, for the individual workers the experience is anything but. o The constant closing and opening of firms means high turnover, little job security, and a prevalence of short-term contracts. Various health and environmental costs
I need to find a way to stimulate the economic sector and increase industry without making the situation worse.
Final Exam Study Guide POLB90 PART B: Short Essay Question Two: “European expansion and colonial conquest involved not just the acquisition of control of the affairs of most of the global south but also involved an important cultural dimension that shaped the way that development is thought about and pursued. Although countries achieved their formal independence, this type of dominance still continues” Discuss. Thesis: Although countries have achieved their formal independence, they still find themselves in a situation where they are dependent on or subordinate to their European counterparts. This is due in part to their lack of sense of self, their financial dependence on Western nations and institutions and the unfair advantage that the west has over policy in the financial sector. All of these factors have ultimately helped perpetuate the problems of the global south countries Paragraph One: National identity On National Culture – Frantz Fanon Frantz Fanon foregrounds the following paradox: "national identity," while vital to the emergence of a Third World revolution, paradoxically limits such efforts at liberation because it re-inscribes an essentialist, totalizing, fetishized, often middle-class specific understanding of "nation" rather than encouraging a nuanced articulation of an oppressed people's cultural heterogeneity across class lines. o
In other words, although the concept of "nation" unfairly characterizes colonized subjects as historically unified in their primitiveness or exoticness, the term's promise of solidarity and unity often proves helpful nonetheless in their attempts at political amelioration.
o
Fanon Became aware psychological and cultural impact of colonialism What it did was inculcated the notion that everything “European” was superior Causes them to look to Europe as an example of how they should combat their poverty Literature had an enormous impact on European views on the Global south Fanon argued that colonized were not only weighted down by economic notions, but the idea of cultural inferiority of the colonized Most of these colonies retained their ties with former colonial powers o “Hybrid elites” – a result of western educated people and indigenous values o Violent revolutionary struggle was necessary in removing the deep psychological impact of colonialism would be shaken Fanon encourages a materialist conceptualization of the nation that is based not so much on collective cultural traditions or ancestor-worship as political agency and the collective attempt to dismantle the economic foundations of colonial rule. o Fanon explains that "national identity" only carries meaning insofar as it reflects the combined revolutionary efforts of an oppressed people aiming at collective liberation: Paragraph Two: Dependence on Western institutions Being dependent on foreign intervention for the stimulation of national revenue can leave a country subjected to the conditions of the provider. The Promise of Global Institutions – Joseph Stiglitz
Opening up to international trade has helped many countries grow far more quickly than they would otherwise have done. International trade helps economic development when a country's exports drive its economic growth. o HOWEVER, a growing divide between the haves and the have-nots has left increasing numbers in the Third World in dire poverty, living on less than a dollar a day.
Final Exam Study Guide POLB90 o
The ministries of finance in poor countries were willing to become converts, if necessary, to obtain the funds of the IMF and World Bank, though the vast majority of government officials, and, more to the point, people in these countries often remained skeptical.
Many of the policies that the IMF pushed, in particular, premature capital market liberalization, have contributed to global instability. And once a country was in crisis, IMF funds and programs not only failed to stabilize the situation but in many cases actually made matters worse, especially for the poor.
Many states allow the entrance of MNCs into their countries with the hope that they will generate revenue and stimulate the economy; however they actually worsened the problem of these developing nations. Multinational Corporations, Rentier Capitalism, and the War System in Colombia- Nazih Richani One aspect focuses on how multinational corporations, or MCs, disrupted the subsistence peasant economy, exacerbating violent conflict particularly over the access to land, which, in turn, consolidated the country’s war system. The second aspect is how these companies triggered rent predation in some of the war system’s main actors: state, guerrillas, and paramilitaries, thereby helping (directly and indirectly) to finance and maintain the war system without affecting MCs’ profit margins to the point of discouraging them from further investment. The third aspect is how the MCs helped to internationalize the conflict, which, in turn, exacerbated the war system condition. o Wittingly or unwittingly, MCs helped to maintain a balance of forces that allowed the perpetuation of the war system. Paragraph Three: Western Self interest The international financial system Would have a profound impact on what Global South countries could not do in terms of development- Mechanism of control Definition: Private commercial banks 1970’s: Banks pressure GS to borrow o Due to a rise in petroleum, they had money Needed a place to invest They had all this capital to lend out Country A lends out money in peso’s, the Canadian banking regulations do not apply, no insurance , no credit checks - Totally unregulated Lent huge amounts of money o Very much a part of this surge in debt IMF & World bank o Developed country dominance The countries that are the wealthiest have more votes meaning that they have more say Gives the opportunity for these countries to influence policy making The Promise of Global Institutions – Joseph Stiglitz The fact that trade liberalization all too often fails to live up to its promise-but instead simply leads to more unemployment-is why it provokes strong opposition.
The Hypocrisy - The Western countries pushed trade liberalization for the products that they exported, but at the same time continued to protect those sectors in which competition from developing countries might have threatened their economies. The Western countries have pushed poor countries to eliminate trade barriers, but kept up their own barriers, preventing developing countries from exporting their agricultural products and so depriving them of desperately needed export income.
Final Exam Study Guide POLB90 jobs and contribute negatively to politics as was the case in Tanzania in 2011 whereby the PRSPs asked leaders to promote domestic and international investment in mining, which we know is not a sustainable source of revenue. Labour Flexibilization: Refers to the changing work practices by which firms no longer use internal labor markets or implicitly promise employees lifetime job security, but rather seek flexible employment relations that permit them to increase or diminish their workforce, and reassign and redeploy employees with ease. This flexibility of the job market can have many negative consequences especially for those in developing nations. Capital is mobile, and labour is not. Labour flexibilization means that there is no guarantee that jobs are stable, and although many are working long hours for minimum pay this is their main source of income for themselves and their families. The FARC: The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—People’s Army are a Marxist–Leninist terrorist organization involved in the continuing Colombian armed conflict since 1964. The FARC-EP claim to be a peasant army with a political platform of agrarianism and anti-imperialism. The FARC say that they represent the poor people of rural Colombia against the monopolization of natural resources by multinational corporations. In municipalities where the extractive multinational corporations operated, their grievances were accentuated, providing better grounds for the armed insurgency to increase its recruitment. The FARC is an ideal example of how MNC’s can fuel conflict within developing nations especially if they are resource rich. Autotrim: Autotrim was established in Matamoros in 1985, as a subsidiary of the Canadian company Custom Trim. The struggle to improve the health, environmental, and wage conditions in the maquiladoras grew from a local struggle to an international campaign due to the practices of Autotrim de Mexico - a car parts maquiladora location in Matamoros.Their experience over more than eight years highlights some of the ways in which the maquiladoras promote the intensive use of labour and impose a double standard for wages and labour rights in the different countries where the parent companies operate, and how the maquiladora model promotes productivity at the cost of the physical and psychological integrity of the workers without granting them fair compensation for their labour.The experience of the Autotrim workers presents the human side of many of these problems. It clearly shows the prevalence of difficultand sometimes dangerous-working conditions. It also shows the tremendous obstacles workers face when they try to defend themselves through collective action. At the hands of the company, they suffer firings, hostilities, and threats. From the official union leaders, they face corruption and collusion with the company. From government authorities in charge of applying labour laws, there is little enforcement of worker protections and, on occasion, complicity with illegal corporate actions. Rodrik’s concept of “hyperglobalization”: The move towards hyperglobalization in the last two decades, meaning the removal of all border controls to trade and financial capital, has led to a reduction of policy space for governments. Democracy has been affected, as in many cases constituencies have lost their access to points where policies were being made, leading to a situation where a trilemma exists between national sovereignty, democracy and (hyper) globalisation. The trilemma means that we cannot, as he argues in The Globalization Paradox, simultaneously pursue democracy, national determination and economic globalization. If we were to push further with globalization, he clarifies, we have to give up either the nation-state or democratic politics. We are forced to choose two of the goals instead, limiting our pursuit for the third one. As Rodrik further argues, since democracy is and remains one of humanity’s greatest achievements and one can hardly imagine a global government, economic globalization is what has to be constrained.
Final Exam Study Guide POLB90 PART B: Short Essay Question One: “You are the president of the Republic of Mineria. Fifty percent of your population live in poverty; unemployment is high. You want to increase taxation on the multinational companies that control your petroleum and mining industries and use these revenues to improve the lives of your people and the productivity of your economy over the long term by ensuring an educated and healthy population. You also wish to launch an employment generating industrialization program to provide jobs for your population. Your country is highly indebted. Write any essay outlining the challenges you face in the achievement of your goals. Are you likely to achieve them? Thesis: When leaders of developing nations attempt to bring their country out of poverty and into the “developed” world, there are certain challenges they may face in the achievement of this. The first challenge I would expect to face is MNC’s creating a situation where the potential of conflict is possible. The second challenge would be structural adjustment and conditionality’s surrounding my debts limiting my ability to put funds into the social sector. And the third challenge I expect to face would be the introduction of large MNCs generating more problems in the industrial sector. All of these challenges perpetuate the cycle of poverty which exists within my country, thus making development highly unlikely but not impossible. Paragraph One: MNC’s and Conflict My nation has the unfortunate luck of being rich in petroleum. Oil and the Production of Competing Subjectivities in Nigeria - Omolade Adunbi Oil drilling fields can be considered “platforms of possibilities” because, in the perception of the subject population, the presence of oil platforms and flow stations in their village creates an illusion of wealth for community members.
But they are also “pipelines of conflict” because they create antagonism within and between communities based on claims of natural resource ownership The nation-state have transformed this prized asset of the communities into properties of the Nigerian state because of the abundance of natural resources in the region, many subject populations both confront and cooperate with the state and multinational corporations to reclaim ownership of what they consider to be “their” properties. These forms of contestation create different layers of practices that transform oil platforms from possibilities— possibilities of wealth generation for individuals, communities, and the Nigerian state—to pipelines of conflict that pitch individuals and communities against each other in an attempt to control wealth generated by natural resources. o These conflicts are further amplified by the categorization of community members into “host families,” “host communities,” and “oil producing” communities. o This form of power rekindles colonial tradition within communities rich in natural resources. These practices reshape the “art of governance” within communities of the Niger Delta in ways that privilege corporations by rendering their powers invisible while promoting local actors as the most powerful entity that is capable of governing spaces.
Multinational Corporations, Rentier Capitalism, and the War System in Colombia- Nazih Richani The extractive companies contributed to the war system by exacerbating conflicts over land and by deepening the crises of the rural economy by injecting the Dutch disease, which put inflationary pressure on wages, accelerated deagriculturalization and deindustrialization processes, and contributed to the erosion of the traditional social fabric.
MCs created in their areas of operations a rentier-based economy, which accelerated the decomposition of the subsistence peasant economy, as demonstrated in the cases of Casanare, Arauca, and south Bolívar.
Rentier capital penetration also assumed a violent form in Guajira and south Bolívar, where the lands of poor peasants, colonos, indigenous people, and miners became valuable commercial commodities for resource extraction; oil, coal, and gold, respectively.
Final Exam Study Guide POLB90 Paragraph Two: Structural Adjustment and Conditionality In order to repay our debts the IMF determined that we had to sign on with their stabilization agreements in order to get funding. Then they notices that this policy was not working Policy conditionality o Stabilization agreements (IMF) The Washington consensus Credit restriction Devalue currency Trade liberalizations Reduction in global spending Privatization To repay debt, stimulate exports. o Sell off your companies Deregulation of foreign investment If they didn’t agree, they could not get loans from the World Labour flexiblization Bank. Results? removal of subsidies removal of restrictions on capital flow Constrict economy o instrumental in GS o Rising unemployment Negative social consequence o No public spending The Promise of Global Institutions – Joseph Stiglitz The fact that trade liberalization all too often fails to live up to its promise-but instead simply leads to more unemployment-is why it provokes strong opposition.
The Hypocrisy - The Western countries pushed trade liberalization for the products that they exported, but at the same time continued to protect those sectors in which competition from developing countries might have threatened their economies. The Western countries have pushed poor countries to eliminate trade barriers, but kept up their own barriers, preventing developing countries from exporting their agricultural products and so depriving them of desperately needed export income.
Paragraph Three: MNCs and the Industrial sector In order to stimulate my economy, attracting international companies to open up plants in my country will seem to be the most plausible option. However, there are also other problems associated with MNCs. The Struggle for Justice in the Maquiladoras - Pastoral Juvenil Obrera Export assembly industries have a very small effect on other areas of production, generating little indirect employment, and largely failing to stimulate the rest of the economy. In part this is because they use very few domestic inputs, aside from labor.
Labour flexibilization - This flexibility of the job market can have many negative consequences especially for those in developing nations. Capital is mobile, and labour is not. Labour flexibilization means that there is no guarantee that jobs are stable, and although many are working long hours for minimum pay this is their main source of income for themselves and their families. The high mobility of the enterprises and the related obstacles to establishing unions makes it difficult to improve wages and working conditions. The general numbers about the growth of employment in the maquiladora l sector also hide the fact that companies are constantly moving. E Even though the number of jobs may be reported as stable, for the individual workers the experience is anything but. o The constant closing and opening of firms means high turnover, little job security, and a prevalence of short-term contracts. Various health and environmental costs
I need to find a way to stimulate the economic sector and increase industry without making the situation worse.
Final Exam Study Guide POLB90 PART B: Short Essay Question Two: “European expansion and colonial conquest involved not just the acquisition of control of the affairs of most of the global south but also involved an important cultural dimension that shaped the way that development is thought about and pursued. Although countries achieved their formal independence, this type of dominance still continues” Discuss. Thesis: Although countries have achieved their formal independence, they still find themselves in a situation where they are dependent on or subordinate to their European counterparts. This is due in part to their lack of sense of self, their financial dependence on Western nations and institutions and the unfair advantage that the west has over policy in the financial sector. All of these factors have ultimately helped perpetuate the problems of the global south countries Paragraph One: National identity On National Culture – Frantz Fanon Frantz Fanon foregrounds the following paradox: "national identity," while vital to the emergence of a Third World revolution, paradoxically limits such efforts at liberation because it re-inscribes an essentialist, totalizing, fetishized, often middle-class specific understanding of "nation" rather than encouraging a nuanced articulation of an oppressed people's cultural heterogeneity across class lines. o
In other words, although the concept of "nation" unfairly characterizes colonized subjects as historically unified in their primitiveness or exoticness, the term's promise of solidarity and unity often proves helpful nonetheless in their attempts at political amelioration.
o
Fanon Became aware psychological and cultural impact of colonialism What it did was inculcated the notion that everything “European” was superior Causes them to look to Europe as an example of how they should combat their poverty Literature had an enormous impact on European views on the Global south Fanon argued that colonized were not only weighted down by economic notions, but the idea of cultural inferiority of the colonized Most of these colonies retained their ties with former colonial powers o “Hybrid elites” – a result of western educated people and indigenous values o Violent revolutionary struggle was necessary in removing the deep psychological impact of colonialism would be shaken Fanon encourages a materialist conceptualization of the nation that is based not so much on collective cultural traditions or ancestor-worship as political agency and the collective attempt to dismantle the economic foundations of colonial rule. o Fanon explains that "national identity" only carries meaning insofar as it reflects the combined revolutionary efforts of an oppressed people aiming at collective liberation: Paragraph Two: Dependence on Western institutions Being dependent on foreign intervention for the stimulation of national revenue can leave a country subjected to the conditions of the provider. The Promise of Global Institutions – Joseph Stiglitz
Opening up to international trade has helped many countries grow far more quickly than they would otherwise have done. International trade helps economic development when a country's exports drive its economic growth. o HOWEVER, a growing divide between the haves and the have-nots has left increasing numbers in the Third World in dire poverty, living on less than a dollar a day.
Final Exam Study Guide POLB90 o
The ministries of finance in poor countries were willing to become converts, if necessary, to obtain the funds of the IMF and World Bank, though the vast majority of government officials, and, more to the point, people in these countries often remained skeptical.
Many of the policies that the IMF pushed, in particular, premature capital market liberalization, have contributed to global instability. And once a country was in crisis, IMF funds and programs not only failed to stabilize the situation but in many cases actually made matters worse, especially for the poor.
Many states allow the entrance of MNCs into their countries with the hope that they will generate revenue and stimulate the economy; however they actually worsened the problem of these developing nations. Multinational Corporations, Rentier Capitalism, and the War System in Colombia- Nazih Richani One aspect focuses on how multinational corporations, or MCs, disrupted the subsistence peasant economy, exacerbating violent conflict particularly over the access to land, which, in turn, consolidated the country’s war system. The second aspect is how these companies triggered rent predation in some of the war system’s main actors: state, guerrillas, and paramilitaries, thereby helping (directly and indirectly) to finance and maintain the war system without affecting MCs’ profit margins to the point of discouraging them from further investment. The third aspect is how the MCs helped to internationalize the conflict, which, in turn, exacerbated the war system condition. o Wittingly or unwittingly, MCs helped to maintain a balance of forces that allowed the perpetuation of the war system. Paragraph Three: Western Self interest The international financial system Would have a profound impact on what Global South countries could not do in terms of development- Mechanism of control Definition: Private commercial banks 1970’s: Banks pressure GS to borrow o Due to a rise in petroleum, they had money Needed a place to invest They had all this capital to lend out Country A lends out money in peso’s, the Canadian banking regulations do not apply, no insurance , no credit checks - Totally unregulated Lent huge amounts of money o Very much a part of this surge in debt IMF & World bank o Developed country dominance The countries that are the wealthiest have more votes meaning that they have more say Gives the opportunity for these countries to influence policy making The Promise of Global Institutions – Joseph Stiglitz The fact that trade liberalization all too often fails to live up to its promise-but instead simply leads to more unemployment-is why it provokes strong opposition.
The Hypocrisy - The Western countries pushed trade liberalization for the products that they exported, but at the same time continued to protect those sectors in which competition from developing countries might have threatened their economies. The Western countries have pushed poor countries to eliminate trade barriers, but kept up their own barriers, preventing developing countries from exporting their agricultural products and so depriving them of desperately needed export income.
