Paper short abstract:

Many of the classical insights from development studies provide crucial lenses into the deep systemic crisis currently facing large parts of the Global South. Recent calls to remake the field risk abetting a politics of obfuscation in the face of aggressive reassertions of Northern dominance.

Paper long abstract:

The suggestion that development studies is no longer fit for purpose given changes in the world order is poorly timed with the deep systemic crisis currently facing large parts of the Global South. Rather, many of the foundational insights from early development economics, for instance, provide crucial lenses to understand the structures underlying the current crisis. Even if the global context has in many ways changed, certain underlying principles are as relevant as ever, even if obscured by moments of exuberance, such during gluts of international liquidity. One of the most central, which has reasserted itself with an aggressive if not violent vengeance, is the principle of external constraints that was central to structuralist thought in early development economics. Insights from structuralism and dependency theory also remain extremely relevant today with the increasing depth and extensiveness of foreign ownership in the Global South, and how this, combined with external constraints, structures the economies of these countries and drives particular forms of polarization and inequality. Lessons from the 1980s are also vital as many countries are being thrown back into similar situations of severe austerity and the revival of structural adjustment programmes in all but name, which many had myopically thought dead only a decade ago. These issues will be examined theoretically and empirically from the perspective of the current crisis, with the suggestion that recent calls to contest and remake the field risk abetting a politics of distraction and obfuscation in the face of aggressive reassertions of Northern dominance.

Paper short abstract:

The Washington Consensus' universal ambitions were only possible in an era lacking a great power antagonist. Today, rivalry with China is reshaping US hegemony around exclusionary rather than universalising aims, unevenly creating new spaces and constraints for development worldwide.

Paper long abstract:

Some scholars contend that US hegemonic decline has brought the world to a multipolar interregnum in which other powers and actors are more able to assert their interests and reshape global systems and structures. This paper recasts such understandings of the current conjuncture by positing that, while US hegemony remains, we are in fact currently leaving a (post-Cold War) interregnum- defined by a lack of major challenges to the US-led order- and returning to a more typical period whereby the modalities of hegemony are configured around great power competition, with major implications for development. The post-Cold War ‘end of history’ presented unique conditions which allowed for an unparallelled, universalising scale of hegemonic ambition (embodied by the Washington Consensus) that had not been feasible during the Cold War. With the rise of China and the failure to incorporate Chinese (and more broadly southern) capital and institutions into the existing order, the US is now retreating from such totalising ambitions towards a hegemony premised on marginalising and excluding antagonistic elements of the world-system. Using financial sanctions as an example, this paper argues that these nascent shifts are unevenly creating new spaces and constraints for development. Much can be learned from recent scholarship on the relationship between the Cold War (understood as a global field of contestation rather than a bipolar struggle) and historical development, though with a recognition that the context of today’s highly globalised world economy makes for substantially different vectors of competition.

Paper short abstract:

Resisting the epistemic erasure of alternative visions of global development, I outline the unfinished agendas of the Non-Aligned Movement, which are emerging at the core of contemporary contestations of global governance institutions.

Paper long abstract:

As environmental, economic, and socio-political rights continue to be sacrificed at the altar of hyper-globalized capitalism, traditional development paradigms fail to account for diverse global emancipatory goals of our planetary survival. Recognizing the epistemic validity of alternative projects of worldmaking, global development is emerging as a terrain in which exploitative paradigms of socio-economic progress are contested and resisted. This understanding of development as an anti-discipline allows us to weave together a pluriverse of alternative development visions resting on knowledge structures that do not need to be internally coherent to be complementary. Outlining the alternative development paradigm of worldmaking espoused by the Non-Aligned Movement, I trace the unfinished agenda of global governance transformation that our generation of development scholars and practitioners are called to urgently realize.

Paper short abstract:

To theorize postdevelopment as an alternative paradigm in development theory

Paper long abstract:

The paper seeks to define and situate postdevelopment (PD) theory within the social sciences

by discussing its relation to other theoretical approaches. It concludes that PD can be seen to

a rather limited extent as a development theory, but rather as a sociology of knowledge of this

discipline and a critique of its foundation. PD shares the critique of capitalism with Marxism

but also has a more negative view of industrial modernity, its relation to nature, economic

growth and productivity. For some, PD is characterized by a spirituality alien to western

modernity, although this does not seem to be necessary to subscribe to the approach. Although

PD’s critique is intimately related to ecofeminist thinking (and ecofeminist authors), many of

its male protagonists seem unaware of this proximity. PD is clearly a postcolonial (or

decolonial) critique of colonial and neocolonial relations of power which can be found also in

knowledge production, in particular in the division between the ‘developed’ Self (Europe and

European settler colonies and other societies emulating them) and the ‘backward’ Other. And

PD, at the least skeptical PD, is based on a post-anarchist perspective of ontological equality,

oriented towards self-determination in the pluriverse and rearguard theories.

Paper short abstract:

The world order has been a multilayered, multipolar order all along. Now there is worldwide interplay between multipolar globalization and multicrisis. Ideological disarray and confusion are building blocks of transition. This paper examines the interplay of crises and multipolarity.

Paper long abstract:

After World War 2 the victors were granted Security Council veto power. Decades later some powers were having international law for breakfast. Israel turned ‘the solution of no solution’ into a strategic motto. Over time NATO snuggled up to Russia a bit close. In response Russia snuggled back to Crimea, then to Ukraine and Georgia. The world order then was a multilayered, multipolar order all along. Now there is worldwide interplay between multipolar globalization and multicrisis. Ideological disarray and confusion are building blocks of transition.

When the French retreated from the Sahel, US forces came in with counterterrorism operations against (alleged) affiliates of Al Qaeda and IS. While replaying the cold war, now against terrorism, they supported corrupt governments. Add the arms spillover of Libya’s civil war (2011) and years later coups took Burkina Fasso, Niger, Mali, Guinea. US security operations expanding to coastal Ghana now encompass the US competing with China.

Pattern analysis: Security trumps development. Consider Afghanistan and Iraq. The issue isn't just neoliberalism but also the military-industrial complex, isn't just MIC but also ideology (democracy = liberal democracy) and isn’t just ideology but also big money. Hegemonic decline used to give rise to wars of hegemonic rivalry (1870-1945) and now gives rise to multipolar globalization (Pacific turn, China, emerging economies), which, interacting with diverse dynamics, yields multicrisis. US problems (corporate power, conservative power, uneven development, a billionaire world, extreme inequality) are reproduced on a global scale. This paper examines the interplay of crises and multipolarity.

Paper short abstract:

Drawn from China's international development initiatives, new development knowledge elements have emerged and nurtured in three dimensions of “ambiguities”: development imagination, modalities of development intervention and development geography.

Paper long abstract:

Development studies are at a crossroads. In the age that stands in need of development “convergence” and multilateralism cooperation to build collective actions in dealing with global challenges, development studies, however, impose increasing doubts and contradictions on the understanding of the traditional dichotomy between the North(centre) and the Global South(periphery). The landscape for development theories and policies has encountered fundamental transformation in terms of its ontology, epistemology and theory of practice. Against the backdrop, this paper takes China as a lens to review its mutual development initiatives for the last decade, shaping the urge for new development studies grounded in the 21st century.

This paper will first review three major waves of development ideas and theoretical debates since the 19th Century, bringing about the calling for a new paradigm of comparative development studies and global development narratives recently. Departing from this intellectual landscape, this paper will investigate China’s “mutual development” initiatives featuring the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and Global Development Initiatives (GDI) to understand its creation of various forms of “ambiguity” amongst traditional development concepts and practices. We argue that both BRI and GDI provide unconventional development practices on the ground. Upon its pragmatically coevolutionary practices, three dimensions of “ambiguities” in terms of its development imagination, modalities of development intervention, as well as development geography have emerged and nurtured new development knowledge elements.

Paper short abstract:

Why has the concept of overdevelopment been largely ignored in the development studies literature? This research identifies a school of theorists who contributed to the understanding of this concept and the proposed solutions that parallel contemporary degrowth thought.

Paper long abstract:

This research conducted a genealogical investigation into the term overdevelopment and identifies degrowth policies as a solution to this condition. The author argued that a genuinely “developed” country falls within a social floor and environmental ceiling that meets human needs and accounts for ecological limits. A qualitative systematic desk review method was used to uncover the existing literature on overdevelopment. Since being coined in the 1950s, overdevelopment was sidelined to perpetuate the underdeveloped/developed dichotomy. This dichotomy led to the framing of nebulous “development” as the goals of all states, without critical social and ecological considerations. Furthermore, the relational aspects of development and underdevelopment are addressed, along with the conditions of uneven and mal-development they constitute. The literature revealed a temporal consistency in overconsumption as an indicator of overdevelopment. Overconsumption is driven by social norms emanating from the higher strata of societies and leads to relative deprivation. The secondary indicator of size and scale has implications for the ideal size of societies in reaching development goals. After these indicators, the concept of “sustainable development” was scrutinized and mainstream development metrics were problematized. Modeling development pathways off of states which have developed largely through (neo-)colonial resource extraction create an “impossibility theorem.” Alternative measurements were discussed, as well as floor-and-ceiling models present in the overdevelopment and post-growth literature. To conclude, degrowth policies were identified as a solution to the overdeveloped condition.

Paper short abstract:

This paper empirically analyzes Chinese COVID-19 vaccines in the Global South. It shows that states with stronger existing political ties with China were more likely to turn to China for vaccine aid/donations during the crisis, but that commercial vaccine sales were driven by economic motives.

Paper long abstract:

The COVID-19 global vaccine distribution brought into sharp relief the inequalities inherent in the political economy of crucial commodities in a time of crisis. This paper asks why some countries turned to China as a source of vaccine doses during the first six months of the global vaccine rollout, while others did not. It theorizes that in the context of extreme uncertainty, threat, and time pressure, bounded rationality causes policymakers to turn to familiar sources for support. Using original data on Chinese vaccine doses delivered up to June 30 2021, and controlling for national interest and gravity variables, the paper finds robust statistical evidence that countries with stronger pre-pandemic “ties of support” with China (measured by receipt of Chinese medical teams and borrowing from China) were more likely to turn to China for vaccine donations. Commercial exports, on the other hand, are better explained by the standard gravity model of trade. The findings suggest that more attention is needed on the “demand side” of foreign aid, in particular in the unique circumstances of a widespread crisis.

Paper short abstract:

This study offers an in-depth examination of a Chinese firm’s digital community business in Kenya, investigating its practices and alignment with the ‘small and beautiful’ development cooperation trend emphasized by the Chinese state.

Paper long abstract:

Many Chinese businesses have embraced the ‘small and beautiful’ principle, focusing on small-scale investments with quick, tangible, and popular results. This marks a new arena in China-Africa development cooperation. However, empirical studies on such practices are scarce.

This study offers an in-depth examination of a Chinese firm’s digital community business in Kenya, investigating its practices and alignment with the ‘small and beautiful’ development cooperation trend emphasized by the Chinese state. Built on the theoretical approach that stresses the multi-dimensional engagements of Chinese actors in a non-holistic and contested manner to shape development cooperation practices, I explore the firm’s intricate dynamics with various contextual actors, including local employees, residents, and partners both from the local and China.

Data was collected during a four-month fieldwork in Nairobi, Kenya, involving interviews with multiple informants.

The study reveals three key findings. First, I reveal how the commercial-oriented business entity identifies niches within communities and integrates itself into the communities to develop its businesses. This underscores the role of African Agency in shaping the firm’s practices. Second, I explain how this firm became apparent in the Chinese state media to represent a ‘small and beautiful’ project in development cooperation. This indicates how Chinese businesses are entangled with the politics of the Chinese state’s development cooperation. Third, I examine how the firm navigates the current geopolitical landscape of development cooperation. This sheds light on how the firm operates within a transnational context to meet and adapt to constraints amidst intensifying geopolitical tensions.

Paper short abstract:

The paper examines China's role in reshaping the global FDI landscape and challenging Western dominance. The study concludes that South African governments should reconsider their economic strategy, specifically aiming to promote self-sustainability and economic equality.

Paper long abstract:

South Africa has emerged as a global hub, attracting substantial Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) from the world. This study focuses on the ramifications of Chinese investments in South African-based manufacturing businesses. First, this study uses a case involving Chinese FDI, local South African governments, and labor unions to examine their intricate interactions. Despite South African local initiatives, such as national minimum wage and collective bargaining aimed at achieving social equality, the analysis contends that these measures may inadvertently contribute to renewed labor struggles and inequality reproduction once FDI funds get involved. This underscores the urgency for South Africa to rebalance its industrial relations to navigate global capitalist competition effectively. Second, this study shifts focus to examine broader African economic development efforts, focusing on China's reshaping of the global FDI landscape and challenging existing Western dominance. This study provides both supporting evidence and a rationale to advocate for a critical examination of the various forms of FDI programs that are influencing African economies, placing special emphasis on the impact of Chinese neoliberal capitalism across the African social landscape. Rather than accepting a temporary halt in declining labor standards, the focus of any African country’s economic policy should be on steering future available FDI towards a more equitable and sustainable future, challenging and dismantling the prevailing social and economic factors that impede progress in reaching these goals.