mohan and stokke

Third World Quarterly

Participatory Development and Empowerment: The Dangers of LocalismAuthor(s): Giles Mohan and Kristian StokkeSource: Third World Quarterly, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Apr., 2000), pp. 247-268Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3993419 .

Accessed: 17/04/2013 22:30

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Taylor & Francis, Ltd. and Third World Quarterly are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve andextend access to Third World Quarterly.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 136.152.131.231 on Wed, 17 Apr 2013 22:30:33 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=taylorfrancis

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3993419?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


Third World Quarterly, Vol 21, No 2, pp 247-268, 2000

Participatory development and

empowerment: the dangers of

localism

GILES MOHAN & KRISTIAN STOKKE

ABSTRACT Recent discussions in development have moved away from holistic theorisation towards more localised, empirical and inductive approaches. In development practice there has been a parallel move towards local 'participation' and 'empowerment', which has produced, albeit with very different agendas, a high level of agreement between actors and institutions of the 'new' Left and the 'new' Right. This paper examines the manifestations of this move in four key political arenas: decentralised service delivery, participatory development, social capital formation and local development, and collective actions for 'radical democracy'. We argue that, by focusing so heavily on 'the local', the see manifestations tend to underplay both local inequalities and power relations as well as national and transnational economic and political forces. Following from this, we advocate a stronger emphasis on the politics of the local, ie on the political use of 'the local' by hegemonic and counter-hegemonic interests.

It is precisely the groundswell of anti-development thinking, oppositional discourses that have as their starting point the rejection of development, of rationality, and the Western modernist project, at the moment of a purported Washington consensus and free-market triumphalism, that represent one of the striking paradoxes of the 1990s. Ironically, however, both of these discourses-whether the World Bank line or its radical alternative-look to civil society, participation, and ordinary people for their development vision for the next millennium.'

This article examines the links between development theory and political action and the ways in which new political spaces are being imagined and constructed. Over the past decade research on development has generally moved away from holistic theorisation towards more empirically informed and inductive approaches, what Leys refers to as development studies rather than development theory.2 In development practice there has been a parallel move towards 'participation' and 'empowerment'. This has produced, albeit with very different agendas, a high level of agreement between actors and institutions of the 'new' Left and those of the 'new' Right.3 In particular, this has led to the emergence of 'the local' as the site of empowerment and hence as a locus of knowledge

Giles Mohan is at the Department of Geography, University of Portsmouth, Buckingham Building, Lion Terrace, Portsmouth PO 3HE, UK. Kristian Stokke is in the Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo, PO Box 1096, Blindern, 0137 Oslo, Norway.

ISSN 0143-6597 print; 1360-2241 online/00/020247-22 ?C 2000 Third World Quarterly 247




generation and development intervention. In terms of valorising the local over the general, two main strands of development thinking and intervention can be identified. These can be described as 'revisionist neo-liberalism' and 'post-Marx- ism'.

In early development economics, the interventionist state was assigned a key role in correcting market failures and ensuring economic efficiency, growth, macroeconomic stability and social development. The neoliberal counter-revolution in development theory brought a dramatic shift, as the state came to be seen as a barrier rather than a driving force in the development process.4 In the 1980s neoliberals strongly criticised the dirigiste state and promoted market liberalism as the most efficient mechanism for delivering economic and social development within a global market system. More recently there has been a shift within neoliberal development strategy from a singular emphasis on market deregulation to an additional emphasis on institutional reforms and social development.5 In this context, civil society has emerged as the arena in which a host of development objectives are to be achieved.

Civil society can, according to neoliberals, exert organised pressure on autocratic and unresponsive states and thereby support democratic stability and good governance.6 Civil society institutions can also be vehicles for participation in development programme and empowerment of target groups of poor people. This move has in part challenged the centralisation of the top-down state through planning couched in terms of 'stakeholders' and 'local governance'.7 For example, Participatory Poverty Assessments (PPAS) have become common practice in the World Bank and seek to identify local people's perceptions of poverty and its causes.8 Similarly, the trust and co-operation engendered through social capital has moved centre stage in poverty alleviation and NGO intervention,9 and forms the basis for the World Bank's Social Fund Programmes (See www.worldbank.org/poverty/scapital/index.htm).

This emphasis within neoliberalism on community participation and empowerment is paralleled by trends within more radical development studies. For post-Marxists, empowerment is a matter of collective mobilisation of marginalised groups against the disempowering activities of both the state and the market.'0 Behind this lies a theoretical critique of the reductionist treatment of politics in more structuralist Marxist accounts. Most famously, Laclau and Mouffe question the centrality of class as the locus of political consciousness and argue that 'society' cannot be so easily or statically explained." The focus then shifts to local political actors and a celebration of their difference and diversity rather than their common relationship to the means of production. This fluidity of identities produce a multitude of collective actions. Thus social movements become the primary focus for serious analytical engagements with political agency in society. At a more general level post-structuralists have radically questioned all claims to authority and truth. Through various critiques we have seen universalist, Western and male-biased claims to truth pulled apart to reveal their inherently power-laden and silencing effects.'2 The corollary is that only by listening to and revaluing alternative local knowledge can this be broken so that the focus is upon hybrid cultures revealed through radicalised ethnography.

248



PARTICIPATORY DEVELOPMENT AND EMPOWERMENT

There are critical differences between these positions'3 The revised neoliberal position represents a 'top-down' strategy for institutional reform in the sense that it is an effort by state agencies and collaborating non-governmental organisations to make institutions more efficient and to include identified target groups in the development process. This conceptualisation of participation and empowerment is based on a harmony model of power. Power resides with individual members of a community and can increase with the successful pursuit of individual and collective goals. This implies that the empowerment of the powerless could be achieved within the existing social order without any significant negative effects upon the power of the powerful'.'4 Post-Marxism represents a reversion of this neoliberal view. The radical notion of empowerment focuses on 'bottom-up' social mobilisation in society as a challenge to hegemonic interests within the state and the market. Conscientisation and collective identity formation around common experiences with economic and political marginalisation are key elements in this process.'5 Power is conceptualised in relational and conflictual terms. Hence, empowerment of marginalised groups requires a structural transformation of economic and political relations towards a radically democratised society.'6

What revised neoliberalism and post-Marxism share is a belief that states or markets cannot and should not be solely responsible for ensuring social equal- ity and welfare growth. Local actors, knowledge and interventions are key features in both 'new' Right and 'new' Left conceptualisations of development.'7 In between these two positions there are various strands of populism which also emphasise local social movements and community organisations. For instance, the liberal populism of Chambers (1983) centres upon reversing the previous centralism such that all development agencies should promote grassroots development. More radical versions are rooted in attacks upon Westernisation and capitalism.18 In both cases the 'post-development' era is to be founded upon localised, non-capitalist practices.'9

This paper examines the manifestations of this move in four key political arenas: decentralised service delivery, participatory development, social capital and social movements. All these themes and perspectives, which are over- lapping rather than mutually exclusive, hold out the promise of bringing about more localised, relevant and, ultimately, sustainable development. Although we see this move towards the local as a promising tendency within contemporary development theory and practice, we would like to point out that it also contains a number of dangers. One obvious problem is the tendency to essentialise and romanticise 'the local'. This means that local social inequalities and power relations are downplayed. Another problem is the tendency to view 'the local' in isolation from broader economic and political structures. This means that the contextuality of place, eg national and translational economic and political forces, is underplayed. Following from these observations, we argue that studies of local development should pay more attention to the politics of the local, ie to the hegemonic production and representation of 'the local' and the use of 'the local' in counter- hegemonic collective mobilisation. Since this politics of the local cannot be confined to the local level, it is crucial to pay attention to issues of scale,

249




ie to transgress analytically the boundaries between 'local', 'national' and 'global' scales.

Decentralisation, the local state and rational choice

It is in this sense that under the sign of 'decentralisation', using the 'mystique', ambivalence and allure of the concept, the forming of consent for something quite different can be more effectively nurtured. The term 'decentralisation' can be articulated into a monetarist discourse, but alternatively it can be linked into a discourse that combines ideas of collective empowerment, democracy and social-

iM20 ism.

In a recent issue of this journal Desai and Imrie analyse the 'new manageralism' in local governance and show how a common set of political and organisational principles is being circulated globally at the same time as these are being contested and modified in line with contingent local conditions.21 In this move towards the technocratic managerial state, decentralisation has become an important underlying principle.22 It holds up the promise of a re-ordering of political space and a revitalisation of 'the local' in terms of accountability and choice. Decentralisation constitutes a fluid and flexible discourse that can be utilised by different ideological interests. In this section we examine the changing discourses on decentralisation, rather than examining the impacts of such processes.23 In particular the major lenders have promoted decentralisation as a means of breaking the power of central ministries, increasing revenue generation and shifting the burden of service delivery onto local stakeholders.24 This is a very different inflection compared with liberal and radical approaches that see devolution of power to local government as a means of promoting a new communitarian spirit and forming the seedbed of democratic practice. Underpin- ning the lenders' vision of decentralisation is rational choice theory (RCT), which permits the more political readings of decentralisation to be transformed into a narrative of capital and 'efficiency'.

The spread of RCT into development theory and policy has been a recent phenomenon, but is of growing importance as Leys observes,25 despite there being relatively few empirical applications.26 The early neoliberal agenda re- volved around a profoundly cynical and pessimistic private interest view of the state in which state actors are only in politics for personal gain and 'correct' decision making will not prevail. The obvious corollary is that the unfettered market will deliver efficient and equitable results. Hence the underlying tendency is to create a 'narrative of capital' rather than a 'narrative of community'.27

In terms of decentralisation and RCT there has been a gradual change in approach over the past two decades. At the beginning of the 'Adjustment Era' Cheema and Rondinelli defined decentralisation as:

transfer of planning, decision-making, or administrative authority from the central government to its field organisations, local administration units, semi-autonomous and parastatal organisations, local governments or NGOS.28

Decentralisation is, in this sense, centered on the public and, to a lesser extent,

250




the voluntary sector. The process can, according to Cheema and Rondinelli, take four organisational forms-deconcentration of administration, delegation to semi-autonomous or parastatal organisations, devolution, and transfer of functions from government to non-government institutions. Around the same time, Kochen and Deutsch were concerned with efficiency in policy formulation and more specifically in the output of organisations as 'service systems'. They consider that the 'core of decentralisation in a service system is its responsiveness, the shortness of its communication time, and the directness of its channels between servers and clients'. 29 They demonstrate this with respect to 'passive services', namely those that require a request from a client, marking a shift towards consumer-led planning.

Almost a decade later Rondinelli et al aim to develop a 'new' political economy framework for analysing decentralisation programmes.30 The need for consumer responsiveness in an environment of increased demand for public services calls for integrating public choice approaches with public policy analysis. They initially criticise public choice theory for its overly rationalistic tendencies yet see it as useful in cases where user charges are levied or where exclusion can be developed. In this model the state is viewed either as 'constraining' or 'enabling' and society is reduced to the characteristics of people as consumers. Crucially the organisational arrangements for decentralisation include, in order, privatisation, deregulation, delegation, devolution and deconcentration. Here we see the move towards market mechanisms and away from public services. Additionally, by reducing people to consumers, Rondinelli et al quietly ignore the other dimensions of decentralisation, namely the notion of participation in state decision making, although the implication is that 'participation' means market transactions.

The World Bank's own policies towards decentralisation reflect these trends. The sixth World Development Report makes the links between market reforms and administration explicit, whereby 'competitive markets permit the necessary flexibility and responsiveness and, because they decentralize the task of handling information, also economize on scarce administrative resources'. 31 In this light decentralisation 'should be seen as part of a broader market-surrogate strategy.32 These views divorce 'technical' questions of economics from the ideological concerns of 'politics' so that the logic of the market is presented as natural. More recently, the World Bank, in talking of 'local participation', states that, 'The participation of local businesses can also play a crucial role in decentralisation, shaping incentives at the local level ... Much of this began in local environ- ments. Members of the business community often participated in local legisla- tures'.3 Again, the discourse is of 'incentives' and a market-friendly role for civil society organisations.

Decentralisation in its neoliberal guise treats the local as a functional, economic space with policies designed to increase the efficiency of service delivery. In this sense the market is seen as a universal principle without any 'geography', although the implication is that local political economies have their own coherence within this totaling logic. Decentralisation simply facilitates the efficiency of these nested local economies. However, as Slater implies in the quote at the beginning of this section, decentralisation can be seen in other terms.

251




For example, Karim details the work of NGOS in Bangladesh which pressed for reform of the government's decentralisation programme to make it genuinely devolved and responsive.34 Having done this the structures were in place for more integrated, co-operative and large-scale rural development. This example suggests that 'participation' at the local level can be broader than the market- driven agenda of decentralisation and thereby produce a multiplicity of local developments which are determined by the local people themselves.

Local knowledge and participatory development

A more liberal and populist approach to local empowerment centres on such an open-ended interpretation of participation, which its leading advocate describes as a 'paradigm shift'.3 Such discourses present this as commonsensical given the failings of what has preceded it. They share a belief in relying less on 'outside' agents, whether that be the state or Western development agencies, for achieving changes to self and/or community. Critically, this adds up to the valorisation of local (or at least non-Western) knowledge which has important implications for researchers and practitioners. The links between knowledge and action are obviously complex,36 but the starting point is to reject the assumption that 'experts' know best what creates the space for local knowledge to be accessed. They epistemological issues are part of the process of change and should not be separated from concrete 'policy' actions.37 This approach is seen as being universally applicable since it permits, in theory at least, development to be locally determined and free from the normative biases of 'non-locals'.

Debate surrounds the political nature of participation and what role knowledge generation plays. For some, it is taken to be a functional necessity for improving policy making so that participatory research aids development management and knowledge is viewed more as a product.38 For others, participatory research (and the new consciousness and knowledge it creates) is one element in an ongoing process of empowerment where local communities take over their own development. Freire's notion of 'conscientisation' is a prime source of inspiration for this more political view of the role of knowledge.34 Whichever point on the participatory spectrum one takes, the common ground is that codifying local knowledge is a necessary first step towards beneficial social change. In this section we look at how these constructions of knowledge privilege certain interpretations of local 'needs' and how they often leave untouched the wider processes which create local underdevelopment.

In contrast to the pseudo-scientist of quantitative research,40 Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) has become an increasingly popular set of qualitative research tools for participatory development.4' The methodologies subsumed under participatory research are broad,42 and are continually evolving. The principles of PRA revolve around a reversal of learning, learning rapidly and progressively, offsetting biases, optimising trade-offs, triangulating and seeking diversity. Tied to these principles are a basket of techniques that are combined, depending upon aims and local circumstances. However, there is an emphasis on expressing knowledge in ways that do not a priori assume that the written word

252




is the best means of communicating ideas: what the practitioners call 'visual- isation', which is supposedly more democratic and communal. Most common of the techniques are various mapping exercises whereby locals relate aspects of their lives through spatial representations, usually on the ground, using local materials such as pebbles and sticks.

While becoming popular over the past few years, PRA and the underlying approach to development that it embodies has a number of problems relating to both its ontology and epistemology.43 In terms of its political imagination participatory development tends to treat 'the local' as a harmonious community which is reflected in the way in which PRA tends to promote a consensual view.44 In Chambers' work, as Brown points out,45 there is a tendency to essentialism the poor and the social systems by which they operate. The 'poor' are set against an unspecified 'elite' whose only defining feature is their 'non-poorness', with the former group operating through affective ties of kinship, ethnic group, etc and the latter utilising the 'modern' methods of state channels. Such binary ontologies undermine the stated intentions of PRA of seeking diversity.

Nelson and Wright observe that 'Community is a concept often used by state and other organizations, rather than the people themselves, and it carries connotations of consensus and "needs" determined within parameters set by outsiders'. 46 PRA has tended towards this consensual view that conceals powerful interests at the intra-community level. The danger from a policy point of view is that the actions based on consensus may actually empower the powerful vested interests that manipulated the research in the first place. Pottier and Orone present a case where the chief purposefully failed to invite the very poor,47 so that as Richards notes 'decisions made generally favour village elites'. Recently such criticisms have been addressed, with conscious efforts made to disclose difference and heterogeneity. For example, Norton et al demonstrated that gendered differences exist over the importance of water availability to poverty in Zambia, while Goebel successfully analysed gender differences over resource management in Zimbabwe.49

Furthermore, the focus on the local as the site of empowerment and knowledge circumscribes consciousness and action. Practitioners of participatory research and development assume that local knowledge will reverse the previ- ously damaging interventions which treated locals as passive recipients. How- ever, the reversal has been almost complete, so that the individual agent has become the key political site. For example, Chambers acknowledges the 'many levels' of causality within underdevelopment, but chooses to focus on 'the primacy of the personal'50 whereby 'we are much of the problem,'51 which assumes that the insider/outsider division is the most important problem block- ing development. By revealing our self-conscious appreciation of this paradox, we place ourselves back at the centre of the (under)development process and therefore re-inscribe the authorial voice, because it is only us who can really change things. As Rahnema notes, we 'express this superiority by the very fact that we recognise and respect the validity of traditional knowledge, whereas nobody else does'.52 Development is not just about attitudes but about material- ities that such a discourse may do little to address. Chambers' invocation

253




of a 'benign virus' spreading through organisations is too voluntaristic and he rarely puts forward any strategies for affecting wider structures. The corollary is that, by valorising the local in this way and being self-critical of our colonising knowledge, 'we' behave as if we do not have anything to offer. The populist line treats all knowledge from 'the West' as tainted,53 and prevents genuine dialogue and learning. In this spatio-political schema the 'local' and the 'non-local' are treated as 'discrete entities, entirely separable from each other in space'. 54

Another effect of 'going local' is that the state is downgraded in importance. The liberal assumption of much participatory research is that the state has been too centralised, but better localised research will make bureaucrats more aware and in touch with locals so that more appropriate development is achieved. 55 Such an assumption ignores the ways in which the state has used 'the local' politically through material and discursive practices that dis- empower. For example, colonial Indirect Rule and the apartheid system were at one level about celebrating and politicising local difference in order to govern, but their corollary was that they fragmented political opposition as well as fuelling divisions between 'ethnic' groups.56 This means that, instead of romanticising the role of local civil society in development theory and practice, we need to examine the political use of 'the local' by various actors. In this politics of the local, state institutions, international donor agencies and social movements are some key actors. In examining the politicisation of the local, many aid-receiving governments who have paid lip service to participation are now doing so because they are aware that, since it has become a discourse of Western donors, they ignore it at their financial peril. While unpacking the causality of such moves is difficult, it was striking that in Ghana the highly centralised and authoritarian government which oversaw five years of stringent liberalisation only began to talk about participation when the donors moved towards 'good government' as a condition for further loans in the late 1980s.57

Similarly, it is assumed that it is NGOS who are 'closest' to those most in need, but Nyamugasira points out that the Northern funding NGOS should not assume, as they do, that their Southern counterparts are more responsive to the needs of locals,58 since they too are bureaucratic, politicised and staffed by indigenous elites.59 Nyamugasira adds that NGOS 'have come to the sad realization that although they have achieved many micro-level successes, the systems and structures that determine power and resource allocations-locally, nationally, and globally-remain largely intact'. 60 More recent interventions have begun to deal with these limitations by looking at strategies for 'scaling up' local interventions61 and linking participatory approaches to wider, and more difficult, processes of democratisation, anti-imperialism and feminism. For example, Whites argues that NGOS should 'also seek to build up the capacity of the state as an integral part of this localized, grassroots work',62 rather than creating parallel or alternative welfare delivery systems outside the state. This opens up questions of collaboration between networks of local 'partners' and it is here that social capital has become important as it promises to explain why some localities are successful and collaborate while others pull apart.

254




Social capital and local development

A relatively recent addition to the armory of concepts around which local development might occur is that of social capital. Popularised by Robert Putnam in his work on Italy and, latterly, the USA, social capital refers to 'features of social organization, such as networks, norms, and trust, that facilitate coordi- nation and cooperation for mutual benefit'. 63 Such capital is localised at the regional or community level and thus explains different degrees of success in response to the same macro-policy environment. For Putnam social capital fosters reciprocity, facilitates information flows for mutual benefit and trust and, once it exists, tends to be self-generating as successive generations are socialised into the localised norms which create success. However, beyond this rather general definition few have elaborated on the concept of social capital, which leaves it vague and amorphous. As Fine observes, social capital 'seems to be able to be anything ranging over public goods, networks, culture etc, The only proviso is that social capital should be attached to the economy in a functionally positive way for economic performance, especially growth'.64 Putnam's original observations on Italy correlated strong social capital with 'civic engagement' and the performance of government. In this latter sense, social capital can also contribute to democratic and sustainable governance.

It is not difficult to see why the concept of social capital has become so central to recent debates in development.65 It is essentially the sociocultural 'glue' which binds communities together and ensures both political and economic progress. This represents a highly reductionist approach to political economy where local communities are presented in a non-threatening language of trust, networks,

66 confitdnoinso owr cas reciprocity and associations. More conflict-orientated notions of power, class, gender and ethnicity are relatively unheard within the discourse on social capital. This allows a diverse range of interests to communicate.67 The recent popularity of the concept of social capital must also be seen in the light of the retreat of fundamentalist neoliberalism to what we have referred to as 'revisionist neoliberalism'. In its earliest incarnation neoliberalism sought to remove the state from economic life and liberate market forces and the entrepreneurial spirit. After 15 years of largely unsuccessful adjustment and liberalisation, the architects of neoliberalism began to soften and conceded, first, a more positive role for the state68 and, second, an awareness that development is a social process whose cultural underpinnings need to be understood. It is in this latter arena that social capital (and much of the rational choice institutionalism discussed above) needs to be placed. The combined effect of these two changes has seen the move towards multiple stakeholder approaches to development involving partnerships between state, private capital and civil society.

Despite social capital being under-theorised and poorly understood,69 it has become an important analytical concept and policy tool within development.70 First, from an analytical perspective several researchers have tested whether social capital does underpin successful economic development and/or poverty alleviation programmes. Leaving aside the obvious point that social capital also has a 'downside', in the sense that associations can work against the assumed common interests of society, these studies generally identify a positive corre-

255




spondence between social capital and local development. For instance, Narayan and Pritchett found a link between, on the one hand, associational activities and people's trust towards institutions and individuals and, on the other hand, household income levels in rural Tanzania.7' Brown and Ashman examined 13 cases of multiparty cooperation across Africa and Asia and found that 'The creation and strengthening of social capital in the form of local organizations and networks is an essential task in building intersectoral cooperation that mobilizes and utilizes local resources and energies for problem solving'.72 Similarly, Bebbington et al argue that 'the nature of relationships among plural actors, and the consolidation of social capital in the form of local organizations and networks, constitute part of the explanation of these successes in sustainable forestry' .7 Crucially, these analysts see social capital as an essentially local endowment leading to local development.

The second application of social capital theory follows from the first and is used in a more prescriptive sense. If one accepts that social capital is vital to developmental success and that lack of success points to the absence of social capital, then policies should attempt to 'build' it,74 and 'thicken' civil society.75 Thus, Wilson urges planners to focus on the 'intangible goal' of building social capital.76 She acknowledges the problems involved in this, since it is difficult to evaluate the current levels of social capital in a given context and then to measure what is gained as a result of a concerted policy intervention. Despite these methodological issues, Wilson urges planners to be facilitatory and reflexive, in much the same way as the PRA-based approaches outlined above.

At the level of macro-policy, the World Bank sees social capital underpinning a wide range of developmental initiatives.77 On their dedicated social capital website (www.worldbank.org/poverty/scapital/index.htm) the Bank defines social capital as 'the institutions, relationships, and norms that shape the quality and quantity of society's social interactions', which can be found in families, communities, firms, civil society, the public sector, ethnicity and gender relations. Crucially, social capital contributes to economic prosperity and sustainability and should ideally entail horizontal and vertical associations that both promote social cohesion and prevent divisive parochialism. The concept also applies to the wider political and social environment in which communities exist such that, following Putnam, social capital can encourage democracy and vice versa. To realise the potential of social capital in development, World Bank policy aims to foster broad-based participation and partnerships between the private sector, the state and civil society.78

While still a relatively new organising concept in World Bank policy, social capital is used to justify the creation of Social Funds. Social Funds have become an established policy device for general poverty alleviation and for cushioning the harsh effects of Structural Adjustment Programmes.79 Since their inception in Bolivia in 1986 they now cover 30 countries in Africa and Latin America. Initially they channelled funds through NGOS which acted simply as implement- ing agencies. Over time this involvement has increased, with the NGOS becoming involved in programme design and in monitoring their effectiveness. This ensures that the beneficiaries remain empowered and do not become marginalised by powerful political actors. At present Social Funds are administered

256




by a national agency which sets, through consultation, the criteria for funding. NGOS then bid to this agency for funds. At this stage, as Fox acknowledges,80 few independent studies have actually analysed the impacts of these programmes, although he suggests that Bank staff have to date failed to appreciate the complexity of local-national-international political processes.

Social capital, then, is a wide-ranging concept which is being used to explain a diverse range of developmental processes and/or justify policies based around it. Most analysts see it as a local phenomenon since it involves trust, reciprocity and a civic-minded community spirit. However, it has recently been dislocated from local communities to explain such things as the actions of corrupt state actors,8' or the failure of privatisation schemes.82

A sustained critique of social capital is beyond the scope of this paper,83 but it is worth mentioning some of the problems concerning its localism. First, in Putnam's work we see an internist view of culture and politics. Those regions which are successful are those which have possessed high stocks of social capital for a long time. In Putnam's words 'The historical roots of the civic community are astonishingly deep ... Stocks of social capital ... tend to be self-reinforcing and cumulative'.84 In this way regions are locked into a 'path dependency' whereby their initial stocks of social capital, wherever they come from, inculcate a self-fulfilling cycle of prosperity. The corollary is that unsuccessful regions simply lacked and lack the proper social capital to develop. While the concept of social capital promises to provide a more nuanced understanding of local development, it actually reduces causality to a rigid determinism.

Following from this cultural internalism comes a tendency to ignore the state's role in enabling or destroying social capital. Tarrow re-visits Italian political history and shows that the South of the country was held in a semi-colonial relation to the North so that economic development and associational life were consciously suppressed.85 This means that contemporary economic weaknesses and the social capital deficit are not connected to initial endowments. Similarly, Putzel adds that, in areas identified by Putnam as having high social capital, other political organisations were heavily involved, but Putnam chooses to ignore them.86 In particular in the North, the communist trade unions were active in promoting political activism and civic life in general. One can only assume that Putnam omitted them because these were not 'legitimate' forms of social capital, preferring instead the more benign activities like sports leagues and choir groups. It is this lack of attention to the state's role and other forms of political organisation that prompted Evans to talk of state-society synergy.87

Focusing on this role of the state, Fox theories the ways in which civil society 'thickens' and explains the 'uneven emergence of social capital under authoritarian regimes' .88 He sees this unevenness resulting from the interplay of the state's willingness and capacity to encourage or dismantle social capital, the contextual strategies of local political actors, and the effect of other organisations in enabling or disabling collective action. Together these causal processes help explain the spatial disparities in the 'thickness' of civil society, the ability to 'scale up' activity beyond the local and, more broadly, they challenge the path dependency of Putnam's approach. Likewise, Heller demonstrates that there are close links between social capital formation and the state in the case of Kerala.89

257




The high levels of social development and redistributive reforms that are found in Kerala are the products of mutually reinforcing relations between a democratic state and a well organised labour movement.

The cultural internalism that is found in the contemporary conceptualisation of social capital also has an important economic dimension. Whether tacit or overt, the thrust of social capital theory is to strengthen economic growth. In this sense it reflects the colonisation of the social sciences by neoclassical economics as it attempts to give an economic rationale to all 'non-economic' behaviour.90 This allows the major lenders to sidestep the state and its relation to the global economy since the economic basis is not rendered problematic, simply the shortcomings of local society in inserting itself into economic life in a cohesive and co-ordinated manner. Like modernisation theory of old, the problem lies with the 'victims' of poverty and underdevelopment and not with the wider political economy. Finally, there is a striking selectivity involved in the identification of the social phenomena which constitute social capital. By conflating or mis-specifying the relations between social processes (eg by focusing on trust or its absence) analysts like Putnam fail to really analyse where and how local conflicts arise. The most glaring ommission is class relations, in which a lack of 'cohesion', 'reciprocity' and 'trust' have obviously been analysed in great detail by marxian political economists. So as Fine observes, 'social capital allows the World Bank to broaden its agenda whilst retaining continuity with most of its practices and prejudices which include benign neglect of macro-relations of power, preference for favoured NGOS and grassroots movements, and decentralized initiatives'.91 Social capital theory combines the problems of both decentralisation and participation initiatives since it is econom- ist while ignoring the wider political economy and places emphasis on local cultural traditions while under-theorising the role of local political processes and state power.

Social movements and radical democracy

Over the past decade we have witnessed the emergence of post-Marxism in 92 i

various branches of the social sciences. Events in Eastern Europe at the end of the 1980s added 'real' political legitimacy to these academic projects, as did the rise of various social movements in the 'Third World'. The academic attack on Marxism was based on its class reductionism and economic determinism, which produced over-generalisations and seemingly unworkable practical politics. In place of this class-based and statist politics the progressive Left have moved towards a more cultural politics in which difference(s) become incorporated into a more open and heterogeneous politics.93 The question immediately arises as to which differences are most important for a critical politics.94 Although no single theory or term has been developed to encompass these changes in Left politics, 'radical democracy' has become increasingly popular and has replaced socialism as a reference point. This section explores the emergence of radical democracy and evaluates the influence of these ideas on development theory.

The development of post-Marxism owes much to Laclau and Mouffe's tional Marxist political analyses.95 Laclau and Mouffe use the existence of

258




diverse 'new' social movements to support their argument for the multitude of culturally constructed identities and collective struggles that cannot be represented by 'old' class movements such as trade unions. In the Third World context these movements became increasingly visible with deepening economic crises and crises of governance in the 1970s and 1980s.96 In general it was felt that formal political institutions (the state, political parties and trade unions) had become indivisible from the needs of the market. Hence new movements emerged which were local and sought to regain autonomy over livelihood decisions.97 These movements were pluralistic in the sense of lying outside major political alignments and were sometimes linked horizontally. Cultural considerations were not subordinated to economic motives especially in valorising local knowledge over 'expert' systems.

Escobar has elaborated on this emphasis on culture in social movements. Focusing on representation and discourse, he argues that 'the development discourse has been the central and most ubiquitous operator of the politics of representation and identity in much of Asia, Africa, and Latin-America in the post-World War II period'.98 As the representations embedded in the development discourse suppresses local cultures, women, identities and histories, they function as sites of violence. This produces acts of cultural resistance in the form of grassroots movements, local knowledge and popular power. The new anti-development grassroots movements that emerged in the 1980s, and the analysts that are representing them within academic literature, are not searching for new development alternatives but rather for alternatives to development. Escobar identifies the defence of the local, ie the defence of cultural difference and livelihoods, as the main principle behind these new forms of collective struggles. In a different context, Shiva presents the Chipko movement in India as the outcome of a fundamental contradiction between, on the one hand. a Western, masculine and nature-destroying science, technology and development paradigm and, on the other hand, local women's sustainable use of nature for everyday livelihood needs.99

This literature on social movements has been marked by some of the same tendencies towards essentialising the local as have been identified for the three previous topics. The basic argument within this literature is that social movements develop as forms of resistance against the state and the market. Local civil society is conceptualised as a relatively autonomous site of material and symbolic resistance and empowerment. This implies that broader material and political processes are analytically marginalised.

First, regarding the question of materiality versus cultural identity, it seems that consumption-based identity-lifestyle politics tends to be more visible in the First World, whereas livelihood struggles still dominate in the Third World.1?? This implies, at one level, that, in analysing many Third World struggles, identity is a problematic starting point given that not all local political struggles are primarily about identity, despite superficial similarities with First World struggles. Thus, Schuurman notes in contrast to Escobar that many social movements are not 'anti' or 'post'-development, seeking to reject the values of critique of the centrality of class relations and class consciousness in conven- modernity, but are in fact the product of an 'aborted modernity project'.101 To

259




characterise Third World countries as post-industrial and postmodern is to wholly misinterpret their histories of imperialism and underdevelopment. This then opens up the issue of culture and the transferability of radical democracy. It is not clear how the radical democrats could prove that anti-universalist politics is the solution to the non-Western democratic void, since the very act of defining and debunking 'universals' assumes partiality.'02 What both these observations points to is the heterogeneity of social movements which probably cannot be captured in a single explanation, no matter how 'unfixed' it might be. At the very least this requires a more complete analysis of the relations between materiality and identity.

Second, regarding state-society relations, much of the literature on social movements has tended to see civil society and the state as separate and opposed spheres. While Laclau and Mouffe do not deny the existence of the state, they 'deny states any positivity and de-privilege them as sites of political struggle'. 103 This leads to downplaying the importance of state power and the struggles over it at a time when states in general have become less accountable. The state is perceived as a site of subordination-as part and parcel of the oppressive system of capitalist exploitation and bureaucratic domination that social movements resist.'04 Political integration will inevitably undermine social movements and give oppressive regimes a degree of political legitimacy. Thus it is argued that social movements are and must remain autonomous in regard to the institutionalised political system. This helps explain the assumption that the new social movements are anti-state.'05 While this may be true in many cases, some social movements are anything but progressive in this regard and seek accommodation within the state apparatus rather than creating new political spaces outside it. Indeed, this blurs the line between the 'old' corporatist social movements and their newer replacements. In addition, it has become increasingly clear that the state is fully capable of co-opting these movements. Hellman has pointed out that this autonomy view is a very crude understanding of the relations between states and social movements. Political participation can and does take place in a number of ways with quite different outcomes for the movements in question:

The first outcome is the partial or total fulfilment of the demands of the movement by some agency of the state ... The second possibility is the incorporation of an urban or rural movement into the personal following of a populist figure ... A third outcome is the incorporation of a geographically or thematically isolated movement that is highly specific in its demands into a broader-based political struggle led by a party or coalition of parties.'06.

What can be learnt from recent analyses of social movements is that most cases are characterized by a growing complexity of alliances and conflicts between collective actors in civil society and actors within the state. The institutionalised political system constitutes a set of negative or positive political opportunity structures that can facilitate or hamper collective action rather than simply being a monolithic 'other' for collective actors.107 It is important in this new democratic imaginary to realise the power of the state and not demean it. This

260




is important in applying radical democracy as a theory of Real Politik, which Laclau and Mouffe are less able to do.

Third, this discussion of social movements and the state also opens up a fundamental question about the nature of civil society and its relation to the economy. Civil society is implicitly defined as a space of freedom from the state. By insisting upon the openness of the social the radical democracy literature runs the risk of downplaying the constraining effects of market forces. The non-state arena may be in one sense a space of political freedom but not of economic freedom, despite countervailing ideology.108 Meiksins Wood's analysis of the origins of civil society is instructive in clarifying this position.109 She argues that civil society emerged alongside capitalism and the modem state and is intimately tied to the concept of private property rights. In pre-capitalist societies political and economic power was inseparable but under capitalist modernity the market became separated from the state and incorporated in the newly formed arena outside the state known as civil society. As the state distanced itself from the 'autonomous' economy, a number of political functions formerly carried out by the state we are performed within civil society. These centre on the com- modification of social life, including most obviously, though not exclusively, labour. Hence, 'it marks the creation of a completely new form of coercion, the market-the market not simply as a sphere of opportunity, freedom and choice, but as a compulsion, a necessity, a social discipline'. o Thus the emergence of new social movements does not necessarily indicate that these are cultural phenomena devoid of materiality.'

This materiality of identities means that, while class may not be the only political referent, it is not possible to equate it with all other political identities, since the concept of class is rooted in capitalist exploitation. Some bases for identity, such as sexual orientation, are not inherently exploitative (though they have become so) and could exist in any political-economic system, whereas class is irreducibly linked to capitalist exploitation. The plurality of identities and the non-fixity of social relations mean that capitalism could 'potentially endorse any-even exploitative-social relations',112 or, as Meiksins Wood ironically exclaims, 'In what sense could it be "democratic" to celebrate class difference?'. 13 It seems that we need to move beyond a simplistic dualism of culture-materialism and its manifestation in an identity-class dichotomy. As Coole notes, 'diverse classes will need to be theorised differently and complexly and not only as differential positions vis-a-vis capitalist production'. II4 In this way the political imaginary can accommodate both material struggles and identity under an increasingly globalising capitalism, but be sensitive to differential causality attached to an identity position.

Fourth and finally, much of the new literature on social movements has a problematic interpretation of the local vs the non-local. This issue of scale (local/global) has been especially central within recent discussions about the ways in which globalisation has been or could be resisted. These discussions commonly reject the 'inevitabilism' of much globalisation discourse and seek 'to produce, or at least make a contribution to producing, concrete strategies of resistance'. 115 As globalisation is multiple so too must be these resistances. Chin and Mittelman argue that: 'Undeclared forms of resistance conducted individu-

261




ally and collectively in submerged networks parallel openly declared forms of resistance embodied in wars of movement and position, and counter-movements'. *16 However, resistance is not always progressive, as can be seen in the rise of extreme right-wing movements across Europe and the USA. Additionally, much resistance is largely reactive and should not be confused with a critical political conscience. The key then is to use resistance as a springboard into imagining and creating altemative futures. Castells describes this as a transition from collective actions based on resistance identities to struggles based on project identities. 17

One line has been to emphasise resistance from 'below', 118 which has seen a retreat into the localisms identified earlier and underpinned by a philosophy of anti-development. Pieterse criticises these strategies for simply seeking 'enclaves that provide shelter from the storm' which then precludes the possibility of linking them together in a concerted global strategy." 9 For example, in the 1990s in Southern Nigeria the Ogoni people mounted a resistance campaign against the Nigerian government and the oil corporation Shell.'20 Although centred around environmental degradation, the resistance movement was place- and ethnically- based because the Ogoni people were being persecuted by the Nigerian state and, allegedly, indirectly by Shell itself. Much of the resistance was therefore reactive. The Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (Mosop) called for greater political recognition within the Nigerian Federation, recompense for the damage caused by years of oil production and broader processes of self-determi- nation. Initially, MOSOP was successful in campaigning with international organisations such as Survival International. By the mid-1990s it was so vociferous that the government attempted to silence it though repression. This reached its height in 1995 when the government imprisoned the MOSOP leaders on trumped- up charges of being behind local killings. In November these nine MOSOP leaders, including Ken Saro-Wiwa, were executed, which caused international outcries but only limited official sanctions. It seems that the opposition has waned since then.

What this example shows is that local resistance by itself cannot challenge global and, in this case, national forces. There is therefore a need to 'break out of the local-primary or exclusive emphasis on the local can also lead groups to become colloquial and blinkered to other acts of resistance around the world or even their own regions, leaving them exposed to defeat or even destruction by not building sufficient social alliances'.'21 Resistance must be 'localised, regionalised and globalised at the same time'. 122 The linkages between scale and politics have become more complex, but more crucial, in these global times.

As the driving forces behind local collective actions are becoming global and globalisation is causing a transformation and hollowing out of the state, 'scaling up' of multiple localisms is beginning to take place, albeit tentatively. What we are seeing are 'political spaces other than those bounded by the parameters of the nation-state system-Global civil society has to recognise states but is not state-centric-while global civil society must interact with states, the code of global civil society denies the primacy of states or their sovereign rights'. 123 So in the same way that economic globalisation works outside and across states, this form of politics works underneath and beyond states. McGrew calls it 'radical

262




communitarianism' because it 'stresses the creation of alternative forms of global social, economic and political organization based generally upon the communitarian principles: that is principles which emerge from the life and conditions of particular communities, from local communities to communities of interest or affection'."24 Crucially this is often a 'virtual' meeting in hyperspace, so Benedict Anderson's notion of an 'imagined community' is further stretched across space.'25 In cyberspace 'resistance finds its instantaneous audience'.126 Although a long way off, we are seeing limited moves towards a world of computer democracy.

The most noted and quoted example of this are the Zapatistas, who spread their message around the world via the Internet; this has been picked up by Western activists and academics, the so-called 'red jet set',127 as a 'postmodern' social movement.'28 The immediate campaign called for a range of changes, including ethnic recognition, economic reform and political participation, but the Zapatistas message transcends the local. Subcomandante Marcos is seen to embody the essence of global civil society as he promotes the multiple 'selves' which constitute us. In response to the question 'who is he?', the reply came 'Marcos is gay in San Francisco, a black person in South Africa, Asian in Europe, a Jew in Germany ... a feminist in a political party. In other words, Marcos is a human being in this world. Marcos is every untolerated, oppressed, exploited minority that is beginning to speak and every majority that must shut up and listen'.'29 The rallying call is that people are exploited along different lines and it is this common experience that will form the basis of political change.

This example suggests that there is a tension between territorial, place-based politics and deterritorialised forms in which the state is a player but is no longer the pivot which mediates the global and the local. However, if transformations of the global political economy are to happen, concerted efforts must be made to reshape global governance. As Pieterse comments, this 'involves a double movement, from local reform upward and from global reform downward-each level of governance, from the local to the global, plays a contributing part'.130 Although clearly on the agenda, the shape and substance of such reforms are, as yet, unknown. Debates around reforming the UN system have been most widely mooted, given that much of the political infrastructure already exists. However, as currently constituted, these organisations are undemocratic so that we need 'an open and democratic organisation with the mandate and power to set and enforce rules holding these corporations across national borders democratically accountable to the people and priorities of the nations where they operate'.'31 Only by multiplying democratic spaces in such ways will more empowering forms of development take place.

Conclusion

This paper has argued that the paradoxical consensus over the role of 'local participation' in a globalising world is fraught with dangers. Local participation can be used for different purposes by very different ideological stakeholders. It can underplay the role of the state and transnational power holders and can,

263




overtly or inadvertently, cement Eurocentric solutions to Third World development. There is a need for critical analyses of the political use of 'the local', but also a need to develop a political imaginary that does not repeat these weaknesses.

Recent discourses about the local within development studies revolve around a binary opposition between the state and civil society. Civil society is understood as an alternative to inefficient and unresponsive state institutions or as the primary site of resistance against the state and the market. This is in opposition to recent trends within studies of politics and development, which are character- ised by a growing emphasis on state-society relations rather than seeing the state and civil society as separate spheres.132 According to the 'state-in-society' perspective proposed by Migdal et al,133 there is a multiplicity of links between actors within the state and in society. These actors will have varying degrees of political autonomy and capacity to define and implement an agenda within a political arena. The relationship between the state and society can be character- ised by strategic engagement or disengagement, but the image of the state and society as discrete spheres cannot be sustained.

In a similar way, the new localism in development studies has tended to essentialise the local as discrete places that host relatively homogeneous communities or, alternatively, constitute sites of grassroots mobilisation and resistance. This goes against recent understandings of place, for example within human geography. Among geographers it has become common sense that places are constituted by economic, social, cultural and political relations and flows of commodities, information and people that extend far beyond a given locality. Thus, what is required is 'a global sense of place' rather than conceptualisations of the local as discrete communities.134 This has become especially clear with contemporary globalisation processes. These observations do not imply an outright rejection of the local as a basis for empowerment. The point is rather that this political project will have to overcome binary opposites such as locaVglobal and state/civil society in order to be relevant.

Both authors would like to acknowledge and thank the British Council and Norwegian Research Council for their support of this collaborative research.

Notes 1 R Peet & M Watts, 'Liberation ecology: development, sustainability, and environment in an age of market

triumphalism', in Peet & Watts (eds), Liberation Ecologies: Environment, Development and Social Movements, London: Routledge, 1996, pp 1-45.

2 C Leys, The Rise and Fall of Development Theory, Oxford: James Currey, 1996; and F Schuurman (ed) Beyond the Impasse: New Directions in Development Theory, London: Zed, 1993.

3 Peet & Watts, 'Liberation ecology'; and S Corbridge, 'Development ethics: distance, difference, plausibil- ity, Ethics, Place and Environment, 1(1), 1998, pp 35-53.

4J Toye, Dilemmas of Development: Reflections on the Counter-Revolution in Development Economics, Oxford: Blackwell, 1987.

S World Bank, World Development Report 1997: The State in a Changing World, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997; World Bank, World Development Report 1990: Poverty, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990; and World Bank, Strengthening Local Governments in Sub-Saharan Africa, EDI Policy Seminar Report Series 21, Washington, DC: World Bank, 1990.

6 G Hyden, 'Civil society, social capital, and development: dissection of a complex discourse', Studies in

264




Comparative International Development, 32(1), 1997, pp 3-30; and C Mcllwaine, 'Civil society and development geography', Progress in Human Geography, 22(3), 1998; pp 415-424. World Bank, World Development Report: The State in a Changing World, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997; and V Desai & R Imrie, 'The new managerialism in local governance: North-South dimensions', Third World Quarterly, 19(4), 1998; pp 635-650.

8 A Norton & T Stephens, Participation in Poverty Assessments, Washington, DC: World Bank, Social Policy and Resettlement Division, 1995; and, J Holland & J Blackburn (eds), Whose Voice? Participatory Research and Policy Change, London: Intermediate Technology Publications, 1998.

9 R Putnam, 'The prosperous community: social capital and public life', The American Prospect, 13, 1993; and Putnam, 'Bowling alone: America's declining social capital', Journal of Democracy, 6(1), 1995; pp 65-78; and J Harriss & P De Renzio, 'Missing link' or analytically missing? The concept of social capital: an introductory bibliographic essay', Journal of International Development, 9(7), 1997, pp 919-937.

10J Friedmann, Empowerment, The Politics of Alternative Development, Oxford: Blackwell, 1992; and M Castells, The Power of Identity, Oxford: Blackwell, 1997.

1 E Laclau & C Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics, London: Verso, 1985.

12 A Escobar, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995; W Sachs, The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power, London: Zed, 1992; and V Shiva, Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development, London: Zed, 1989.

3 K Stokke, 'Globalization and the politics of poverty alleviation in the South', Norwegian Journal of Geography, 52, 1998, pp 221-228.

14M Mayo & G Craig, 'Community participation and empowerment: the human face of structural adjustment or tools for democratic transformation?', in G Craig & M Mayo (eds), Community Empowerment: A Reader in Participation and Development, London: Zed, 1995.

5 P Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, London: Penguin, 1996. 16 Laclau & Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy.

Mayo & Craig, 'Community participation and empowerment'. 18 S Latouche, In the Wake of Affluent Society: An Exploration of Post-Development, London: Zed, 1994. 19 J-K Gibson-Graham, 'Identity and economic plurality: rethinking capitalism and "capitalist hegemony"',

Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 13, 1995, pp 275-282. 20 D Slater, 'Territorial power and the peripheral state: the issue of decentralization, Development and Change,

20, 1989, pp 501-531. 21 Desai & Imrie, 'The new managerialism in local governance'. 22 G Mohan, 'Adjustment and decentralization in Ghana: a case of diminished sovereignty', Political

Geography, 15(1), 1996, pp 75-94; and M Mamdan, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism, Oxford: James Currey, 1996.

23 Mohan, 'Adjustment and decentralization in Ghana'; M Karim, Breaking boundaries to participation in local governance: empowering the People's Organizations (POs) in Bangladesh' unpublished draft, 1999; J Fox & Aradna, Decentralization and Rural Development in Mexico: Community Participation in Oaxaca's Municipal Fund Program, La Jolla, CA: University of California, San Diego; and L Engberg-Pedersen, 'The limitations of political space in Burkina Faso: local organisations decentralisations and poverty reduction', unpublished draft, nd.

24 World Bank, Strengthening Local Governments in Sub-Saharan Africa. 25 Leys, The Rise and Fall of Development Theory. 26M Nabli & J Nugent. 'The new institutional economics and its applicability to development', World

Development, 17(9), 1989, pp 1333-1347. 27 D Williams & T Young, 'Governance, the World Bank and liberal theory', Political Studies, 42, 1994, pp

84-100; and D Williams, 'Constructing the economic space: the World Bank and the making of homo oeconomicus', Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 28(1), 1999, pp 79-99. G Cheema & D Rondinelli, Decentralization and Development: Policy Implementation in Developing Countries, London: Sage, 1983. M Kochen & K Deutsch, Decentralization: Sketches Towards a Rational Theory, Cambridge, MA:

3Oelgeschlager, Gunn and Hain, 1980. 0 D Rondinelli, J McCullough & R Johnson, 'Analysing decentralization policies in developing countries: a

political-economy framework', Development and Change, 20, 1989, pp 57-87. 3 World Bank, World Development Report, Washington, DC: World Bank, 1983.

321Ibid, p 123. 33 World Bank, World Development Report: The state in a changing world. 34 Karim, 'Breaking boundaries to participation in local governance'. 35 R Chambers, 'The origins and practice of participatory rural appraisal, World Development, 22(7), 1994, pp

953-969. 36 A Inglis & S Guy, 'Scottish forestry policy U-turn: was PRA in Laggan behind it?'; in Holland & Blackburn,

Whose Voice? Participatory Research and Policy Change, pp 80-84.

265




37 R Chambers, Whose Reality Counts? Putting the First Last, London: Intermediate Technology Publications, 1997.

38 D Brown, 'Seeking the consensus: populist tendencies at the interface between research and consultancy', paper presented at the workshop From Consultancy to Research', University of Wales, Swansea, 1994; and Holland & Blackburn, Whose Voice?

39 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 40 Chambers, Whose Reality Counts? 41 R Chambers, 'Participatory rural appraisal (PRA): analysis and experience', World Development, 22(9),

1994, pp 1253-1268; and N Nelson & S Wright, 'Participation and power', in Nelson & Wright (eds) Power and Participatory Development: Theory and Practice, London: Intermediate Technology Publica- tions, 1995, pp 1-18.

42 Chambers, 'The origins and practice of participatory rural appraisal' and Chambers, 'Participatory rural appraisal (PRA)'; and Chambers, 'Paradigm shifts and the practice of participatory research and development', in Nelson & Wright, Power and Participatory Development, pp 30-42.

4 G Mohan, 'Not so distant not so strange: the personal and the political in participatory research'. Ethics, Place and Environment, 2(l), 1999, pp 41-54.

44 A Goebel, 'Process, perception and power: notes from participatory research in a Zimbabwean resettlement area', Development and Change, 29, 1998, pp 277-305.

45 Brown, 'Seeking the consensus'; and T Brass, 'Old conservatism in "new" clothes', The Journal of Peasant Studies, 22(3), 1995, pp 516-540.

46Nelson & Wright, 'Participation and power', pp 1-18. 47 J Pottier & P Orone, 'Consensus or cover-up? The limitations of group meetings', in IIED (International

Institute for Environment and Development) (ed), Critical Reflections From Practice, PLA Notes, No 24, London: IIED.

48 P Richards, Participatory Rural Appraisal: A Quick and Dirty Critique, PLA Notes, No 24, London: IIED,

1995, pp 13-16. 49 Goebel, 'Process, perception and power'; J Milimo, A Norton & D Owen, 'The impact of PRA approaches

and methods on policy and practice: the Zambia PRA in Holland & Blackburn, Whose Voice? pp. 103-1 1 1; and A Norton, 'Analysing participatory research for policy change', in Holland & Blackburn, Whose Voice? pp 179-191. Chambers, Whose Reality Counts?

51 Ibid, p 2. 52 M Rahnema, 'Participatory action research: the "Last temptation of saint" ', Development Alternatives, XV,

1990, pp 199-226. 53R Young, White Mythologies: Writing History and the West, London: Routledge, 1990; and Goebel,

'Process, perception and power'. 54 K Kenneh, African Indentities: Race, Nation and Culture in Ethnography, Pan-Africanism and Black

Literatures, Routledge: London, 1999. 55 A Rew, 'The organizational connection: multi-disciplinary practice and anthropological theory', in R Grillo

& A Rew (eds), Social Anthropology and Development Policy, ASA monograph No 23, London: Tavistock, 1985, pp 185-197; and, M Redclift, 'Policy research and anthropological compromise: should the piper call the tune?', in Grillo & Rew Social Anthropology and Development Policy, pp 198-202.

56 C Young, 'The African colonial state and its political legacy', in D Rothchild & N Chazan (eds), The Precarious Balance: State and Society in Africa, Boulder co: Westview, 1998; and M Mamdani, Citizens and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism, Oxford: James Currey, 1996.

57 G Mohan, 'Globalisation and governance: the paradoxes of adjustment in Africa', in E Kofman & G Youngs (eds), Globalisation: theory and practice, London: Pinter, 1996, pp 452-480; and C Baylies, '"Political conditionality" and democratisation', Review of African Political Economy, 65, 1995, pp 321-337.

58 W Nyamugasira, 'NGOs and advocacy: how well are the poor represented?', Development in Practice, 8(3), 1998, pp 297-308.

59 Karim, 'Breaking boundaries to participation, in local governance'. 60 Nyamugasira, 'NGOs and advocacy'. 61 J Blackburn & J Holland, 'General introduction', in Blackburn & Holland (eds) Who Changes? Institution-

alizing Participating in Development, London: Intermediate Technology Publications, 1998, pp 1-10; and Holland & Blackburn, Whose Voice?

62 A Whaites, 'NGOS, civil society and the state: avoiding theoretical extremes in real world issues', aDevelopment in Practice, 8(3), 1998, pp 343-353.

63 Putnam, 'The prosperous community'; and Putnam, 'Bowling alone'. 64 B Fine, 'The developmental state is dead-long live social capital?', Development and Change, 30, 1999,

65 pp 1-19. Harriss & De Renzio, '"Missing link" or analytically missing?'

66J Putzel, 'Accounting for the "dark side" of social capital: reading Robert Putnam on democracy', Journal of International Development, 9(7), 1997, pp 939-949.

266




67M Woolcock, 'Social capital and economic development: towards a theoretical synthesis and policy framework', Theory and Society, 27(2), 1998, pp 151-208.

68 World Bank, World Development Report: The State in a Changing World; and Fine, 'The developmental state is dead'.

69 M Levi, 'Social and unsocial capital: a review essay of Robert Putnam's making democracy work', Politics and Society, 24(1), 1996, pp 45-55.

70 A Bebbington, Social capital and rural intensification: local organizations and islands of sustainability in the rural Andes, The Geographical Journal, 163(2), 1997, 189-197; A Bebbington, A Kopp & D Rubinoff, 'From chaos to strength? social capital, rural people's organizations and sustainable rural development', paper prepared for the FAO for a workshop on pluralism, forestry and rural development, Rome, 1997; L Brown & D Ashman, 'Participation, social capital, and intersectoral problem solving: African and Asian cases, World Development, 24(9), 1996, pp 1467-1479; P Evans, 'Introduction: development strategies across the public-private divide', in Evans (ed), State-Society Synergy: Government and Social Capital in Development, IAS Research Series No 94, Berkeley, CA: University of California, 1997, pp 1-10; and P Wilson, 'Building social capital: a learning agenda for the twenty-first century, Urban Studies, 34(5-6), 1997, pp 745-760.

71 D Narayan & L Pritchett, 'Cents and sociability: household income and social capital in rural Tanzania', Economic Development and Cultural Change, 47(4), 1999, pp 871-897.

72 Brown & Ashman, 'Participation, social capital, and intersectoral problem solving'. 74 Bebbington et al, 'From chaos to strength?'. 75 Wilson, 'Building social capital'. 7 J Fox, 'How does civil society thicken?' The political construction of social capital in rural Mexico, in

Evans, State-Society Synergy, pp 119-149. 76 Wilson, 'Building social capital'. 77 J Fox, 'The World Bank and social capital: contesting the concept in practice', Journal of International

Development, 9(7), 1997, pp 963-971. 78 J Wolfensohn, The Challenges of Inclusion, Address to the World Bank Board of Governors, Washington,

DC: World Bank, 1997. 79F Stewart & W van der Geest, 'Adjustment and social funds: political panacea or effective poverty

reduction?', in F Stewart (ed), Adjustment and Poverty; Options and Choices, London: Routledge, 1995, pp 108-137.

80 Fox, 'The World Bank and social capital'. 81 J Bayart, S Ellis & B Hibou, The Criminilization of the State in Africa, Oxford: James Currey, 1999. 82 www.worldbank.org/poverty/scapital/scwhyrell.htm. 83 Harris, De Renzio, ' "Missing link" or analytically missing?'. G Hyden, 'Civil society, social capital and

development: dissection of a complex discourse', Studies in Comparative International Development', 32(1), 1997, pp 3-30; and Fine, 'The developmental state is dead'.

84 Putnam, 'The prosperous community'. 85 S Tarrow, 'Making social science work across space and time: a critical reflection on Robert Putnam's

"Making Democracy Work"', American Political Science Review, 90(2), 1996, pp 389-397. 86 Putzel, 'Accounting for the "dark side" of social capital'. 87 Evans, 'Introduction: development strategies across the public-private divide'. 88 Fox, 'How does civil society thicken?'. 89 P Heller, 'Social capital as a product of class mobilisation and state intervention: industrial workers in

Kerala, India', World Development, 24(6), 1996, pp 1055-1071. 90 Fine, 'The developmental state is dead'. 9' Ibid, p 12. 92 D Booth, 'Marxism and development sociology: interpreting the impasse', World Development, 13(7), 1985,

pp 761-787; D Slater, 'The political meanings of development', in Schuurman, Beyond the Impasse, pp 93-112; S Makdisi, C Casarino & R Karl, 'Introduction: Marxism, communism, and history', in Makdisi, Casarino & Karl (eds), Marxism Beyond Marxism, New York: Routledge, 1996, pp 1-13; and N P Mouzelis, Post-Marxist Alternatives: The Construction of Social Orders, London: Macmillan, 1990.

9 Escobar & S Alvarez, The Making of Social Movements in Latin America: Identity, Strategy and Democracy, Boulder, CO: Westview, 1992; and K Mercer, 'Welcome to the jungle: identity and diversity in postmodem politics', in J Rutherford (ed), Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990, pp 43-71.

94D Harvey, 'Class relations, social justice and the politics of difference', in J Squires (ed), Principle Positions: Postmodernism and the Rediscovery of Value, London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1993, pp 5-120; and E Meiksins Wood, Democracy Against Capitalism: Renewing Historical Materialism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

96 Laclau & Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. 96J Haynes, Democracy and Civil Society in the Third World, Politics and New Political Movements,

Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997; and S Lindberg & A Sverrison, (eds), Social Movements in Development, The Challenge of Globalization and Democratization, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997.

267




97A Escobar, 'Reflections on "Development". grassroots approaches and alternative politics in the Third World', Futures, 24(5), 1992, pp 411-436.

98 Escobar, Encountering Development, p 214. 99 Shiva, Staying Alive.

' M Redclift, Sustainable Development: Exploring the Contradictions, London: Routledge, 1987; G C Spivak & D Plotke, 'A dialogue on democracy', in D Trend (ed), Radical Democracy: Identity, Citizenship and the State, New York: Routledge, 1996, pp 209-222.

101 Schuurman, Beyond the Impasse. 102 Escobar, 'Reflections on "Development" ', and Spivak & Plotke, 'A dialogue on democracy'. 103 B Jessop, State Theory: Putting Capitalist States in their Place, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990. 104 Escobar, Encountering Development; and J Friedmann, Empowerment The Politics of Alternative Develop-

ment, Oxford: Blackwell, 1992. 105 B Epstein, 'Radical democracy and cultural politics: what about class/what about political power', in Trend,

Radical Democracy, pp 127-139. 106J A Hellman, 'The study of new social movements in Latin America and the question of autonomy', in

Escobar & Alvarez, The Making of Social Movements in Latin America. 107 D McAdam, J D McCarthy & M N Zald, Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: Political

Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framings, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996; and S Tarrow, Power in Movement. Social Movements and Contentious Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

108 C West, Keeping Faith: Philosophy and Race in America, New York: Routledge, 1993.

109Meiksins Wood, Democracy Against Capitalism. "?Ibid, p 252. 1 N Shanmugaratnam, 'Encountering postdevelopment and the end of the Third World', Forum for

Development Studies, 2, 1997, pp 329-339. 112 R Hennessy, 'Queer theory, left politics', in Makdisi, et al, Marxism Beyond Marxism, pp 214-242.

3 Meiksins Wood, Democracy Against Capitalism. 114 D Coole, 'Is class a difference that makes a difference?' Radical Philosophy, 77, 1996, pp 17-25. 115 B Gills, 'Editorial: "globalisation" and the "politics of resistance" ', New Political Economy, 2(1), 1997, pp

11-15. 116 CChin & J Mittelman, 'Conceptualising resistance to globalisation, New Political Economy, 2(1), 1997, pp

25-37. 117 Castells, The Power of Identity. 118 R Falk, 'Resisting "globalisation-from-above" through "globalisation-from-below" ', New Political Econ-

omy, 2(1), 1997, pp 17-24. 1J Pieterse, 'Globalisation and emancipation: from local empowerment to global reform', New Political

Economy, 2(1), 1997, pp 79-92. 120 C Obi, 'Globalisation and local resistance: the case of the Ogoni versus Shell', New Political Economy,

2(1), 1997, pp 137-148. 121 L Amore et al, 'Overturning "globalisation": resisting the teleological, reclaiming the "political" ', New

Political Economy, 2(1), 1997, pp 179-195. 122 Chin & Mittelman, 'Conceptualising resistance to globalisation'. 123 R Lipschutz, 'Reconstructing world politics: the emergence of global civil society', Millennium, 21(3),

1992, pp 389-420; and Hyden 'Civil society, social capital, and development'. 124 A McGrew, 'Democracy beyond borders? Globalization and the reconstruction of democratic theory and

practice', in Mcgrew (ed), The Transformation of Democracy, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995, pp 231-266. 125 B Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso,

1983. 126 Chin & Mittelman, 'Conceptualising resistance to globalisation'. 127 R Debray, 'A guerrilla with a difference', New Left Review, 218, 1996, pp 128-137. 128 R Burbach, 'For a Zapatista style postmodernist perspective', Monthly Review, 47(10), 1996, pp 34-41; and

G Esteva & M Prakash, Grassroots Post-modernism: Remaking the Soil of Cultures, London: Zed, 1998. 129 H Cleaver, 'Zapatistas' Documents of the New Mexican Revolution, Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia, 1994. 130 Pieterse, 'Globalisation and emancipation'. 131 D Korten, 'Your mortal enemy', Guardian Supplement, 21 October 1998, pp 4-5. 132 Fox, 'How does civil society thicken?'; and 0 Tornquist, Politics and Development. A Critical Introduction,

London: Sage, 1999. 133 J S Migdal, A Kohli & V Shue, State Power and Social Forces, Domination and Transformation in the

Third World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. 34 D Massey, Space, Place and Gender, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994.

268

