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Book Reviews

Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan, Anthropology and Development: Understand-


ing Contemporary Social Change. London: Zed Books, 2006. 243 pp. £20.99
paperback.

Anthropology and Development is a major contribution to development studies, rural


sociology and the ethnography of aid. Olivier de Sardan condenses several decades
of research into an accessible and well-referenced textbook that provides provoking
insights into the anthropology of development and the relation between social scientists
and ‘developers’. Originally published in French in 1995, the translated, updated and
expanded present edition follows, both semantically and theoretically, in the footsteps
of a French social science tradition that has much to offer analytically.
The author pursues an explicitly programmatic goal as he seeks to ‘reintegrate[s]
development into mainstream anthropology’ (p. 1). In addition, he explores how —
and under which circumstances — anthropological enquiry can contribute to improving
development ventures. In doing so he adopts a particular theoretical perspective that
he designates as an ‘entangled social logic approach’ (p. 11). Unlike post-structuralists
like Arturo Escobar or proponents of participatory development like Robert Chambers,
the author propagates an actor-oriented development anthropology. His theoretical
approach is grounded in a belief in ‘the profound unity of the social sciences’ (p. 89)
and a self-proclaimed ‘eclectic epistemological attitude’ (p. 103). Consequently, the
book emphasizes the multi-rationality of actors, the multi-focality of power and the need
to make sense of the ambiguities that characterize the ‘developmentalist configuration’
(p. 25). The author’s repeated calls for sustained empirical engagement with complex
development phenomena are a pleasant change from prevailing universalizing theories.
‘Concepts should not be expected to do the impossible’ (p. 134), he reminds us and
proposes in-depth field research instead.
While the book covers a broad range of issues at the interface of development pro-
fessionals, peasant communities and those who study development, three points stand
out. First, the author deconstructs several of the aid industry’s long-standing myths.
The book dissects the altruist and modernist ‘meta-ideologies’ (p. 70) of develop-
ment, exposes aid agencies’ prevalent stereotypes about rural Africa and challenges
the problematic notion of ‘needs’. Second, carefully avoiding derision or condemna-
tion, the author exposes major discrepancies inherent in development interventions.
One example is ‘development language’, which is ‘supposed to address itself to de-
velopees while, in reality, it concerns only developers’ (p. 178). Another example is
the role of ‘sidetracking’ (p. 145) processes by which target populations selectively
appropriate a project, its resources and meanings. Third, Olivier de Sardan provides
a number of valuable theoretical contributions. Based on a discerning literature re-
view, he identifies populism as the ‘endemic social science attitude’ (p. 110) and
defining trait of development experts’ and academics’ relationship with rural commu-
nities. He distinguishes between moral, cognitive, ideological and methodological pop-
ulism and supports the latter as the most useful construct for development scholars to
employ.

Development and Change 39(2): 333–352 (2008). 


C Institute of Social Studies 2007. Published

by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main St.,
Malden, MA 02148, USA
334 Book Reviews

Other strong points of Anthropology and Development are its passages on the con-
frontation between different systems of knowledge in the field. While development
agents disseminate uniform and formalized types of technical and scientific know-
ledge, rural producers rely on localized, contextualized and empirical types of popular
knowledge. The book offers methodological guidance and a number of concepts for
the empirical analysis of development projects. In line with his emphasis on people’s
agency, the author proposes analysing how ‘heterogeneous strategic groups confront
each other’ in the different ‘arenas’ (p. 186) where development occurs.
Olivier de Sardan’s observations are mostly anchored in field research carried out in
West Africa, yet apply to many situations where external institutions seek to transform
a particular social milieu in the name of development. Constantly drawing attention to
actors’ room for manoeuvre, he in many ways contradicts post-development scholars’
determinist mantras. Highly reflexive and full of wit, he provides an unsparing view of
development projects by carefully reconstructing the knowledge, rationality and sub-
jectivity of those involved in the implementation process. Not all chapters exhibit the
same level of analytical density, however. The history of anthropological innovation
research summarized in chapter 6 could have been shortened. Chapter 8 on relations
of production is slightly disconnected from the overall argument and chapter 11 on
‘mediations and brokerage’ is rather repetitive. Moreover, despite the eloquent trans-
lation by Antoinette Tidjani Alou, readers might find some of the terminology rather
dense.
This said, Anthropology and Development is a brilliant book that triggers many ques-
tions and will attract a wide readership of both academics and development profes-
sionals. Single chapters are short, concise and make ideal reading for graduate courses.
While not everything Olivier de Sardan writes is new, it has rarely been formulated
more lucidly and to the point.

Reference
Olivier de Sardan, J.-P. (1995) Anthropologie et développement: essai en socioanthropologie du
changement social. Paris: Karthala.

Tobias Hagmann
Department of Geography, University of Zürich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, CH-8057
Zürich, Switzerland.
E-mail: tobias.hagmann@geo.uzh.ch

Kenneth W. Dam, The Law–Growth Nexus: The Rule of Law and Economic
Development. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 2006. viii + 323
pp. £22.50/$36.95 hardback.

When I received Kenneth Dam’s new work The Law–Growth Nexus, I was expecting
another treatise on the obvious connections between legal reform, market liberaliza-
tion and beneficial effects on growth. So I was pleasantly surprised to encounter an
informative and fresh look at the relationship of law to economic development that
will be of use to newcomers to the subject as well as seasoned researchers. This book
could be used as a textbook for the study of law and development. The main focus is
on the core elements of the rule of law, namely, property rights and contracts. The book
analyses the reasons why legal institutions are important for growth. It explores the
Development and Change 335

policy consequences of recognizing the rule of law as an essential element of economic


development.
Dam starts with a concise and pragmatic description of the rule of law in the first
chapter, rightly emphasizing the importance of the protection of private property rights
and rules for their enforcement. This represents an honest and clear treatment of a topic
often muddled by the rhetoric of international financial institutions on social and human
rights that does not actually translate into policies going beyond property and contract.
The book achieves its aim of offering a practical guide to the policy implications of the
rule of law. While less defined contemporary notions like ‘governance’ are addressed,
Dam remains focused on what, according to him, is important. This is not to say that
a rule of law based on property and contract is enough for development, however, and
Dam does not pretend that to be the case. One criticism of this work might be that
while he considers the property–contract–enforcement version of the rule of law as
‘fundamental’, others will consider it incomplete.
The second chapter critically examines the outdated but persistent idea that legal
origin (common versus civil law) determines or affects development outcomes. Dam
convincingly argues that the legal origins literature, in the light of new data, is not
an adequate predictor of the quality of legal institutions in any context (developed or
developing). Indeed later in the book (p. 99) Dam counters the assumption that civil
law systems are procedurally heavier and more bureaucratic (with the consequence of
being less market friendly) by demonstrating that what is measured as bad ‘formalism’
in many studies is the result of a terminological misunderstanding. Different proce-
dural cultures, in other words, do not have pre-determined qualitative consequences.
This realization allows the book, from the third chapter onward, to address other expla-
nations for underdevelopment, primarily those considering the quality of institutions.
Dam’s presentation of the historical origin of market friendly institutions in the West
constitutes a legal and economic explanation of history, leading to a realization that
incomplete protection of property rights and insecure contractual bargains have detri-
mental effects on growth. This idea, of course, lies at the basis of existing development
programmes of the type promoted by Hernando de Soto, which are centred on formal-
ization of property rights. This is not to say that Dam is an indiscriminate advocate of
formally recognized private property rights. He makes the crucial distinction — often
missed — between commonly held and open access property, arguing that the dangers
represented by the ‘tragedy of the commons’ apply to the latter but not necessarily the
former.
Dam offers a detailed look at the judicial system and its independence as a factor
affecting economic performance. This serves to highlight commonly discussed themes
such as the link between the predictable resolution of contractual disputes and economic
outcomes. However, explanations based on the quality of judicial institutions can be
taken too far, as for example when a study is cited in which Argentina’s continued
decline is blamed on the political domination of the judiciary (p. 115).
The final part of the book pays special attention to the development of the finan-
cial sector where changes in regulatory regimes have direct correlations to growth
outcomes. Dam considers China as a test case for the assumptions and conclusions
of the book. His treatment of China is illuminating, as he manages to explain how
and why China differs from the West, while at the same time dispelling the myth that
China’s economy operates in fundamentally alien ways. He concludes that the history
of Chinese growth has historical parallels in its region and beyond. However, Dam
finds the Chinese legal system very unorthodox (in comparison to Western norms) and
336 Book Reviews

notes that while it is moving more in the direction of protecting private property and
contracts, it still needs to change radically to guarantee continued growth, albeit of a
more moderate kind than usually assumed.

Ioannis Glinavos
School of Law, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, London
WC1H 0XG, UK.
E-mail: i.glinavos@soas.ac.uk

Duncan K. Foley, Adam’s Fallacy: A Guide to Economic Theology. Cambridge,


MA: The Bellknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006. 265+xviii pp.
$25.95/£16.95/€ 24.00 hardcover.

Duncan Foley’s book is a formidable attempt to revive interest in the evolution of


economic thought. But it is not a book on the history of economic thought proper. Its
aim is to achieve more — namely to expose the essential ‘fallacy’ that underlies most
of economic theorizing throughout its history. As the title indicates, this fallacy is due
to Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, which provide the main stage around which
the author develops a coherent argument and critique of classical to contemporary
neoclassical economics.
Adam’s fallacy ‘lies in the idea that it is possible to separate an economic sphere
of life, in which the pursuit of self-interest is guided by objective laws to a socially
beneficent outcome, from the rest of social life, in which the pursuit of self-interest is
morally problematic and has to be weighed against other ends’ (p. xiii). As Foley writes:
‘By being selfish within the rules of capitalist property relations, Smith promises, we
are actually being good to our fellow human beings’ (p. 2). This is the crux of Adam’s
Fallacy. This separation of the economic sphere from other spheres is essential to
ideologically justify a society based on competition and profit-making and it provides
the basis for modern ‘positivist’ economics. Foley debunks the positivist/scientific
pretensions used to legitimize this separation, exposing its ‘theological’ nature. ‘Neither
Smith nor any of his successors has been able to demonstrate rigorously and robustly
how private selfishness turns into public altruism’ (p. 3).
The first chapter of the book deals with the approach followed by Adam Smith in The
Wealth of Nations. Adam Smith’s conceptualization of capitalist growth is expanded
and amended by Malthus and Ricardo, whose theories are discussed in Chapter Two.
The third and best chapter of the book is concerned with Karl Marx’s critique of the
capitalist system, which in essence undermined Smith’s ideological justification for
capitalism. Partly in response to Marx’s critique, marginalist or neoclassical economists
developed a new framework incorporating Adam’s Fallacy in its purest form, which is
discussed in Chapter Four. Jevons, Menger, Pareto and Walras created an axiomatized,
mathematical political economy that ‘could endow the social relations of capitalism
with the aura of “natural laws” that guaranteed the stability and rationality of economic
life’ (p. 157). But the long, drawn-out crisis of the first half of twentieth century —
including two World Wars, the Great Depression and the emergence of non-capitalist
alternatives (in the USSR and many newly independent former colonies) — posed new
challenges to the capitalist order. Chapter Five deals with Keynes, Schumpeter and Von
Hayek, who — in very different ways — came to the rescue of the capitalist system.
Chapter Six gives an overall summary and presents the author’s conclusions.
Development and Change 337

When treated as a history of economic thought (comparable to Heilbroner’s 1953


classic The Worldly Philosophers, for instance), Foley’s book is a masterly achievement.
Avoiding all unnecessary jargon and with an unmatched clarity, Foley manages to
explain the essence of the works of the prominent economic thinkers of the eighteenth,
nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His exposition of Smith’s vision of the capitalist
growth process, based on a greater division of labour, technological progress and
capital accumulation (in a full-employment economic system) is fascinating, as is his
discussion of how Ricardo and Malthus, by amending Smith’s theory, arrived at their
‘dismal’ stationary state.
Foley’s discussion of Marx’s theory and critique of capitalism is superb: his expla-
nation of Marx’s historical materialism, along with explanations of concepts such as
surplus value, exploitation, modes of production, accumulation, estrangement, base
and superstructure and accumulation could not be clearer. This book is a ‘must-read’
for anyone interested in Marx’s thoughts. Foley does not spare Marx from criticism,
however, pointing to devastating gaps and inconsistencies in his arguments. Specifi-
cally, Foley observes that Marx’s socialist society functions very much like the capitalist
society it is supposed to have displaced, as it is also based on the generation of max-
imum surplus value through a complex division of labour, albeit through collective
exploitation.
Foley’s book goes beyond being an introduction to political economy, because its
narrative is organized around a single central theme: the effort of political economists
to come to terms with the moral contradictions of capitalism as part of their analytical
understanding of the capitalist system. Foley argues that Adam Smith claims that
the single-minded pursuit of self-interest, which has to be balanced against regard for
others in non-economic human spheres, can be relied upon to lead to socially beneficial
outcomes both for oneself and others in the context of competitive markets interactions.
This is Adam’s Fallacy, which has reconciled many people, including most economists
after Smith, to the morally troubling consequences of capitalist development. Foley
is well aware of the limitations of his interpretation of Smith’s moral stance. Hence,
critics who argue that Foley’s account of Smith’s work is distorted, miss the point:
irrespective of Smith’s precise views on the moral contradictions of capitalism, Adam’s
Fallacy has significantly influenced and shaped economists’ moral judgements about
capitalism. The important point here is that Adam’s Fallacy presupposes that, in a
capitalist system, there are in-built (self-regulating) mechanisms, which ensure that
the system will operate at full employment. Put differently, Adam’s Fallacy critically
depends on Say’s Law, which states that somehow jobs that get eliminated through
competition will be replaced somewhere else. If Say’s Law does not hold, as has been
argued by Marx and Keynes, there may be unemployment and thus moral and social
conflicts become inherent to capitalist development.
Foley’s account must be regarded as a sequel to Albert Hirschman’s (1977) The
Passions and the Interests, which asks the question: How did self-interest become
honourable in the modern age after having stood morally condemned as greed, love
of lucre, and avarice for centuries past? Hirschman shows that, at some point, the
capitalist pursuit of self-interest was actively promoted by moral philosophers includ-
ing Spinoza, Hume and Montesquieu, as the prime countervailing passion to bridle
and restrain the destructive passions of the ruling social classes. But this line of
reasoning, which posited economic interests as a constraint upon political violence,
was abandoned in the eighteenth century, as material wealth increased and (interna-
tional) commercial interests expanded vastly. Material well-being became the sole
338 Book Reviews

justification for the emergence of capitalism and Adam Smith became its principal
apostle.
Continuing where Hirschman stops, Foley shows how Adam’s Fallacy has been
almost continuously invoked to provide political and social legitimacy to the (neo-
liberal) capitalist project. Marx, who had a lively sense of the damage capitalist insti-
tutions can do to human personality and the potential for human development, is about
the only economist to take on Adam’s Fallacy directly. ‘The pursuit of self-interest,
even in the context of private property relations regulated by law, is no path to the
good life. On the contrary, it blinds the individual to the true conditions of his own
existence (ironically, precisely the division of labour that Adam Smith so clearly de-
scribes), and prevents humanity as a whole from confronting both its real conditions
and the real possibilities for social change that technology and the division of labour
make possible’ (p. 112). But while Marx’s discussion of alienation and commod-
ity fetishism centre on the various ways in which capitalist society damages human
personality and human development, his vision of socialism still ‘carries with it a
lot of capitalist baggage’ (p. 151) and hence provides no real alternative to Adam’s
Fallacy.
Foley’s masterful book forces the reader to question the neutrality of economic
theory and policy. In an interview, Foley (2006) has stated that he will be happy if his
book helps ‘people to have the confidence to make up their own minds about economic
issues and not feel that economists or economic science has worked out economic laws
that prescribe how we have to organize society and conduct our lives’. There can be no
doubt that his book serves this purpose.

References
Foley, D.K. (2006) ‘The Theology of Economics: Interview with Duncan Foley’, Challenge
November/December: 103–12.
Heilbroner, R.L. (1953) The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times and Ideas of the Great
Economic Thinkers. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Hirschman, A.O. (1977) The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism
before its Triumph. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Servaas Storm
Department of Economics, Faculty TBM, Delft University of Technology, Jaffalaan 5,
2628 BX Delft, The Netherlands.
Email: s.storm@tbm.tudelft.nl

Rizwanul Islam (ed.), Fighting Poverty: The Development–Employment Link.


xviii + 520 pp. Boulder, CO and London: Lynne Rienner, 2006. $65.00 hard-
back.

The core message of Fighting Poverty: The Development–Employment Link, edited by


the director of the ILO’s Employment Strategy Department, Rizwanul Islam, is that
employment is of paramount importance in any growth strategy that aims to reduce
poverty and mitigate inequalities. Economic growth is necessary, but not sufficient,
for achieving poverty reduction targets, such as those enshrined in the Millennium De-
velopment Goals. The type of growth matters. Specifically, a growth regime that im-
proves employment opportunities and raises the returns to labour will be redistributive
Development and Change 339

and ‘pro-poor’, since labour is the factor of production which the poor command in
abundance.
The first part of the book, comprising the first three chapters after a general in-
troduction, outlines a conceptual framework of growth–employment–poverty linkages
and presents broad empirical evidence to document its importance. The second part
of the book is a series of seven country studies that present more detailed analysis of
these issues and provide a foundation for making international comparisons. The seven
countries included are: Bangladesh, Bolivia, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Uganda and
Vietnam. A short synthesis and policy discussion concludes the book.
The broad conceptual and empirical chapters provide a useful framework for
analysing how growth translates into poverty reduction through better employment
opportunities. Osmani outlines the key analytical relationships linking growth, employ-
ment and poverty reduction; Islam builds on these themes, presenting cross-country
evidence suggesting that the employment intensity of growth is an important variable
explaining poverty reduction. Rahman Khan focuses more explicitly on the role of em-
ployment policies in poverty reduction, drawing on brief success stories and failures
from around the world.
The seven country studies then present detailed empirical pictures of how the re-
lationships highlighted in the conceptual framework played themselves out in diverse
settings. The specifics of the country studies vary, but all of these chapters incorpo-
rate a common analytical formula. This allows for some degree of comparison across
countries. Each country study includes an overview of the economic growth record,
analysis of the structure of employment and how its composition has changed over
time, estimates of the employment-intensity of growth, and econometric analysis of
the determinants of poverty. In addition, issues such as wage and productivity trends
are examined to the extent that the available data allow. Taken together, the country
studies present a wealth of detailed information on a common set of indicators and
economic relationships.
One common theme that surfaces repeatedly is the dialectical tension between
employment-intensive growth and improvements in labour productivity. Productiv-
ity improvements often come at the expense of job opportunities and therefore reduce
the employment-intensity of growth. However, in the absence of productivity improve-
ments, sustainable increases in living standards are impossible. Resolving this tension
is one of the central challenges of the type of employment-centred development strate-
gies advocated by the papers in this volume. There are few clear-cut recommendations
or guidelines in the book, partly because the constraints which may force a trade-off
between employment and productivity differ from situation to situation.
Because of the limited availability of reliable time series data, policy research on
employment dynamics in developing countries is challenging, particularly when the
goal is to link outcomes to macroeconomic aggregates such as growth performance.
The papers collected in this volume show what determined researchers can accomplish,
and the final results represent an important contribution.
The volume touches on a wide range of critical issues. However, certain topics are
under-explored, possibly a consequence of the need to focus on a set of core themes. I
mention three such topics here. First, the primary emphasis throughout the book is on
labour demand. Labour supply dynamics are not examined in depth, although labour
supply/poverty linkages are central. Some of the anomalous results in the statistical
models of the determinants of poverty — for example, that having more employed
people in the household is associated with a high likelihood of being poor — can be
340 Book Reviews

explained by labour supply effects (in poor households, more people work as a basic
survival strategy). Second, agricultural and industrial employment receives the most an-
alytical attention, in some cases due to data limitations. The discussion of employment
in services — although frequently the most significant source of employment — is less
well developed. Third, the issues around informal employment, including the hetero-
geneity of informal activities, are not actively pursued. The importance of informal, and
related, forms of employment for the poor (such as rural non-farm self-employment)
is acknowledged, but whether such employment represents a low-productivity residual
that slows progress on poverty or a productive foundation for improved living standards
is not explored in the policy discussion.
These topics do not represent omissions so much as extensions of the central theme of
the papers assembled for this book. Fighting Poverty: The Development–Employment
Link presents compelling arguments and detailed evidence for why employment should
be featured in any development agenda. For that reason alone, it should be widely read
and carefully studied.

James Heintz
Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA
01003, USA.
E-mail: jheintz@peri.umass.edu

Santosh Mehrotra and Mario Biggeri (eds), Asian Informal Workers:


Global Risk, Local Protection. London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon
Taylor&Francis Group, 2007. xxxiv + 475 pp. £85.00 hardback.

Most academic literature tends to describe the informal sector in abstract terms pro-
viding limited insight about the actual workers involved and their conditions of em-
ployment. This book aims to address this omission in the literature by focusing on
one specific group of informal sector workers — semi-artisanal home workers in five
Asian countries (India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Philippines and Thailand). It particularly
concentrates on the employment conditions of the women and children who carry out
most work in this sector and whether home-based work can foster human development.
Local teams of seasoned researchers carried out case studies in the selected countries
following, as far as possible, a similar research plan. Mehrotra and Biggeri wrote the
theoretical framework and the cross-country comparative analysis of survey data. Ad-
ditionally, they wrote an extensive policy agenda based on the case studies. This gives
the book more coherence in its internal structure and added value compared to many
edited volumes. However, the editors have not managed to tie together the five coun-
tries and three to four cases of clustered industries per country in a more analytical
way, so the reader can get lost in the write-up of endless survey data.
One of the starting points for the book is that through industrial outwork the home
workers become connected to international value chains, as the separation between the
formal and informal sector becomes increasingly blurred. The informal sector displays
incessant absorptive capacity for people displaced or redirected (through informal-
ization of work) from the formal sector. The key question then is how these workers
are able to improve their position amidst flexible production, oversupply of labour,
intensified global competition, and a number of other circumstances that suggest that
Development and Change 341

their position is likely to get worse rather than improve. These conditions the authors
arguably describe as ‘Global Risk’, although they never pinpoint how global events
directly affect the workers in the individual case studies or workers’ awareness of it.
More attention could have been given to what unites the workers in the separate case
studies and how they deal with similar pressures (when dealing with globalization).
The dilemma of informal sector employment is whether informal home-based work
is a rational choice for women with limited opportunities for formal employment (be-
cause of their age, level of education, etc.). The informal sector does provide them a
safety net by offering insecure occupation in which their age is not a limitation. Employ-
ment within their own neighbourhood, under relatively flexible conditions, is then best
combined with their household duties. Do they trade-in protection or services offered
by formal institutions for informal modes of protection based on kinship, friendship
and neighbourhood relationships? Is their work necessity-driven or opportunity-driven
and what dynamic potential does their home-based work have? These questions need
to be addressed before proposing solutions to improve the workers’ positions.
In suggesting pathways for development for the selected industries, the editors draw
very heavily on the clustering literature with its emphasis on social cohesion and
joint action. This body of literature has found few examples of clustered industries in
developing countries where economic success is combined with improved conditions
for workers. To refer at this point to examples of successful clusters in Italy and
collective enterprises in China in the 1980s is questionable and of little relevance for
the country cases described in the book. As both the clustering and value chain literature
have generally ignored the conditions of labour at its lowest levels of operation, the
book misses the opportunity to make an original theoretical contribution beyond the
often-cited, metaphorical, ‘high’ and ‘low road’ in cluster development.
The policy agenda in this book focuses on stimulating the various local stakehold-
ers to get their act together. A problem the editors neglect is the general ignorance
about home-based work as (coinciding with its invisibility) it is considered to have
a limited role in a country’s economic development. The key challenge it provides
for action in this field is how provision of basic social services for workers can be
integrated within business development services. By suggesting that reduced vulner-
ability through basic social services can trigger a virtuous cycle within poor house-
holds, the editors end with an optimistic note after worrisome research findings on
the conditions of employment in most case-studies. Perhaps this book should be ap-
preciated as one of the first cross-country comparative studies on one of the fastest
growing phenomena in employment in many countries in the global South. Though the
ambitions of the editors were higher, the book is most relevant for those policy mak-
ers who need to be convinced about the dynamic potential of informal home-based
work.

Niels Beerepoot
Amsterdam Institute for Metropolitan and International Development Studies, Univer-
sity of Amsterdam, Nieuwe Prinsengracht 130, 1018 VZ Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
E-mail address: N.P.C.Beerepoot@uva.nl
342 Book Reviews

Amit Bhaduri, Development with Dignity: A Case for Full Employment. New
Delhi: National Book Trust, 2005. ix + 107 pp. Rs 45.00 paperback.

Economic growth in India has been running at more than 8 per cent per year for many
years now; Indian stock market indices are at their highest levels and rising. There is a
large inflow of foreign direct investment and incomes in India’s (organized) urban sector
are rising rapidly. No wonder that the Indian economy is claimed to be prospering. But
in many ways this claim is almost surreal. While India’s economic growth is high, the
rural and urban unemployment rates increased sharply between 1993–4 and 2003–4.
In rural India, home to two-thirds of the labour force, there is no sign of an easing of
the agrarian distress and peasant farmers’ suicides continue. While poverty is claimed
to have fallen, per capita food consumption in India is down to the level where it was
more than sixty years ago. No honest observer can avoid seeing that India’s (liberal)
economic policies, while delivering growth, do not lead to ‘development with dignity’
— if by this we mean increased productivity and decent employment for the masses and
the eradication of poverty, illiteracy and malnourishment. ‘What is the alternative?’
is the usual dismissal of any questioning of the dominant economic policy discourse.
Amit Bhaduri’s little book provides us with an alternative, based on what he himself
calls ‘reasonable economics’ which integrates growth, employment and distribution in
a proposal for progressive social change.
Bhaduri’s argument is that development with dignity in India (and this holds true
for other developing countries as well) cannot be achieved by growth per se, nor
can it be realized by (re-)distribution (such as income transfers to the poor). Growth
and distribution have to be integrated into one progressive process of economic and
social transformation which includes systematically breaking the barriers of gender,
caste, ethnic and religious discrimination. This progressive integration of growth and
distribution can only be achieved by combining the market system and the state, or more
specifically, the system of political democracy, so as to serve the needs of the people,
especially the under-employed poor. Bhaduri meticulously points out where and why the
‘pro-market’ view, which is the dominant view of today’s economists and policy makers,
is erroneous. For example, what is essential is to achieve an appropriate mix of domestic
and export demand, rather than a one-sided emphasis on export growth to be achieved
by means of labour market flexibility and low real wages. Likewise, the argument that
the ‘government cannot do it, because it lacks adequate resources and its budget must
be balanced’ is shown to be obviously erroneous in an economy having large food
stocks, large unused foreign exchange reserves and unemployed labour, where there
is little reason to worry about inflation. In these circumstances, a government deficit
can ‘crowd in’ (rather than ‘crowd out’) private investment, thus raising employment.
Most importantly, as Bhaduri emphasizes, it is essential not to confuse instruments and
targets. For example, the degree of international competitiveness or the magnitude of
the growth rate are not social goals, but can only be instruments to achieve such goals:
full employment and decent living standards.
Bhaduri’s alternative is an integrated development strategy, which can be realized
only through the agency of a democratic state, the actions of which are supported and
legitimized by the majority of the people. With penetrating insight, Bhaduri highlights
the deep tension between political democracy and the power of the market. India’s
market economy is holding out the hope of upward socio-economic mobility for the
majority, but neglects the utter hopelessness of a desperately poor minority. However,
even for the majority, this perception of upward mobility mostly turns out to be an
Development and Change 343

illusion. As Bhaduri (p. 25) writes: ‘[Upward mobility] is a “small probability” event
which would happen to only a relatively few lucky ones, but the ideology of the market
economy survives by nurturing this illusion for the majority’. Disillusionment then
leads to mobilization around religion, caste, ethnicity and other identities, and to large
swings in actual voting behaviour (and political instability).
To break through this stalemate, economic decision making has to be democratized,
which in India would mean decentralizing relevant administrative powers to panchayati
raj institutions. At the macro-economic level, to let the state play its agency role, some
degree of national policy autonomy will be necessary. This in turn may require imposing
controls of international capital flows and a strategic (rather than close) integration with
world markets — an issue which is not fully explored in this book. But apart from this,
Amit Bhaduri has succeeded in integrating growth, employment and distribution in
a proposal for progressive social change. In so doing, he has managed to revive the
original sense of purpose and worthiness which the development economics discipline
has lost during the last three decades. His book is highly recommended.

Servaas Storm
Department of Economics, Faculty TBM, Delft University of Technology, Jaffalaan 5,
2628 BX Delft, The Netherlands.
Email: s.storm@tbm.tudelft.nl

Leela Fernandes, India’s New Middle Class: Democratic Politics in an Era of


Economic Reform. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2006. xl
+ 289 pp. $22.00 paperback.

The expansion of the service sector of the economy and of professional white-collar
private sector employment in the wake of marked changes in India’s economic policies
(generally subsumed under the rubric of liberalization) have imparted topicality and
urgency to the study of the rise of the new Indian middle class. Surprisingly, until very
recently the middle class has been an academically understudied subject. Given the
paucity of scholarly literature, Leela Fernandes’s work makes an important contribu-
tion to the study of middle classes in contemporary India, as well as to the field of
comparative political economy in general.
By relating the formation of the new middle class to two of the central national
trends that have shaped India since the 1990s — the rise of Hindu nationalism and
the politics of economic liberalization — she captures the rapidly changing contours
and content of politics in liberalizing India. Since the new middle class serves as an
idealized standard for a range of social strata that make up the rural and urban middle
classes, the author examines a range of ethnographic data concerning newly available
commodities, consumption practices and urban lifestyles to shed light on its politics.
Yet, she goes beyond the static, though fashionable, conception of the new middle
class as a consumer group. What is interesting is her thesis that India’s new middle
class is not defined by new entrants to its ranks. The newness refers to a process of
production of a distinctive social and political identity that represents and lays claims
to the benefits of liberalization rather than any fixed structural or social basis. In other
words, the new middle class does not simply act on behalf of its predefined interests but
these very interests are created through specific sets of political, cultural and discursive
processes: ‘this middle class is not simply a new socioeconomic group; it embodies a
changing set of sociocultural norms for the Indian nation’ (p. 141). The general decline
344 Book Reviews

of the public normative interest in questions of poverty and workers rights is a case in
point.
At a structural level, this group largely encompasses English-speaking urban
white-collar segments of the middle class who are benefiting from new employment
opportunities particularly in the private sector. Even as entry to this social group is
potentially open to other segments of the middle class and upwardly mobile working
class, its reproduction draws upon historically produced inequalities. At the same time,
its boundaries remain fluid and open to contestation as its claims of representative
citizenship are challenged by social groups from which it distinguishes itself — both
the upper class and subaltern groups. It is this structural ambiguity and the attendant
tension produced by its claims of natural or universal representativeness that imparts
vitality to middle class politics.
Fernandes is not sure if the benefits from liberalization are accruing uniformly to
the middle class. For instance, lower caste groups are still dependent on state politics
and state employment in gaining access to middle class membership. Despite the fact
that affirmative action policies have facilitated the entry of lower caste groups into the
middle class, one witnesses increasing reliance on privatized strategies rather than on
organized political opposition on the part of the middle classes while responding to
processes of economic restructuring and accessing new careers and jobs.
In the urban-metropolitan context, the production of the identity of the new middle
class is linked to a politics of ‘spatial purification’ (p. 139) which centres on middle
class claims over public spaces and corresponding movements to cleanse such spaces
of the urban poor and working classes and ‘loose’ women, in order to articulate its
conceptions of civic life. What is quintessentially Indian in this new mode of politics
is the way in which both gender and class get coded by caste-based discourses and
inequalities. Moreover, new middle class politics is equally shaped by its relationship
with a range of state practices and strategies. This complicity of the state demonstrates
continuities across the facile binary between the state-dependence of the Nehruvian
middle class and the market orientation of the new middle class. What has indeed
changed are the mechanisms and practices within civil society through which this
class has come to shape the symbolic register of democratic politics. By virtue of
its informal points of access to state power, and its representational claims through
a plethora of civic associations, India’s new middle class is engaged in an attempt to
‘reclaim and redefine the substantive terms of democracy in exclusionary ways’ (p.
219). If for nothing else, the author deserves applause for this insightful peep into the
politics of India’s new middle class. Students of development studies will find the study
valuable.

Manish K. Thakur
Sociology Group, Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, Kolkata – 700 104, India.
E-mail: thakurmk@hotmail.com

Göran Djurfeldt, Hans Holmén, Magnus Jirström and Rolf Larsson, The
African Food Crisis: Lessons from the Asian Green Revolution. Wallingford,
UK and Cambridge, MA: CABI Publishing, 2005 x + 266 pp. £55.00/$100.00
hardback.

This is an important book that deals with a major theme in contemporary development
studies: why is there the divergence in growth between Asian and African countries?
Development and Change 345

Agricultural policies play a major role in this debate, and indeed Asian countries have
become much more self-sufficient in food than African countries. In 1977, the Asian
Development Bank predicted a substantial supply–demand deficit in rice, wheat and
maize by 1985, possibly ranging from 24 to 30 million tons. ‘Less than a decade later,
starting in 1982 and peaking in 1986, Asian rice farmers experienced the so-called
“crisis of success” as the world market price of rice plummeted’ (p. 25). ‘Whereas
population in Africa south of the Sahara has quadrupled since 1950, cereal imports
have increased ten fold between 1961 and 2001’ (p. 66).
This book highlights the role of improved seed and fertilizer or ‘the green revolution’
in this divergent development path. The authors stress the importance of the institutional
component of this ‘revolution’ in Asia — driven by the state, mediated by the market
and dependent upon smallholder farming. In the African situation there is no shortage
of ‘green revolution’ initiatives, but these do not persist. The authors speak about the
‘limping’ green revolution in Africa.
There are thematic chapters, for example about the State and the green revolution in
Asia or the role of technology in African agricultural successes, and chapters dealing
with four African countries: Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania and Ghana. Surveys, called the
AFRINT studies, were carried out in selected regions in these countries. They dealt
only with food crops: rice, maize and cassava.
The book offers a surfeit of information and the interested reader is advised to be
selective. I recommend paying special attention to Rolf Larsson’s article on crisis and
potential in smallholder food production in Africa that synthesizes the findings from the
survey. It documents not merely a stagnant or declining mass among African farmers
but also a highly productive minority of commercially-oriented farmers. Yields are
generally low in Africa, but the survey documented ‘a general gap of about 60 per cent
between the majority and the best performing farmers within the same village’ (p. 116).
The potential for higher productivity is thus there, but it is not realized because of social
and economic factors. The nature of market integration is one of the crucial factors.
For example: ‘Off-farm income in the form of employment, however, has the opposite
effect. Employment in the form of low income jobs underlines the poverty condition of
affected households and indicates that crop sales for this group are distress sales. This
is a condition they share with households without access to off-farm incomes’ (p. 129).
In such statements I recognize the situations that I encountered while studying rural
Africa in recent years, although I would lay more stress on the exploitative relationships
between rich and poor.
The chapters on particular countries are sometimes surprising. For example, the
chapter on Ghana documents a spurt in the production of food crops as a response
to structural adjustment. In Kenya, reduced government involvement in subsidizing
production led to a fall in output. The Tanzanian chapter is puzzling in this respect. The
authors say that there were production gains in the immediate post-liberalization period
up until the early 1980s. ‘However, such gains have not been sustained, especially after
1994 when all subsidies for the agricultural sector, both explicit and implicit, were
removed’ (p.199).Yet after 1994 there were some of the highest production figures
since 1961. Production figures did then become more erratic: this is a theme that
could have been explored further. Production scores become more erratic if there is
a less stable environment in terms of credit, input supply and crop marketing, but we
know relatively little about the reasons why. I disagree with the statement that ‘Unlike
the Asian experience, however, policies in Tanzania were weak on credit supply and
administration as well as on development and maintenance of marketing structures’
346 Book Reviews

(p. 199). During the 1970s and 1980s there was a maize boom in four regions of
Tanzania: Rukwa, Ruvuma, Mbeya and Iringa. Over a period of more than a decade
this was carried by credit, a dependable input supply and produce marketing on the
basis of a pan-territorial pre-planting producer price. Of course, the more familiar
one is with particular countries and regions, the more one will query findings about
those regions. It is a major strength of the book that it gives so much material to agree
and disagree with. Even if one cannot muster the energy to read this dense mass of
information from cover to cover, it can very profitably be browsed.

Jan Kees van Donge


African Studies Centre, PO Box 9555, 2300RB Leiden, The Netherlands.
E-mail: jdonge@ascleiden.nl

Maurice N. Amutabi, The NGO Factor in Africa: The Case of Arrested Devel-
opment in Kenya. New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2006. xxxviii
+ 238 pp. £60.00 hardback.

The contribution of The NGO Factor in Africa lies in its ordinariness and the simple
but critical manner in which it presents the work of NGOs in Africa from the point
of view of the masses. Maurice Amutabi’s primary purpose is to re-evaluate long-held
ideas about the supposedly stellar role of NGOs in Africa, using Kenya as a case study.
The book brings into focus the question of representation as it relates to development
in Africa, highlighting the imperial aspects of the activities of NGOs, especially the
imposition of models of development and agenda-setting. The book illuminates the
problems that NGOs have created in Kenya, exposing the paradoxes, ambiguities and
suspicions held against them. It examines the place of NGOs as colonial tools in
Africa, questioning previous assertions about their neutrality. The author challenges
assertions that have presented NGOs as undifferentiated and homogeneous, faultless
and pure. Using the Rockefeller Foundation (RF) and its work in Kenya as a case
study, Amutabi problematizes the activities of RF in the agriculture, education and
health sectors, demonstrating that these activities have not only facilitated but also
undermined development efforts in Kenya.
The seven chapters in the book are arranged thematically and chronologically. They
range in focus from a critique of the roles of NGOs in Africa to the cultural, social
and economic imperialism of their activities, through what Amutabi terms ‘philanthro-
cracy’ (p. xxiii). Philanthrocracy is a complex process through which NGOs seek to
dominate their constituents and other stakeholders in development. Chapters One to
Four provide theoretical thrusts to the background of Kenya’s development history. In
the first chapter, Amutabi illustrates a paradoxical duality in the activities of NGOs in
Kenya, showing their two faces: one as agents of development and the other as agents
of external dominance. He shows how NGOs are variously used by governments and
international institutions of development to link local communities to global social
and economic movements in order to exploit them. Using a neoliberal framework
Amutabi casts NGO projects as sites where communities are created or altered through
hegemonic tendencies, such as ‘forms’ or ‘structures’ of globalization (p. 29).
In the second chapter, Amutabi examines the value and motives of NGOS, with
a critical view of imperial and capital interests, and argues that despite many years
of working in Kenya and other parts of Africa, only a few cases can be seen to bear
Development and Change 347

the fruits of ‘genuine development’, such as financing higher education. Many of the
NGOs’ activities in Kenya, he argues, have maintained Africans as the ideal ‘other’
in constant need of aid. Amutabi casts NGOs as colonial tools for oppressing and
exploiting people. While he does not discredit their work totally, for they ‘have often
created islands of development in some areas’ (p. 34), Amutabi puts into perspective
the motives behind NGOs, identifying them as non-neutral participants for their placing
of ‘subsistence’ and ‘modern development’ in two separate realms, thus creating the
mark of binary division in society. This chapter suggests that the activities of NGOs in
Kenya have given them a position of benevolence which is interested only in assisting
the poor but not helping them solve their problems.
Amutabi looks at the work of early missionaries and philanthropists in Africa and
how they shaped the domestic economic, political and social institutions. In this chapter,
he provides background on the Rockefeller Foundation by showing its growth world-
wide and its activities in Kenya. He examines its activities in sectors such as health,
education, agriculture and water development, arguing that these activities, rather than
being agents of development, were used to initiate Kenya ‘in global politics and eco-
nomics’ for exploitation by the North (p. 79). Amutabi argues that the complexities of
drastic reforms and restructuring of social, economic and political activities brought
about by colonial missionaries and philanthropists have transformed the social struc-
ture from communal to that of ‘binary oppositional structures’, which ‘continued to
influence and guide development, away from social welfare to capitalism’ (p. 107).
The author shows how NGO terms such as ‘field’ are loaded with patronizing, ‘oth-
ering’ tendencies, replete with prejudiced binaries of ‘us’ versus ‘them’, ‘backward’
versus ‘developed’, which influence their development. In this chapter, he states that
NGOs reflect imperial culture, values and power, reproducing those values in their
language, activities, recruitment, and in the overall goals of their mission. He thinks
that the work of these NGOs has undermined previous subsistence economic processes
that worked for Africans in the past, and which have been violated and pushed aside,
making many people vulnerable to famine and poverty. He says that subsistence struc-
tures that existed in Kenya were socially and culturally adjustable and cushioned people
from famine and other problems before NGOs allowed the penetrating and exploiting
tentacles of Northern capitalism to proliferate.
Amutabi takes the readers to various rural financing projects in Kenya in Chap-
ters Five and Six. Here he shows the various power dynamics at play in development
projects initiated and controlled by the Rockefeller Foundation. In the health, agricul-
ture and education sectors, Amutabi illustrates how the activities of RF in the name of
improvement and development weakened local social structures. For example, the in-
troduction of cash crops in the agricultural sector weakened the subsistence economies
and opened up structures of dependence; intervention in education led to the alienation
of the uneducated from mainstream development, opening up in the masses a sense
of uselessness. Intervention in health displaced traditional medicines and healing, dis-
missing traditional healers as heathen and accusing them of witchcraft and mysticism.
Amutabi shows how NGO projects constantly neglect African social structures, trans-
forming people’s behaviour to conditions suitable for capitalism in which Africans are
made subordinate.
I found The NGO Factor in Africa quite fascinating, especially in the balanced
manner in which archival and oral sources were used. With admirable clarity, vigour
and rigour, the book is intellectually convincing and provides new knowledge about the
work of NGOs in Africa. For those who prefer to theorize development issues in Africa,
348 Book Reviews

this book shows the limits of our understanding of the role of NGOs under contempo-
rary conditions where they are competing for donor funds with African governments.
Amutabi shows that NGOs almost always privilege Western notions of development
without reference to what the locals think. Amutabi brings to life the views of ordi-
nary people, which have remained untold in the analysis of the activities of NGOs in
Africa in the past. The author does a good job of professionally admonishing fellow
researchers for this previous omission while inviting them to investigate and analyse
the ‘politics’ of NGOs more carefully. The study identifies manipulation by NGOs
in the development narrative on Africa, in which NGOs cast the continent as needy
and helpless, in order to justify their presence. It shows that while NGOs have tackled
poverty and underdevelopment, they tend to use their local ‘partners’ to further the
post-colonial agenda through the ideology of a civilizing mission. It suggests that they
have failed to transcend their internal forms of exclusion along racial, class and gender
lines (p. 88). Although Amutabi’s analysis is developed from an exploration of three
NGOs — the RF, CARE and Oxfam — the discussion is intended to raise broader
questions about philanthrocracy and activities of NGOs and development in Africa
from the point of view of the masses, hence the extensive deployment of interviews.
The NGO Factor in Africa has a few limitations. More men than women are in-
terviewed. Also, while it provides us with insights about the exploitative relationship
between NGOs and Africans, it treats the beneficiaries as blameless, without agency.
In other words, the book risks the narrow assumption that Western philanthropy always
has ulterior motives, and local communities do not. This ambivalence and suspicion has
not only obstructed the author’s view on the contribution of local actors in sustaining
Western philanthropies, but has also impeded him from addressing how NGOs have
contributed positively to the development of Africa. In relation to this, the book has not
explained how both the Western NGOs and local actors’ activities have complicated
the notions of ‘development’ and ‘underdevelopment’, especially when both terms can
be reversed depending on which side one is referring to. In other words, to avoid val-
ourizing Westerners as the originators of development and reducing the ‘locals’ to a
fixed position of underdevelopment, the author could go beyond the exclusively ‘de-
velopment and underdevelopment’ analysis and suggest ways in which philanthrocracy
(the word he coins) can be useful, without one side being blamed.

Elinami Swai
Womens’ and Gender Studies, University Hall 4220-A, The University of Toledo,
Toledo, OH 43606, USA.
E-mail: swaiev@gmail.com

Stephen Haggard and Marcus Noland, Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aid
and Reform. xvi + 309 pp. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. £22.50
hardback.

This is a study of the economics and politics of one of the worst famines in the
twentieth century — the North Korean famine that began in the early 1990s and lasted
until 1998 — in which between 600,000 and one million people died (3–5 per cent of
the pre-famine North Korean population). It is a scholarly and meticulous study of the
causes and devastating consequences of this famine, and the failure of the authoritarian
regime to mitigate the devastation. The latter reflected a degree of callousness in the
Development and Change 349

handling of mass starvation that bordered on the criminal. What emerges from this
rich and illuminating analysis is a grim and sordid story of cumulative economic
mismanagement, suppression of information about mass deprivation and fatality, a
brutal and desperate struggle for the survival of an authoritarian political regime,
obstruction of humanitarian assistance and, last but not least, the donors’ use of food
aid as a diplomatic weapon.
Overall food availability suffered as a consequence of a rigid pursuit of self-
sufficiency that restricted foreign exchange earnings which could have been used
to import food during a domestic shortage. Different data sources confirm a decline
in food production during the 1990s. While natural disasters (such as floods in 1995
and 1996) played some role, the official explanation exaggerated it. An important
triggering factor was the precipitous loss of supplies of agricultural inputs following
the disruption of trade with the socialist bloc from the late 1980s. Food distribution
took the form of daily grain rations distributed through the Public Distribution System
(PDS), ranging from 600 to 700 grams for most urban dwellers to 700 to 800 grams for
high officials, military personnel and others. As the crisis unfolded, PDS rations were
cut or delayed or withheld from some regions. By 1997, the daily rations had fallen
to 128 grams. The government’s response to the growing food shortage was perverse
and brutal — there were coercive seizures of farmers’ grains and cuts in the annual
retained farm allotment from 167 to 107 kg per person. But rural households mitigated
their hardships by hoarding, cultivating illegal private plots and neglecting production
on officially recognized farms and co-operatives.
Not unexpectedly, the food supply shrank and the PDS collapsed. Food was increas-
ingly allocated through informal market channels. Access to food was determined by
a combination of geographic location (food surplus or deficit), occupation (urban or
rural), and access to foreign exchange (through diverse channels). Appeals for hu-
manitarian assistance produced a delayed response but its disbursement was played
out as a bargaining game. The donors sought to advance their objectives while the
North Korean government manipulated to maximize aid with little monitoring and
accountability. Something in the order of 30 per cent of food aid was diverted. No
wonder the mortalities were huge. Yet the policy reforms announced or undertaken
were patchy, ill-informed and designed to protect the political regime. Procurement
prices were hiked to expand food supply to the PDS along with a dramatic increase in
retail food grain prices (40,000 to 60,000 per cent in 2002). While food grain prices
rose sharply in the farmers’ markets, higher procurement prices failed to coax a larger
supply into the PDS. Subsidies to state-owned enterprises were cut but wage rates were
raised substantially for some groups (such as military personnel and party officials).
Administered prices remained pervasive. In the absence of any formal exit mecha-
nism, side-businesses cropped up, wages were cut and loans from the Central Bank
kept bankrupt organizations afloat. The net result was an enormous jump in the price
level and ongoing inflation.
Does the international community have a role in dealing with a rogue state? If the
Haggard and Noland prognosis is anything to go by, the prospects are bleak. While
rejecting the proposal to cut off food aid despite huge leakage has had direct bene-
ficial effects — increasing overall supply, moderating prices and encouraging com-
mercialization — these benefits support the persuasive plea that ‘the international
community must make a concerted and coordinated effort to wean North Korea off
humanitarian assistance’ (p. 231). An important component of such a strategy would
be to couple reduced humanitarian assistance with ‘the promise of greater access to
350 Book Reviews

development assistance’ (p. 231). A prerequisite is, of course, North Korea’s mem-
bership in multilateral development organizations such as the IMF and the World
Bank.
Unfortunately, what continues to impede North Korea’s membership is its nuclear
ambition. The authors are emphatic that the blame for the impasse lies also with the
international community for not broadening the engagement to include other issues
such as ’the humanitarian disaster of the last decade, the question of human rights, the
growing issue of refugees’ (p. 241). A strategy of incremental improvements on a wide
range of issues may well be the only workable option.
In conclusion, in a rare blend of scholarship and a profound understanding of what the
international community could accomplish to prevent a recurrence of the catastrophic
famine, Famine in North Korea is as good as the best of its genre.

Raghav Gaiha
Faculty of Management Studies, University of Delhi, Delhi-110007, India.
E-mail: rdg@bol.net.in

Lewis Taylor, Shining Path: Guerrilla War in Peru’s Northern Highlands, 1980–
1997. xiv + 232 pp. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2006. £50.00 hard-
back, £18.50 paperback.

Of all the armed conflicts to have affected Latin American society in recent years, few
can compare in ferocity with the civil conflict that affected much of Peru during the
1980s and early 1990s. As a result of the state’s attempt to suppress the insurrection
launched by the Partido Comunista del Peru-Sendero Luminoso (PCP-SL) or ‘Shining
Path’ an estimated 69,280 people lost their lives, of which 79 per cent were from rural
areas and 56 per cent were peasants (p. ix). Within a context of widespread violence
that affected all but three of Peru’s twenty-four departments, one particularly important
conflict arena was the northern Andes. In spite of the high priority attached to this area
by the PCP-SL, most of the literature on the civil war in Peru post-1980 has tended
to focus on the events in the south-central Andes and the department of Ayacucho in
particular.
In this monograph Lewis Taylor shifts the focus onto the northern Andes and the
hostilities that took place in the provinces of San Marcos and Cajabamba in the de-
partment of Cajamarca and a number of neighbouring provinces in the department of
La Libertad. The most noteworthy dimension of this book’s contribution to our un-
derstanding of the causes and effects of the civil war in Peru post-1980 is the critical
approach it offers to the claim that ‘there existed no direct correlation between poverty
and support for political violence’. Using the oft-cited claim that land redistribution
and the restoration of local government in 1980 meant that the PCP-SL was operating
in the wrong nation at the wrong time, the author shows this to be an inappropriate
explanation for the insurgency’s evolution in the northern Andes. Unlike the south-
central Andes, the structure of rural society, the trajectory of social change and the
motivational factors that produced support for the PCP-SL were distinguished by lo-
cal dissatisfaction with land redistribution and an involvement with political parties,
especially APRA, which extended as far back as the 1930s (pp. 63–65).
In this particular region such non-military factors as the social consequences of the
land redistribution programme and the heightened political awareness that accompa-
nied it are shown to have played a key role in determining the various outcomes of the
Development and Change 351

guerrilla insurgency. It was not so much the failure of the state that alienated people
as the nation’s economic crisis that made hunger such a subject of intense concern for
the rural peasantry from the early 1980s onwards (pp. 162–3). So often regarded as
a sine qua non for explaining the rapid expansion of PCP-SL, the author shows how
economic misery was responsible for the pool of sympathy for PSP-SL that existed
amongst the north Andean populace (p. 210). Under such conditions widespread state
atrophy, growing corruption and a political system in crisis only served to heighten
local awareness that ‘misery has a human agency’. Imbued with the Andean tradition
of gamonalismo — a belief system centred on the legitimacy of employing subterfuge
and violence to further one’s own interests and attain respect — the PSP-SL was able
to tap into a much older tradition (p. 208).
The pattern for the translation of these contrasting social mores into a changing
perception of the state was, under the PSP-SL, a specific resolution of the difficulties
with which the northern Andes was then associated. However, for a social environment
steeped in a long history of factional and familial feuding, this combination of localism
and the political was to provide the PSP-SL with problems that in the end proved
insurmountable. In this respect the caricature of the Andean countryside employed by
the PSP-SL and presented as a subsistence farming system cut off from the national
economy became its greatest weakness (p. 214). The failure to listen to ordinary people,
the use of outsiders as trainers and the rapid promotion of greenhorn individuals who
were granted responsibilities beyond their capability and wisdom meant that PSP-SL
authority came to increasingly rest not on consent, but on coercion (pp. 181ff). The
subsequent rise in PSP-SL inflicted deaths of many innocent people after 1985 only
served to produce further disaffection, conflict and disillusionment.
The image of efficiency, meticulous planning and coherent decision making with
which the PSP-SL projected itself so effectively is revealed as a façade behind which
the flawed workings of a totalitarian structure are thoroughly exposed. This book is
suffused with a deep understanding of the roots of guerrilla insurgency. It is clear,
articulate, fluent, confident and authoritative. The narrative is lively, the analysis sub-
tle and sophisticated. It is a pleasure to read and should have the widest possible
readership.

Tim Bowyer
Centre for Development Studies, University of Wales, Swansea, Singleton Park,
Swansea SA2 8PP, UK.
E-mail: t.j.bowyer@swansea.ac.uk

Tom Zaniello, The Cinema of Globalization: A Guide to Films about the


New Economic Order. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007. 202 pp.
$49.95/£26.50 hardback, $19.95/£10.50 paperback.

This is one of the most useful books on globalization — in both its positive and negative
aspects — that I have ever read. No other volume could cover the range and depth of
the process in quite this way, and yet it is a book about films, and consists of a short
introduction followed by over 200 reviews of films, including feature films, animation,
blockbusters, television drama series, and documentary films.
The largest of these documentary projects is ‘How Yukong Moved Mountains’
(1976). This twelve-part, eleven-hour documentary series about China’s workers during
352 Book Reviews

the Cultural Revolution of the 1970s, directed by Joris Ivens and Marceline Loridan,
was devoted to documenting Chinese modes of decision-making at that time (pp. 92–3).
The historical depth of the collection is one of the strengths of this volume, as is the
frequent cross-referencing between films for contrasting and continuation of a theme.
This adds yet again to the value of the volume as an invaluable teaching — but also
research — resource for anyone interested in globalization, as well as in film and the
politics of media. The author invites communication at the start, giving his e-mail and
since I am presumably not alone in having sent him some of my missing favourites,
this could be a study that is quite easily updated every few years. I would hope it would
be amended through additions rather than replacements, however, as there was literally
nothing that did not seem of potential interest to someone.
Stills and photos are scattered throughout, and there is an index of film types,
from ‘Africa’ (ten films) to ‘Women Workers and Child Labour’ (five films). Not
surprisingly the films’ origins reflect the inequality of the global film industry, with
only 40 of the 213 films coming from Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East
(which was not in the index, with only four films). The index also includes a ‘Must
see Films’ entry (p. 199) with key contemporary and historical films that could form
the starting point for anyone wishing to build up a collection of film and documentary
material on the subject of globalization.
The list of ‘must see’ films includes ‘Bigger than Enron’ (2002), a TV Frontline
documentary which exposed the close ties of Bush and Cheney with top management
at Enron, including the notorious ‘Kenny Boy’ Lay, one of the former US President’s
closest backers. The ‘Bigger than Enron’ title refers to prior scandals involving the now-
collapsed accounting firm Arthur Andersen. Other ‘must see’ films include Hubert
Sauper’s unbearable ‘Darwin’s Nightmare’ (2004) which depicts in all its sordid and
disturbing horror the impact on local people of a commercialized trade around Lake
Victoria of Nile perch exchanged for weapons. It is, Sauper asserts, ‘as if you had 9/11
every day in the Eastern Congo alone’ (p. 161), so destructive have been the continuing
impacts of global imperialism on people’s lives in the region.
TV series and commercial films are also included in the ‘must see’ list, such as ‘Edge
of Darkness’, a 1980s satire about the dirty politics of Thatcherite state involvement in
plutonium processing at Sellafield in the UK, a series described as ‘post-apocalyptic’.
Finally in this list, I would single out ‘Life and Debt’ (2001). This is probably one of the
best films ever made about the direct and indirect, tangible and secondary impacts on a
small island country of mounting debt and imposed liberal market reforms. Produced by
Stephanie Black, with a lot of relevant reading provided from Jamaica Kincaid to Tate
Greg in Village Voice, this is a classic of anti-globalization documentary film making.
As the volume is added to in future I would expect to see the Middle East section grow
quite dramatically, given the rash of critical and not-so-critical documentary films on
Iraq and US military involvement there.
An excellent volume, alphabetically and accessibly organized, with a useful introduc-
tion about the key terms and categories used throughout. Thorough and yet extremely
simple; just what one needs in such a complex world.

Helen Hintjens
Institute of Social Studies, PO Box 29776, 2502 LT The Hague, The Netherlands.
E-mail: hintjens@iss.nl

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