Human (In)Security and Development in the 21st Century

In this contribution we focus on the political merits as well as limitations of the project of Third Worldism. Through critical historical analysis we identify the difference that Third Worldism made to world politics. At the same time it was without a doubt beset with contradictions from its inception. By foregrounding the contexts of development struggles, we hope to illustrate-at least minimally-these contradictions. From our perspective these are to be found in the politics of emancipatory nationalism. On the one hand, this facilitated a freedom of a kind: recognition and formal equality in world politics. On the other, the institutional form this took was premised on the assumption that national development (especially of the postcolonial states) was somehow independent of wider historical as well as 'transnational' social and political relations. A more relational understanding of the history of development would reveal the extent to which wealth and poverty, order, violence and conflict are outcomes of multifaceted, but combined social and political processes that cannot be reduced to the parameters of the nation-state or the nation-state system. For all its contradictions, Third Worldism articulated a radical political imagination (for its time). However, ironically, to carry forth its underlying concerns, we need to move beyond the territorial imagination and the equation of progress and modernity with the sovereign nation-state to understand why it was a contradictory project. Perhaps, through understanding its contradictions, spaces of hope might be opened up to (re)imagine radical and more humane alternatives. Notes 1 V Prashad, The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World, New York: New Press, 2007, pp xv, 281. 2 Prashad puts this point somewhat differently. Ibid, p xviii. 3 There are, of course, many studies that document the social and ecological consequences of aggressive modernisation strategies pursued in the name (and cause) of 'national development'. See, for example, M Davis, Planet of Slums, London: Verso, 2006. 4 See, for example, D Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000; M Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996; SN Grovogui, 'Regimes of sovereignty: international morality and the African condition', European Journal of International Affairs, 8 (3), 2002, pp 315-338; and F Cooper, Colonialism in Question-Theory, Knowledge, History, Berkely, CA: University of California Press, 2005. 5 See the references in footnote 4. 6 Of course, legally, they had to accept the currently established borders and the state form as the path through which to come out of colonial rule. 7 See Cooper, Colonialism in Question. 8 An example is the World Social Forum. See T Teivainen, 'The World Social Forum and global democratisation: learning from Porto Alegre', Third World Quarterly, 23 (4), 2002 pp 621-632. 9 'Failed States Index 2008', Foreign Policy, July/August 2008, pp 64-73. 10 S Hameiri, 'Failed states or a failed paradigm? State capacity and the limits of institutionalism', Journal of International Relations and Development, 10 (2), 2007, pp 122-149; BM Kraxberger, 'Failed states: temporary obstacles to democratic diffusion or fundamental holes in the world political map?', Third World Quarterly, 28 (6), 2007, pp 1055-1076; and M Boas and KM Jennings, '"Failed states" and "state failure": threats or opportunities?', Globalizations, 4 (4), 2007, pp 475-485. See especially the contribution by Shah in this volume, and also H Weber, 'A political analysis of the formal comparative method: historicizing the globalization and development debate', Globalizations, 4 (4), 2007, pp 559-572

Environmental ethics · Foregrounding · Modernity · Nationalism · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Sovereignty · International Development and Aid · Law

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