Reproducing Inequalities through Development: The MDGs and the Politics of Method

Abstract

This article is a critical inquiry into particular methodological means underlying analyses of development, inequalities, and poverty in the context of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) discourse. A populist approach to poverty reduction, the MDG initiative has gained much exposure at the expense of a closer scrutiny of the specific methodological premises (and their implications) underlining the development frameworks through which the goals were to be realized. A critical examination of premises of this kind demonstrates the way in which the application of specific methods in analyses of development and poverty is carefully crafted to serve discernible ideological ends. In order to explicate this by way of an example, I draw on MDG1 (and target 2 with reference to hunger), which I discuss in relation to its integration with the overarching development objective of realizing economic growth. My aim is to demonstrate how dominant explanations and understandings of poverty and hunger, social struggles for fundamental entitlements, and ultimately ‘development’, are construed in ways that are premised on abstractions from actual social and political relations; they are framed as ‘independent variables’ external to the very policies and strategies of international development. The critical engagement offered in my analysis is timely, given the extent to which the MDG initiative and the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals agenda have been presented without any attempt to answer to decades (and more) of critical arguments that offer more rigorous and sustained understandings of inequalities, including deprivations of basic life sustaining needs and fundamental entitlements.

Extracto – Este artículo es una consulta crítica de los medios metodológicos particulares subyacentes al análisis del desarrollo, las inequidades y pobreza dentro del contexto del discurso de las Metas de Desarrollo del Milenio (MDGs por sus siglas en inglés). Una aproximación populista a la reducción de la pobreza, la iniciativa MDG ha Ganado mucha exposición a costa de un escrutinio más cercano de específicas premisas metodológicas (y de sus implicaciones) como trasfondo del marco de desarrollo bajo el que se alcanzarían tales metas. Un examen crítico de premisas de esta naturaleza demuestra la forma en que la aplicación de métodos específicos en análisis de desarrollo y pobreza es manufacturada cuidadosamente para servir fines ideológicamente discernibles. Con el objeto de explicar esto con un ejemplo, el autor se basa en MDG1 (y en la meta 2 en materia de hambre), que se comenta en relación con su integración con el predominante objetivo de desarrollo de alcanzar el crecimiento económico. Se intenta demostrar cómo las explicaciones y conocimiento dominantes de la pobreza y el hambre, los enfrentamientos sociales por derechos fundamentales y, por último, el “desarrollo” son construidos en forma tal que sus premisas constituyen abstracciones de las efectivas relaciones sociales y políticas; están enmarcadas como “variables independientes” externas a las mismas políticas y estrategias del desarrollo internacional. El compromiso crítico ofrecido en este análisis es oportuno, dada la medida en que la iniciativa MDG y la agenda de Metas de desarrollo Sostenible post-2015 han sido presentadas, sin ningún intento de responder a décadas (y más) de argumentos críticos que ofrecen una comprensión más rigurosa y sostenida de las inequidades, incluyendo privación de las más básicas necesidades de vida y de los derechos fundamentales.

Keywords:

• Millennium Development Goals
• Sustainable Development Goals
• global development
• inequality
• politics of method

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Clive Gabay for organizing and facilitating this Special Issue. My specific thanks to one referee whose comments led to significant improvements. I would also like to thank Martin Weber for providing helpful comments on drafts of this paper.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 See Fukurda-Parr (2004) for an overview of the institutional account of the emergence and significance of the MDG initiative; for alternative critical accounts, see Saith (2006) and Amin (2006).

2 Fukudar-Parr (no doubt, well intentioned) states that World Bank and IMF are committed to including the MDGs in their Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) (see p. 398). They may well be committed to doing so, given the close link between the MDG initiative and neoliberal politics; however, it would be mistaken to assume that the PRSPs are not premised on neoliberal premises. The PRSPs are documents that do not prioritize redistribution but rather are about realizing economic growth through neoliberal development. The PRSPs are the graduated version of Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs). Indeed, full PRSPs only follow after SAPs have been implemented. For a critical account based on a close reading of World Bank policy documents with regard to the PRSPs, see Weber (2006).

3 There are several other critical perspectives of the MDGs (some of which are discussed below); Here, I indicatively highlight those who have problematized the MDG initiative more explicitly as part of a neoliberal development framework.

4 I am drawing on McMichael's argument about the epistemic privileging of the ‘market calculus—where the market has become the dominant lens through which development is viewed. An episteme is an approach to knowledge about the world, based on a core set of assumptions that seem like common sense. Thus the market, and its “invisible hand” assumptions (neutrality, efficiency, rationality) has come to represent the central episteme in the modern enterprise of development. Since these assumptions have commonsense appeal, they normalize the market calculus in the discourse and pursuit of development’ (2010, p. 3).

5 Hulme and Scott are citing a reference to such a discussion to Fukudar-Parr and Hulme (2011).

6 On this point see also Saith (2006, p. 1185) who states that ‘there is no mention at all in any form of redistributions whether of income or assets, such as land’. Saith also provides a convincing critique of the focus on absolute poverty and not on rising inequalities. He notes that the focus of the MDG initiative has not been on global poverty or inequalities but rather on conditions of absolute poverty—or more basic deprivations of fundamental entitlements—in states of the global south, submerging concerns for constitutive global inequalities (2006, esp. pp. 1184–1185). This also means ‘taking a step back from the earlier discourse of the human development paradigm, which made it a point to highlight the development deficits experienced by deprived groups in the rich countries’ (2006, 1184, ftn 17).

7 At a broader level this logic of analysis is what underpins the ‘stages of growth’ framing of development. A ‘stages of growth’ conception of development has deeper historical roots (for a critical discussion, see Hindess, 2007), and forms the basis of modernization theoretic conceptions of development (cf. Rostow, 1960). More recently Jeffrey Sachs’ (2005) use of the ladder metaphor aligns with this conception of development. For an excellent critique of Jeffrey Sachs’ more recent articulation of this premise through the ladder metaphor in the End of Poverty, see McMichael (2005).

8 See John Walton and David Seddon (1994) for an analysis of food riots in relation to SAPs and neoliberal development more generally. They also note that the ‘bread riot' has a longer history in capitalist and colonial development (23–54).

9 At a broader level such substantive abstractions are at the core of modernization theoretic premises of development, which rests on a ‘stages of growth’ premise. See note 7 op cite.

10 See United Nations (2008) for a good overview of the diverse range of participants and their respective commitments.

11 Without specific details it is not possible to offer a precise analysis of this commitment, however, it does raise the question of ‘what kind of land deals?’, especially in the context of the current global landgrabs. On the latter see McMichael (2012a.

12 For critical discussion of the GDA in relation to microcredit and poverty reduction, see Weber (2002).

13 Paul Nelson makes some interesting observations in his distinction between the MDG framework and Human Rights based approaches to development. He states that the international human rights covenants ‘are rights of individuals. Goals, on the other hand, belong to states and their international organizations in which they are negotiated. They refer to the people who suffer the indignities of poverty, but those individuals are the objects of the goals not their agents’. (..) He goes on to state that the fact that ‘governments adopt a goal’ (..) ‘does not give any particular destitute person a right or claim on her government’ (2007, p. 2045). Nelson further states that ‘Human rights-based approaches tend to call for attention to the causes and multiple dimensions of poverty, and to linkages between poverty and civil and political freedoms’ whereas the MDGs ‘aim primarily for progress in some of the worst symptoms of poverty’ (2007, p. 2046). Nelson raises some important insights, but as the discussion of rights below indicates, the link between poverty and rights is more complex, and increasingly so in the light of institutions such as the WTO (which is something he recognizes, see 2007, p. 2050).

14 Here Grovogui's discussion of the Haitian Revolution's constitution is significant. A related critical discussion by Robbie Shilliam (2008) is also highly cogent for the argument about politics of method and the question of delinking (as conceptualized for the purposes of this argument). See also Kamil Shah (2009).

15 For a good critical engagement of the problems associated with foregrounding statistics and the MDGs see David Satterthwaite (2003).

16 See the UN Millennium Project (2002–2006).

17 See especially pages 84–86 for food insecurity and how protests against food insecurity are conceived and framed.

18 See also Saurin (1997) on the relationship between international development institutions and hunger.

19 I am drawing from the title of an excellent critical analysis of debates about welfare provision by Somers and Block (2005). They too critically discuss neo-Malthusian justifications for welfare retrenchment.

20 For a detailed critical analysis of the proposed post-2015 SDGs agenda, see Weber (2014).

Additional information

Dr. Heloise Weber is Senior Lecturer in International Relations and Development Studies at the School of Political Science and International Studies, The University of Queensland (Brisbane, Queensland, Australia). She has published widely on the global politics of development, inequalities and poverty reduction strategies, as well as on theoretical and methodological concerns in the global politics of development. She is co-author (with M.T. Berger) of Rethinking the third world—International development and world politics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). She is the editor of Politics of development (Routledge, 2014).