The Geopolitical Imagination and the Enframing of Development Theory Author(s): David Slater Source: Transactions of the Institute

of British Geographers, New Series, Vol. 18, No. 4 (1993), pp. 419-437 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/622559 Accessed: 09/02/2009 11:09
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geopolitical imagination and development theory

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DAVID SLATER AssociateProfessor Centrefor LatinAmericanResearch and of Social Geography, Interuniversity Documentation 1016EK The Netherlands 395-397, (CEDLA),Keizersgracht Amsterdam, RevisedMS received9 June 1993
ABSTRACT It is argued that all the major conceptualizations of developmentin the post-war period contain and express a geopoliticalimaginationwhich has had a conditioningeffect on the enframingof the meaningsand relationsof theory for the developing countriesreflecteda will to development.The Occidentaldeploymentof modernization for a whole seriesof practical interventions and penetrations geopoliticalpower.It provideda discursive legitimation that sought to subordinate and assimilatethe ThirdWorld Other. In a connectedbut far from identicalmanner, neo-liberal of development in the 1980s have accompanied andbeen inspired readings by rapidlychanging geopolitical conditions.Similarly, it is arguedthat on the other side of the North-South divide the radical dependencia perspective of the 1960s and early 1970s cannotbe separated froma seriesof geopoliticalevents such as the CubanRevolution, nor fromthe perceivedneed on the partof critical Latin to confrontandchallengethe relevance American intellectuals of modernization it is suggestedthatin any attemptto rethink for global theoryfor the periphery. Finally, development times the natureof our geopoliticalimagination must be a key element,just as the theorization of the geo-political is equallyrelevantfor developmenttheoristsand politicalgeographers. KEYWORDS:Universalism, Occidental State Ethnocentrism, gaze, Dependencia, Democracy,

GEOPOLITICS AND NORTH-SOUTH RELATIONS In the wake of the disintegration of the Second World and the sudden evaporation of the erstwhile 'Soviet threat', a new spectre is haunting the West. Visions of unruly, unpredictable and destabilizing regimes and religions of a non-Western world increasingly appear to occupy and perturb the Occidental gaze. During the same moment, exponents of a more criticalpersuasion are placing on to the agenda the moral question of North-South relations. H6sle (1992, 229), for example, suggests 'the increasing gap between First and Third Worlds raises some of the most difficult moral questions of the modem world', and similarly,Arrighi (1991, 40) writes, 'the increasing inequality of the global distribution of income is ... rapidly becoming the central issue of our times'. Along a potentially connected analytical track, a variety of critical scholars invoke the name of
Trans. Inst. Br. Geogr. N.S. 18: 419-437 (1993) ISSN: 0020-2754

'geopolitics' or 'imperialism' to mark a central feature of contemporary global power. Mohanty (1992, 88), for instance, writes of the USA of the 1990s as a geopolitical power 'seemingly unbounded in its effects' and of the logics of imperialism and modernity sharing a common notion of 'space as territory'. Or, in other previous instances, a differentiationhas been drawn between global capitalism (exploitation in economics) and nation-state alliances (domination in geopolitics).1 Going further, it can be argued that across a broad spectrum of intellectual enquiry, through literary theory, cultural studies, political and philosophical investigation, social and anthropological research, feminist theory, international relations and political geography, one can discern a growing focus on issues of space and power, in which questions of inside and and global outside, local, de-territorializationand re-territorialization, connections and separations punctuate the emerging debates. Interspersed through these discussions, we
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can locate an expanding interest in a critical geopolitics. In the domain of international relations the work of, inter alia, Ashley (1987), Der Derian and Shapiro (1989) and Walker (1993), has shown the fertile possibilities of deploying post-structuralist and post-moder thought in new attempts to re-conceptualize the spatiality of political power. In a not dissimilar vein, recent contributions from a number of political geographers (Dalby, 1988 and 1991; O Tuathail and Agnew, 1992; Corbridge, 1993) have begun to emphasize the openings offered by a more discourse-orientated approach to global aspects of the geopolitics of power.2 Despite the existence of differences in conceptual and thematic emphasis, the above-mentioned literature is generally characterized by a double tendency. First, there is a strong inclination to equate the analysis of geopolitics with the international or global, including the question of nation-state formations and relations. Secondly, although certainly not in all cases, there seems to be a predisposition to associate geopolitics with the ways in which a whole community of state bureaucrats,leaders and foreign-policy experts, the 'intellectuals of statecraft', spatially represent international politics. This twin tendency can lead us to pose two interwoven questions: (a) in the first place, is it sufficient to constitute the analytical field of a geopolitics on the level of international or global relations, and (b) to what extent can we accept the notion of a centred subjectivityfor the analysis of geopolitics? In other words, can we indicate a variety of interconnected analytical levels for geopolitics and also is it possible to identify a heterogeneity of geopolitical imaginations with contrasting capacities for deployment? In attempting to answer both these questions, the analytical context is formed by what I shall refer to as the enframing of development theory across the North-South divide. The questions I am posing here could take us into a very extended discussion. My objective, therefore, is to attempt to clarify certain general issues of geopolitical analysis before dealing in some detail with continuities and discontinuities in the formation and deployment of development theory. By effecting an encounter between geopolitics and the constitution of development theory, the intention is to shed some further light on the ways in which development theory has been enframed, since in many critical accounts of the emergence of ideas on development, the geopolitics of global power has

not infrequently remained unexplored. Similarly, it can be argued that in the growing literature on geopolitical analysis, including the more critical currents,the nature of North-South relations and, in particular, the representation of societal development in the South, have tended to receive less attention than might have been expected given the increasing importance attached to globalization. In this sense, therefore, it is to be hoped that such a critical encounter might help to stimulate new questions in two fields of enquiry as well as generating a dialogue which could be mutually beneficial. In its most basic form my first question on geopolitics concerns the object of analysis. Traditionally, this might have been taken to be a series of states conceived of as living organisms capable of growth and development.3 Such an approach has found recent application in the writings of the Latin American military but, in these cases (primarily in the Southern Cone) owing to the difficulties of territorial acquisition, the geopolitical strategy has been transformed from conquest of physical space into that of political space, while still preserving the organic concept of the state.4 On a broader canvas, the object of geopolitical reflection, as brought into being by the practitioners of statecraft in the United States, has been the changing constellation of global political forces. The terrain of analysis and of potential intervention has neither been restricted to one part of the globe, nor to an interpretationof the 'global' as constitutive of a level that is essentially 'above' or 'over' (the notion, for example, of superimposition). It has rather been conceived in terms of an imbrication of spheres, or an interlocking of 'global', 'national', 'regional' and 'local'.5 Although very differentfrom both the theoretical and political starting points, there is a criticalFrench current which, not entirely unlike the abovementioned practitioners of statecraft, has also emphasized the importance of seeing geopolitics in terms of both the external and the internal.Thus, in a special issue of H rodoteon geopolitics in Africa, Foucher (1987), Lacoste (1987) and associated authors have put on to the agenda the changing territorialityof political power insideAfrican states.6 Similarly inside Brazil, the relations between space and power in the context of the colonization of the Amazon region, for example, have also been considered as an inherent component of geopolitics (Becker, 1982).7

Thegeopolitical and theenframing imagination theory of development What I want to argue here, therefore, is that when we pose the question of how we might best characterize the terrain of a geopolitical analysis, it will be necessary to keep in mind the differential imbrication of transnational, national and regional/ local political spheres. Secondly and crucially, since the ways of seeing and interpreting the terrain or object of analysis vary, often quite dramatically, some clarificationof the approach to be adopted is required. Faced with a related requirement, Ashley (1987) has developed what he refers to, after Foucault, as a genealogical approach to an analysis of geopolitical space. For my perspective on the enframing of development theory, I shall derive support from those contemporary currentsof critical thought that are enabling us to re-structuremany of the questions of social and political analysis as well as to destabilize the apparent solidity of the official discourses of development. It is my contention that all the major conceptualizations of development in the post-war period contain and express a geopolitical imagination which has had a conditioning effect on the enframing of the meanings and relations of development. Thus, I shall argue that the Occidental enframing and deployment of modernization theory for the so-called developing countries was a reflection of a will to spatial power. It provided a discursive legitimation for a whole series of practical interventions and penetrations that sought to subordinate, contain and assimilate the Third World as other. In a connected but far from identical manner, neoliberal readings of development in the 1980s have accompanied and been inspired by rapidly changing geopolitical conditions. Similarly, in a previous period and on the other side of the North-South divide, the radical dependenciaperspective of the 1960s and early 1970s cannot be separated either from the geopolitical impact of the Cuban Revolution, or from the perceived need on the part of critical Latin American intellectuals to confront and challenge the relevance of modernization theory at the periphery. Finally, in any treatment of the possible new horizons for 'critical development theory', one of the key dimensions will be formed by a questioning geopolitical imagination. My own perspective may be seen as forming one possible pathway within what is broadly referred to as critical geopolitics wherein post-structuralist and post-marxist reflections can help us move forward. I shall return to these questions at the end of the article.8 WAVES OF WESTERN DEVELOPMENT THEORY

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and the Three Modernization,Euro-Americanism Worlds of Development It is important to remember that it was the Enlightenment that created the language in which concepts of the 'modem' first came to be defined. In Enlightenment discourse, the West was the model, the prototype and the gauge of social progress. It was Western progress, civilization, rationality, thought and development that were proclaimed. Equally, however, these projections were intimately related to the discursive couplets of 'civilized versus barbaric nations', of 'peoples with history and those without', which were reflections of the need to create an opposed non-West other so as to cement a positive identity for the West itself. It is in this sense then that 'the West' is much more an idea than a fact of geography.9 Further,not only is the rise of the West a global story, but also, as Hall (1992, 291) puts it, the 'discourse of the West about the Rest' has been and continues to be deeply implicated in practice. This was particularly evident in the Western construction of the idea of modernization, during the early post-War period. The development of the modernization paradigm, based as it was on a dichotomous view of 'modern' and 'traditional' societies, or West and non-West, took place in a world characterizedby a new and expanding threat - Communism. In 1947, President Truman drew up a picture of two antagonistic 'ways of life'."0On the one hand there was freedom and liberty and on the other terror and oppression. The West, led by the United States, defined the former and the Communist world the latter. Truman concluded it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resistingattemptedsubjugation minorities or by outsidepressures. (Ambrose, by armed
1988, 78)

Two years later, a related policy statement helped to define the place of the 'underdeveloped areas' in the projection of US power. Truman's'FairDeal' for the world embraced a bold new programme 'for making the benefit of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas'. The poverty of more than half the people of the world was viewed as a 'handicapand a threatboth to them and to more prosperous areas' (emphasis added). Truman

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DAVIDSLATER the other are made, they are made to stick. And always one of the crucial objectives of resistance discourses is to deconstruct and displace those subordinating definitions of the other. Occidental inscriptions of 'development' were further elaborated within the frame of modernization theory which traversed an extensive field of enquiry. As is well known, within this theoretical configuration, the societies of the West were characterized as being modern, advanced, the centres of scientific and technical progress, as efficient, democratic, rational and free. In terms of the Western polity, there was a stress on the posited combination of: (a) a high degree of structuraldifferentiation; (b) a secularized political culture with a pragmatic attitude towards 'ideological movements', and (c) an autonomy of sub-systems within the system as a whole, referringin particularto the notion of an enabling pluralism of groups and associations. Not surprisingly, it was further conveyed that rational and analytical secularizationhad reached its zenith in the political cultures of Britain and above all the United States. In his cogent interrogation of these and related expressions of modernization theory in political science, Cruise O'Brien (1979, 53-4) presciently remarked that not only did the idealized versions of modernity have an American face, but that this ideal type is in effect the end of history, the to modernizterminal stationat which the passengers ation can finallyget out and stretchtheirlegs. During the 1950s and beyond, political modernity was couched in terms of representative democracy. And, since the realization of the democratic ideal had reached its highest point in the United States, the modernization process for the less advanced nations was to be understood as one of 'transition' in which backwardpolities would increasingly come to resemble the American model. Hence, as one key protagonist of political modernization, Gabriel Almond, expressed it nationsof Asia,Africaand in the new andmodernizing Latin America,the processes of enlightenmentand will have theirinevitableway.12 democratization Writing at a similar time, another North American political scientist, Apter, celebrated modernization as a special kind of hope which

went on to propose that 'what we envisage is a common program of development based on the concepts of democratic fair dealing' (quoted in Escobar, 1993). Subsequently, and in close affinity with the Truman doctrine, a group of experts convened by the United Nations designed a programme for the economic development of underdeveloped countries. This programme, whilst affirming the Western vision of development, also recognized that the developmental transition for the non-West, the underdeveloped countries, would not be an entirely smooth one. The authors wrote that there is a sense in which rapideconomicprogressis [emphasis impossible without painful adjustments; added]... ancientphilosophieshave to be scrapped; bonds of old social institutionshave to disintegrate; caste,creedand racehave to burst;and largenumbers of personswho cannotkeep up with progresshave to have theirexpectations of a comfortable life frustrated. (UnitedNations, 1951)11 This report, as Escobar (1993, 2) emphasizes, advocated a total restructuring of underdeveloped societies and reflected an emerging will to convert two-thirds of the world to the Western 'way of life'. In an associated manner whereby, a decade or so later, a connection was made between the Cold War and development, an eminent North American geographer suggested that the to nationsaretaught way in whichthe underdeveloped develop,and assistedin developingtheirgeographical populations space to supporttheirburgeoning would be a crucial factor in the waging of the Cold War and the preservation of the Western way of life (Ackerman, 1962, 297) [emphasis added]. From these examples, it can be argued that the knowledge which a discourse produces constitutes a modality of power which is exercised over those who are known as the other, the non-West. Furthermore, when that knowledge is deployed in practice, those who are so known will be subject, or more exactly subjected, to it. Moreover, the political will that fuels such a knowledge has great difficulty in accepting difference as autonomy; there is a profound fear of 'the shadowy outside' which must be made safe through penetration and assimilation; Ashley (1987, 423) defines one vital vector of such a will as 'the geopolitical domestication of global political space'. By the same token, when, within a structured ensemble of meanings, definitions about

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the supreme human desires; indeed, the desire for reachesaroundthe world.(Apter,1987, modernization
54)

the vacuumof power and authoritywhich exists in countriesmay be filledtemporso many modernizing or by military force,. . . arilyby charismatic leadership but it can be filled permanentlyonly by political
organization ...; in the modernizing world he controls

But the modernizing societies - countries such as Indonesia, Egypt, Ghana, Tanzania and India - were seen as almost all populist and 'predemocratic'.For Apter (1987), 'such systems require both sympathy and understanding', but, in addition, allows us to approach such societiesas predemocratic to view certain institutionsof coercion as perhaps necessary to the organizationand integrationof a community. modernizing Already in this passage there is an early indication of the rising concern for political order. From the 1950s through to the mid-1960s there was much emphasis in the work of political scientists such as Almond and Apter on the combination of industrialization, technological advancement and the diffusion of Western democratic ideals, practices and institutional arrangements. However, by the late 1960s and early 1970s, the emphasis had shifted to one of political order and stability. This emerging focus was expressed in the work of Huntington, Pool and Pye. Pool, for example, in a well-known passage published in 1967, wrote that orderdependson somehow compellingnewly mobilised strata to return to a measureof passivity and defeatismfromwhich they have been arousedby the process of modernisation. (quoted in Higgott, 1983,
19)13

the futurewho organizesits politics.(Huntington, op. cit., 461) In Huntington's text, the portrayal of the Second World exhibited a certain characteristicduality. The Soviet Union was no longer seen as a 'mystery wrapped up in an enigma' but rather as a world endowed with a certain rationality, as expressed in the scientific, technological and military achievements of Soviet development since the 1920s. Nevertheless, its political system was subjected to fierce criticism for its totalitarianism, its lack of freedom, and its ideological/Communist foundations. In this context it was generally argued that the absence of political freedom and the continuance of state repression would eventually lead to the overall debilitation of the Soviet system. Moreover, the posited expansionist drive of Soviet totalitarianism was represented as a threat to the 'free world' in general and to the vulnerable societies of the non-Western world in particular.14 The change of emphasis from the transference of democratic ideals and the values of the Western Enlightenment to problems involved in maintaining political order and stability was closely related to a further clarification of geopolitical thinking in the United States. From the early 1960s, particularlyin the aftermath of the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961, the National Security Council of the United States came to approve a grand strategy toward the peripheralsocieties of the South. Within this strategy, confronting internal disorder and insurgency in the developing, modernizing world was viewed as essential. Even more than under previous administrations,it became the purpose of the US to ensure that 'developing nations evolve in a way that affords a congenial world environment'.15 Under the new Kennedy administration, all the relevant agencies, such as the State and Defense departments, the CIA and the Agency for International Development met frequently to analyse what Kolko (1988, 130) reminds us were officially defined as the 'problems of development and internal defense'. At this time programmes of counter-insurgency were initiated and Washington's military modernization strategy for the Third World began to be put in place. Already by 1962 a National Security Council document stated

Huntington, in his classic text on political order, distanced himself from the earlierunilinearistvisions of modernization and stressed the significance of breakdowns and dislocations in the political transition to development. In the mid-1960s, he argued that not only does social and economic modernization generate political instability, but the degree of instability is related to the speed of modernization. He also pointed to the fact that within 'traditional polities', it was the areas undergoing modernization rather than those which remained traditional that were the 'centres of violence and extremism' (Huntington, 1968, 45). He concluded, after a sharp appraisal of Leninism and revolution, that political organization was crucial for stability and liberty;

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process. (Kolko, 1988, 133)16

it is US policy, when it is in the US interest,to make ruraldevelopment amounted to only $172.5 million, the local militaryand police advocatesof democracy 181 per cent of its total lending, whereas by 1981 and agents for carrying forward the development it had risen to $3-8 billion, or 31 per cent of its
lending (Ayres, 1985, 5).8

Whilst it is true, as Cruise O'Brien (1979) showed in his seminal article on the politics of modernization, that there was an erosion of the democratic ideal and a gradual shift towards a concentration on problems of order and stability in the modernizing world, it is equally important to bear in mind that orthodox Western visions of democracy did not wither away. Rather, in a context where the exigencies of order and defence against the threat of Communism acquired a higher profile, democracy for the traditional polity was conceived of in much more circumscribedforms. underWesterneyes and development Neo-Liberalism Between the late 1960s and the onset of a new wave of Western development theory in the 1980s, between a phase characterizedby the waning of the modernization paradigm and the resurgence of a highly confident economic liberalism, there was an unstable transition period. In the sphere of political science, the 1970s saw a growing concern with specific questions of public policy, and a greater interest in the connections between politics and economics (Higgott, 1983, 21-30). Defeat in Vietnam, the continuing vitality of resistance movements in the non-Western world and a growing realization of the shortcomings of modernization theory,17 nurtured a greater awareness of the need for more empirically-based knowledge of Third World societies (including their ruralperipheries),as well as for more aid to counter the challenges posed by poverty and backwardness. In a landmarkspeech, delivered before the Board of Governors of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund at their annual meeting in 1973, former US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara argued for a greater concentration of World Bank resources on helping to alleviate the problems of the developing world's rural poor. Following the McNamara speech, a series of sector policy papers on rural development, basic education, basic health and low-cost housing were produced by the World Bank's Development Research Center. The reorientation towards antipoverty programmes was dramatically reflected in changes in the Bank's lending activities for development. In 1968 Bank lending for agriculture and

However, as Escobar (1991, 664) argues the new focus on 'the ruralpoor' was more the result and of the in the countryside radicalism of increasing theoriesthanof a realchange demiseof modernization in the thinkingof the WorldBank. In the mid-1970s, whilst the World Bank began to emphasize poverty-oriented and basic needs approaches, the US Agency for InternationalDevelopment (AID) called for a more community-centred approach designed to deal with the basic human needs of the poor and especially 'the poorest of the poor'. In addition, US AID came to insist on the design of grassroots participatory approaches that would encourage the active participation of the poor themselves (Escobar, ibid.). But for such programmes to be effective, empirically-based knowledge and understanding of rural communities were deemed essential and, as a consequence, a growing number of social scientists, especially anthropologists, came to find a role in organizations such as the US AID.19 By the end of the 1970s, an increasing number of Third World societies were burdened with growing debt problems;for example, from 1970 to the end of 1980 their foreign debt had increased dramatically from 67-7 billion US dollars to 438-7 billion (World Bank, 1981a, 57). In 1980 the World Bank officially approved what became known as 'structural adjustment lending', that is lendingdesignedto supportmajorchangesin policies and institutionsof developing countriesthat would deficitsto more managereducetheircurrent-account in the mediumtermwhilemaintaining ableproportions the maximumfeasible development effort. (World
Bank, 1981b, 69)

The argument might have sounded quite technical but as it was developed and extended it became clear that the implications were far-reaching. On the institutional front, it was made clear that structural adjustment lending by the Bank was complementary to support for adjustment programmes provided by the International Monetary Fund. This required, as was stated in the Bank's 1981 Annual Report, 'the development of procedures for ensuring closer collaboration between

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the staffs of the two institutions ...' (World Bank, 1981b, 70). For the World Bank, structural adjustment was closely connected to the stipulated need for policy and institutional changes within developing countries. In many cases such policy changes were designed to correct 'biases in incentive systems that deter exports and promote uneconomical import substitution'; in other instances institutional changes were related to

tions of the state, such as the provision of social and and the creation of 'space for physical infrastructure, private initiative through a shift in the boundary between the public and private sectors' (ibid.).21 Looking back on the 1980s, the Bank took the view that 'adjustment policies help most poor people - at least in the medium term', although it was acknowledged that economic reform programmes could cause 'temporary welfare declines for some' (World Bank, op. cit., 69). In the related for institutions reforms of the public-sector responsible Development Report for 1992, a similarly up-beat, in the ef- almost agricultural development... improvement Panglossian view was offered for the future. ficiency of state economic enterprises,or improve- Now ments in support to nontraditional exports. (World Bank,1981b, ibid.) with near unanimityon the central importanceof markets andhumanresource investments for successful In surveying progress along these lines, the Bank the comingdecadesoffergreatprospects development, somewhat laconically observed for progress. . . . within the next generation,widespread poverty could be eliminated.(World Bank, findin gainingpolitical the difficulty thatgovernments 1992b, 178) of acceptancefor the adoption and implementation has been andcontinues As is known, the World Bank has not been deploystructural-adjustment programs to be the single most importantobstacle to rapid ing a strategy for development in isolation from progress by the Bank with structural-adjustmentother International Organizations. Apart from the assistance. (WorldBank,1981b, ibid.) IMF, the Inter-AmericanDevelopment Bank (IDB), which is charged with responsibility for Latin At the beginning of the 1980s, the World Bank has also been active in drawing up neoAmerica, re-asserted the cardinal importance of economic liberal for development. In its 1991 Report policies growth. It was argued that there was already on Latin four 'strategic directions' are America, sufficient evidence to indicate that 'economic for future change and reform. In the first suggested contributes to the alleviation of growth generally emphasis is given to the importance of poverty' and that, in a more general sense, 'human place, outward orientation and integration. development depends on economic growth to pro- Reforms are needed to hemispheric open up Latin American vide the resources for expanding productive economies to greater international competition employment and basic services' (World Bank, at the same time, proposals for greater market while, 1981a, 67 and 97). As the decade came to a close within Latin America should be encourintegration private sector development was becoming increasas envisaged in the Enterprisefor the Americas aged in the Bank's ingly significant20 shaping strategies Initiative, launched by former US President George for development. In its Annual Report for 1992, the Bank noted Bush. NAFTA (the North American Free Trade that two out of every three operations included Area) is accorded an overall welcome since all are set to benefit.22 components that explicitly supported private sector parties from the standpoint of the InterSecondly, development, an increase of 40 per cent from four American Bank (IDB), Latin America Development years earlier. In the promotion of private-sector has to modernize through private sector developthree crucial tasks were development, distinguished: ment. This is explained in terms of the fact that the the creation of an public sector is seen as being involved in the affirmative businessenvironment, of the 'process of closing down or privatizing most of its restructuring public sector, and the developmentof the financial public enterprises'(IDB, 1991, 13). In addition, there sector for entrepreneurial activities. (World Bank, is a connection to the underlying belief in the 1992a, 61) general superiority of the private over the public, which is seen as especially relevant for strategies of Public-sector restructuring was seen as involving modernization and development. The priority given both the improvement of efficiency in critical func- to private sector development goes together with

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the identification of a variety of required reforms financial, labour and regulatory.23 Next, what is referred to as 'public sector reform' calls for a reduction in the size of government, cutbacks on public expenditures and the development of a minimal technocratic state. The process of privatization and acceleration of the 'deregulation and debureaucratization of the economy' is seen as 'complementary to the dual strategy of greater outward orientation and stronger emphasis on private sector development' (IDB, 1991, 14). Finally, a fourth strategy relates to what is referred to as 'human resource development'. Because it is anticipated that the process of outward orientation and modernization of the economy 'will encounter critical obstacles on the human resource side', it is argued that 'improvements in education and health need to be a top priority during the 1990s' (IDB, 1991, 17). The problems associated with poverty are also touched on - although no mention is made of the increase in poverty in Latin America during the 1980s24 and the view is expressed that in the long term the solution to the poverty problem

What is clearly reflected in the various positions expressed in the above documents is the revival of an economic liberalism that is couched in terms of market-orientated development strategies, a minimal state, free trade, financialdiscipline, comparative advantages and prosperity through economic growth. These are not new ideas.25 Classical liberalism, for example, rested on a view of society in which certain fundamental areas of life were de-politicized, notably religion and economics. Religious toleration and a market economy made belief and the pursuit of wealth 'private' matters. Looking at market economics as a political project, Przeworski (1986, 219) has argued of the early 1980s that, for the first time for several decades, the Right has an historical project of its own: to free accumulation from all the fetters imposed upon it by democracy.

In this context, market economics became a selflegitimating process - a political project in itself, in which any effective political regulation over the economy was rejected. It was deemed necessary to lies in the improvement of professionalskills,which rethink and restructure the public sector but the will allow an increasing numberof people to participrivate sector was to be protected from public pate in the process of economicdevelopmentand to control and involvement. sharein the fruitsof progress.(18) As ostensible examples of the success of the market-orientatedstrategy of development, the East To complete this very brief but illustrative review of Asian model is frequently cited; for instance, the the official discourse on contemporary developOECD Report for 1992 asserts that from 1983 ment, one may turn to the recent OECD (1992) onward the 'East Asian economies enjoyed boom report on development cooperation. In a section on years based on market-oriented, outward-looking privatization, which summarized a two-day review (OECD, 1992, 35). What is glossed over is on the subject organized by the Development policies' the historical fact that in the cases of Taiwan and Assistance Committee (DAC) in the early part of South Korea the state played an indispensable role 1992, many of the ideas referred to above are again in developing an industrializationprocess. It was the to be found. Notions of deregulation, of the prostate that led the market rather than the other way vision of an 'enabling environment' for the private around. Even in the cases of Singapore and, more sector and of 'macroeconomic stability' are interespecially, of Hong Kong (where the state, through spersed through the text. A key concluding rec- its ownership of land and massive investment in ommendation on the private sector/public sector intervened in the economy), it balance was that progress has resulted from actions housing, directly would be highly misleading to assume that it was 'that foster competitive markets, private initiative, sector development that and investment in physical and human capital'. independent private economic change.26 explained rapid Therefore, In contrast to the historical reality of a strong in the dynamic processes of East Asian indusdonors ... should limit investmentsin public enter- state the official protagonists of today's trialization, on areasthathelp support prisesandfocusinstitutional doctrine equate the idea of a strong and that sector development and the foster competition private abilityto providebasicsocial Third World state with inefficiency, waste, corrupimprovea government's tion and centralism. On the other hand, a minimal services.(OECD,1992, 20)

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state - a lean, fit, streamlined centre of political authority, effectively nurturing an 'enabling environment' for private enterprise, providing social services, and training new generations of human capital - is seen as the desirable junior partner to an expanding private sector. Permeating all discussions of social and economic development, of the public sector/private sector balance, of poverty and welfare, of science and education, of trade balances and financial flows, of recommendations for governmental policy, and so on, there exists a deeply-rooted belief that all things 'economic' have been purified of the political. Market mechanisms and rationally-operating individuals, dynamic entrepreneurs and efficient international investors, sound policies and effective actions, help to constitute solid building blocks for the official language of development. The overall objective is to place an unruly set of contestable orientations and approaches to development under the control of a settled system of understandings and priorities - a particularregime of truth. The statements, conceptual priorities, lines of classification and the meanings that guide are all characterized by a politics of forgetting, which is vital in the construction of a new truth. It is as if the societies of the South have never experienced previous waves of capitalist penetration and modernization, as if their economies have never been open to the world market, as if the post-War diffusion of modernization theory had never occurred. It is as if, in the historical annals of real development, progress is set to begin with structural adjustment. Moreover, an image has been created that what went before was detrimental to the 'body economic' of the developing countries. The existence of a malaise, most clearly embodied in the debt crisis, required a long-term strategy for cure, including, where deemed appropriate, shocktherapy, rehabilitation, infusions, donors, special treatment for debt-distress, relief measures, support against adjustment fatigue and, always, continual monitoring. The monitoring and supervision belong to a sense of mission and a belief in the need for tutelage. The World Bank reminds us, for instance, that adjustment lending has been part of the 'landscape of the developing world for over a decade', and a few countries 'have clearly graduated' (in this case, Chile and Thailand), whilst others 'are on the road to graduation' (World Bank, 1992a, 68). The firm belief in the need to instruct and guide the

'developing other' is, of course, one more reflection of a much broader ethos of Occidental supremacy. Nor can we assume that the tutelage is applied only in the economic sphere. More recently there has been a notable shift or, more accurately, an extension of the terrain on which development strategy is to be pursued and implemented. In its 1992 report on Development Cooperation, the OECD notes that the subject of participatory development and good governance is receiving priority attention and that support is needed for developing countries going through their 'democratic transition' (OECD, 1992, 6). Developing this argument further,the Report notes that what is required is a general framework for establishing key characteristicsof good governance within which support for the strengthening of judiciary systems, election monitoring, administrative decentralization and ethnic relations, and protection of minorities, conflict resolution and demobilization are all key features (OECD, 1992, 7). Fundamentalto this new approach is the priority given to building institutional and economic capacities in the developing countries. In fact, it is commented that 'the key to mastering development and other global challenges' lies precisely in this task of construction for the developing countries. Equally, it is argued that policy makers in the West are finding that solutions to the domestic problemsfor which they have responsibilityare increasinglyassociatedwith the economic and institutionalfunctioningof other societies;.. . this createsnew scope for mutualunderstandingand synergy among policy makersin donor goverments as they tackle developmentas part of a global agenda.[emphasisadded] (OECD, achieving
1992, 49)

The OECD report echoes and emphasizes related World Bank orientations. In the early part of 1992, the Bank organized a workshop on participatory development and has come to recognize, so we are informed, the key role of intermediaryorganizations in development. Thus in Africa, for example, there is an increasing association with local NGOs in the design and implementation of the Bank's assisted projects; for instance, in 1991 forty-four were in partnership with NGOs compared to only seven each year in the period 1973-87 (Landell-Mills, 1992, 565). In his article on governance, cultural change and empowerment in Africa, which follows

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to graduate into mature development. Knowledge has to be diffused to and institutionalized within the developing countries. For example, in its discussion strengthened by the economic liberalizationand of education in Latin America, the IDB advises the measures thattypicallyforma key partof reader that most universities in this privatization part of the the on-going structural adjustments being undertaken South have been concerned 'largely with reproin most countries. (567) ducing knowledge as opposed to producing it' (IDB, 1991, 17). In other words, they have not Apparently, giving high priority to education, pub- been capable of generating their own knowledge lic management reform, privatization, the informal and, therefore, have had to transmit or reproduce sector and lighter fiscal controls 'are consistent with knowledge coming in from outside.28 the goal of strengthening civil society' (565). Within the field of aid and development, interWith the new orientation in official thinking on national organizations endowed with financial development, it is clear that the former concenand donorresponsibilities and driven by tration on essentially economic issues is being capabilities adherence to a particularway of constituting knowlwidened to establish what is in a very real sense an edge, social practices, forms of subjectivity and all-encompassing agenda. Whereas in the past, durpower relations, need, if they are to be seen as ing the first wave of orthodox Western theory, one effective, to be able to instil and to internalize their encountered important notions of 'political order', norms, values and ways of thinking into the recipient now we read of the growing significance of 'good other. This is done through discursive persuasion governance'. Yesterday, there was a 'Communist and external inducement. Of the former, dialogue threat' helping to cement into place rights of on the basis of an already constituted agenda is enforcement and rituals of order, whereas today the central. The OECD for example highlights will to global power can rest more confidently on the presumed superiority of the West's developof expandeddialoguewith the develthe importance ment project - markets, good governance and oping countrieson the complex issues surrounding rational, achieving individuals. This is the future political transition,improvedgovernanceand economic reforms... solid progress has been made ... for the developing world if it is able to learn [and]encouragingly,the dialogue indicatesthat the effectively.27 - especiallyin Africa developingcountriesthemselves Just under twenty years ago, Castoriadis, in lead in supporting are the and Latin America taking a critical essay on the orthodox vision of devel1992, 9) added] (OECD, change. [emphasis if this to wrote that, according orthodoxy, opment the countries of the Third World were to 'be Of the latter, varying forms of conditionality are developed' they would have to undergo a 'total crucial. The politics of financial aid and supervision transformation';he went on, through the IMF and World Bank have been disto the West had to assertnot that it had discoveredthe cussed in detail by Payer (1991).29 The power trick of producingmore cheaply and more quickly monitor, discipline and intervene in the economy of but that it had discoveredtheway the other generates profound effects, and the lanmore commodities, to all humansociety. (Castoriadis, guage of expert omniscience helps to camouflage of life appropriate and also legitimate this disciplinary power. 1991, 181) I alluded above to the parallel between 'political In the current debates on the politics of multi- order' and 'good governance'. Similarly it is posculturalism,on questions of identity and difference, sible to discern key emphases on modernization and and on the varied modalities of Western universal- democracy in both waves of Western development ism and ethnocentrism, the connection with the theory. In this context then, there is a sense of deployment of Occidental development doctrine is continuity. Equally, however (and leaving aside the not always brought out. It has to be said here that, significant question of the varied content of these as with modernization theory, the neo-liberal dis- terms as between the two waves of theory), there is course of the contemporary era bears within it a at least one crucial difference.In terms of the public supreme belief in the universal applicability and sector/private sector balance, neo-liberal ideas break rationality of the Western development project. The with the previous sense of the need for some kind of Third World other has to be instructed and helped public/private articulation in the economy and set

the World Bank lead, Landell-Mills avers that civil society will be

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down a quite new agenda which consistently and assertively privileges the private. This is not to suggest that modernization theorists were advocates of state enterprises and nationalization, but neither were they the brash champions of privatization and market economics. They were, however, advocates of capitalist modernization and democracy through processes of geopolitical diffusion and entered, adoption. At this juncture, the dependentistas left of stage.

philosophers, such as the Mexican Zea (1970) argued that in 'our America' the evolution of analytical thought had its own specificities and complexities and it belonged on no such subordinating continuum. The counter-position to the Western development canon was that Latin America not only had the right to independence but also the right of recognition. Thirdly, within the modernization paradigm, relations between the West and non-West, and between the already modernized societies and the traditional societies of the periphery, were contextualized as THE SOUTH THEORIZES BACK being essentially beneficial for the developing In going back to certain elements of the dependency world. The criticalreply was that the reality of these perspective I want to recover some notions which relations showed that the impact on the Third are still relevant to our time. Whilst there is a World was fundamentally negative. Through slapolitics of forgetting, there is also a politics of very, colonialism and imperialism, the relations between First and Third Worlds were characterized memory. in the North frequently as being exploitative and oppressive and conducive Development specialists assume that in terms of the history of ideas, radical of poverty and underdevelopment. Of course, these views on dependency and underdevelopment, ideas were not only expressed in Latin America. though perhaps vividly inscribed,remain rooted in a Fanon, for example, underlined the crucial cultural fading past. In Latin America, since the first critical dimensions of colonial domination in Africa, noting incursions of dependencia thinking, a very varied and rich literature has been developed on, inter alia, and the the povertyof the people,nationaloppression inhibition of culture are one and the same thing. issues of state and democracy, poverty, welfare and (Fanon, 1967, 191) the informal sector, social movements, women's struggles and power, environmental change, political culture, and modernity and post-modernity. More recently, the Kenyan writer Nguigi (1985, Whilst in this other America, the critical pathways 118) has appropriately observed that economic and have been extended and diversified, dependency political control can never be effective without thought has not been rejected but rather situated in mental control: its time as a necessary and fruitful critique of both modernization theory and the erstwhile strategies of to controla people'scultureis to controlits tools of in relationship self-definition to others. the Communist parties of Latin America. Together with all its limitations and shortcomings, it is generally seen as an important part of the critical In the Latin America of approximately two decades intellectual heritage of post-war Latin America.30 ago, theoretical analyses of marginalization and the With a view to our previous consideration of the combination of external economic integration with two waves of Western development theory, I want internal disintegration provided an alternative series to summarize three of the original propositions of starting points for further conceptual and empirical enquiry (Nun, 1969; Quijano, 1974; Sunkel, emanating out of the dependency literature.31 First, it was emphasized that within moderniza- 1972).32 Today, new studies of marginality and tion theory the characterizationof the 'developing informalization are being developed, more in relaworld' was little more than a caricature. Third tion to issues of democracy, social movements and World societies were not given any history of their violence (Camacho, 1990; Tironi, 1990) and the own; their history began only with their contact context is quite different.Nevertheless, in terms of a with the West. Secondly, following a linear view of critical ethic and a counter narrative to the tradidevelopment, the already modernized societies were tional canon of development thinking, there is a presented as offering a horizon, a future for the clear connecting line. traditional society which, by adopting Western Furthermore,the spirit of critical enquiry is still innovations, could eventually modernize. Critical very much alive as Castells and Lasera (1989), for

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example, show in their article on 'La nueva was a key body of alternative critical thought. The In the context of an examination of West might believe that it had a 'Manifest Destiny' dependencia'. technological change and socio-economic restruc- to transmit and implant its way of life across the turing, they argue that the worsening social and globe, but the ethnocentric presumption inscribed in economic situation in Latin America originates in its discourse of development was now challenged, the combination of new and old forms of depen- interrupted and destabilized. However, as we have dency; new in relation to the technological revol- seen, it was not long before the non-West came ution as a moving force of the new system of under the impact of a second wave of development production and old in terms of financialdependence truth. and the imposition of policies of austerity by foreign capital. A similar position is taken by Kay CRITICAL PATHWAYS FOR GLOBAL (1989). From his discussion of Latin American TIMES theories of development and underdevelopment and, indeed, from even a cursory analysis of the Under the influence of a somewhat melancholic present state of North-South relations, it can be sentiment, it has been suggested that in our new ascertained that the reality of financial dependence times, critical development theory lies in ruins. For has hardly declined. Moreover, with the new others, development itself is the antithesis of deployment of political conditionalities and the democracy, a kind of 'elastic prison'. In times of call for Western-style democracy, other forms of perplexity and disenchantment, of the dissolution of meta-narratives, of living what can seem like a dependence are already being installed. The objective of my argument here is not to continuous present - in all these moments of being, draw a veil over the deficiencies of the dependency there is a sense in which the future is immanently persuasion including the relative absence of a theor- precarious and fragile. Must every horizon exist etical analysis of international relations; the often only as mirage; are we living a time of perpetual over-generalized portrayal of the state-society deconstruction, or are there interstices and margins nexus; the tendency toward class essentialism; and in which forms of reconstruction might emerge and the presence, in some texts, of terminal abstractions grow? How do we think the social and the political employed to capture fluid processes.33 Instead, I without revolution, beyond the traditional Marxist want to suggest that in a geopolitical conjuncture paradigm with its old certitudes and informed truth characterized by the Cuban Revolution, the estab- of capital and class?34How do we think developlishment by the United States of an Alliance for ment critically, in a world of limits and uncertain Progress, the persistence of foreign penetration survival? In a world where the relations of power that (military, political, cultural),the increasing evidence of financial, technological and cultural forms of undermine the conditions for a sustainable developdependence, and the diffusion of a theory which ment are themselves sustained, what does purported to legitimize and rationalize a new colon- 'sustainability'mean? Connolly (1988, 1), reflecting ization of the imagination, an intellectual/political on the order of modernity, suggests that perhaps movement emerged which argued, wrote and theor- 'modernity is the epoch in which the destruction of ized back. This was the significance of dependencia. the world followed the collective attempt to master The facts that associated modes of reflection it'. The prevalence of master discourses on develemerged in other parts of the South during the same opment and the environment has been the focus of years and that the ideas of the Latin American much feminist critique (Moghadam, 1992; Tickner, writers spread to other parts of the Third World 1993) and it is certainly the case that modernizexpressed the depth of the challenge. In the encom- ation, neo-liberalism, dependency and Marxism passing context of North-South relations, the have, overall, tended to move within the orbit of dependency writers constructed and deployed a androcentrism. There is, perhaps, in some of the new critical geopolitical imagination which sought to prioritize the objectives of autonomy and difference and to literature a trend towards greater prudence, and break the subordinating effects of metropolis- attention to what the other is thinking and saying. satellite relations. To the Western mind inculcated The bearers of master discourses are no longer in the Cartesian tradition, 'dependency' seemed assured of an attentive and accepting audience. But little more than a vague discontent, but in fact it perhaps also there is a need for adventure, for what

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Nietzsche (1983) referred to as the plasticity of human potential, the capacity to transform and incorporate into oneself what is past and foreign, to replace what has been lost, to recreate broken moulds. The new social movements have expressed this sense of plasticity, renewing amidst the ruins, living beyond the ghosts of old paradigms. In our new more global times where do we locate our frame of meaning and analysis and how do we develop new geopolitical imaginations? One possible entrance can be found in the contemporary discussion of globalization. Let us take as an example a recent article by Held (1991). Held suggests that the meaning and place of democracy have to be rethought in relation to a series of overlapping local, regional and global structuresand processes. Globalization has at least three main consequences (p. 222); (a) the way processes of economic, political, legal and military interconnectedness are changing the nature of the sovereign state from above; (b) the manner in which 'local and regional nationalisms' are eroding the nation-state from below; and (c) the way global interconnectedness creates chains of interlocking political decisions and outcomes among states and their citizens which in turn impact on national political systems. There is here an interesting geopolitical imagination at work. First,we have the idea of global connectivity, the increasing need to link the differentlevels or spheres of problems and issues; secondly we have the place of the nation-state, as a two-way nodal point of power, conflict and dissonance and, thirdly, placed in a broader frame, we have the importance of social movements and political culture. The terrain of our geopolitical analysis, therefore, can be constituted by the intermingling of global relations, nationstates and local and regional movements and oppositions. Our imagination can be focused on questions of the nature of identities, difference and justice at all levels but increasingly in a global frame. Within the more specific territorial setting of particular peripheral societies, the analysis of democracy and emancipation can be given its required spatiality. The struggle for democracy has its local and regional domains so that in the debate on the possible meanings of democracy, territorialityenters as a crucial component. Democracy has its horizontality. Also, and within a global frame, the need to

extend the principles of democratization and accountability to the major institutions of world development, within which the voices of the South must receive their legitimate representation in decision-making processes, has to form part of a critical geopolitical imagination. Such an imagination can help us subvert the traditional frames of meaning and practice which have constituted North-South relations for so long. Within the approach sketched out above, importance is attached to broadening the terrain of geopolitical analysis and of connecting that amplification to North-South relations. However, there still remains a deeper theoretical question concerning the status of the political in this kind of analysis. In the first place, I would argue that there can be no effective single-shot fixed function for the political. It is not desirable to assume that the political can be separated off as a 'level' apart, differentiatedfrom an economic and an ideological level. Very often the political has been circumscribedwithin the domain of the state, against which a civil society must organize its institutional and interactive mechanisms of defence. Similarly,it is common to encounter the assumption of a binary division between the realm of the political (bounded within the state and including political parties) and the domain of the social (framedaround the family, religion, education, the citizen, group relations, civic associations, movements and so on). In dissolving this binary split, as the post-Marxist would transcend the basesuperstructuredivision or a post-structuralistwould subvert any idea of a pre-supposed separation between institutions and discourse, we can suggest, after Lefort (1988), that any discussion of the political confronts us with a crucial ambiguity. This ambiguity resides in the fact that it is possible to talk both of the political and of politics. Political sociologists and scientists acquire their object of knowledge by delineating political facts which they regard as particular and separate from other specific facts such as the economic, the juridical, the aesthetic, the scientific or the purely social. In this context, modern societies are characterized, inter alia, by the delimitation of a domain of institutions, relations and activities which appears to be political, as distinct from other domains which appear to be economic, juridical,religious and so on. However, the problem here is that the very fact that something we call politics should have been demarcated within social life at a given historical moment has in itself a primal political meaning. Lefort (1988,

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217) defines this originary meaning as the political, suggesting that this term refers to the principles that generate different forms of society. Rather than accepting the social as given, Lefort stresses the necessity of investigating the principles of interalization which account for both the specific modes of differentiation and articulation between classes, groups and social ranks, as well as the specific modes of discrimination between economic, juridical, aesthetic and religious markerswhich condition the experience of the social. In a slightly more complex formulation,it is argued that the political is revealed in a double movement whereby the mode of institution of society appears and at the same time is obscured. It appears in the ways in which the process whereby society is ordered and unified across its divisions
becomes visible, . . . it is obscured in the sense that the

locus of politics (the locus in which partiescompete and in which a generalagency of power takes shape andis reproduced) becomesdefinedas particular, while the principle whichgeneratesthe overallconfiguration is concealed.(Lefort,1988, 11) Hence, revealing what is concealed - examining the underlying generative principles that govern the 'temporal and spatial configuration of society' (218) - constitutes for Lefort a key aim of political theory. Before situating these ideas in a specifically geo-political frame, I want to make one observation. With reference to the thesis that the political is rooted in the principles governing the development of society, it needs to be emphasized that the temporal and spatial dimensions of these principles are quite crucial for any effective analysis. As regards the temporal dimension, when the sociallygiven is questioned and referred back to the initial act that led to its constitution, the unstable sense of the given can be reactivated. This de-sedimentation of the social can be seen as a continuing process which reveals what Laclau (1990, 213) calls the political essence of the social. Expressed more concretely we can argue that what is and what is not political at any moment changes with the emergence of new questions, posed by new modes of subjectivity - for example, the personal is political. Nevertheless, the political does not eliminate the social conditions from which its question was born; gender relations, religious belief, environmental degradation and regionalism may become political at certain moments but they are not only

political. This suggests, therefore, that in the analysis of the principles which govern the constitution of society there may be a foundational meaning which Lefort, for example, traces back to the French Revolution and the idea of a historical break in the political grounding of the social. Equally, however, through the emergence of new modes of subjectivity and new points of refusal and resistance, the challenging of the content of specific social forms can also reveal, through the process of de-sedimentation, a more dynamic formulation of the political. If we now return to our context of the geopolitical imagination and development theory, the first point that needs to be made concerns the importance of making a related distinction between geopolitics and the geopolitical.Aspects of the former were previously discussed and, after the above consideration of the political, we are now in a position to suggest what might be meant by the geo-political. Although Lefort refers to the 'spatial configuration of society', no furtherdevelopment of this conceptual orientation is offered. There are two points that can be made. First, the generative principles that govern the constitution of a society must have a territorialgrounding and the way the principles themselves emerge, as during the French Revolution, cannot be divorced from the territoriality of the political forces that are in conflict. Secondly, and more directly relevant to the context of North-South relations, in the peripheralcountries of the South, the international dimension has been quite fundamental. For the societies of Latin America, Africa and Asia the principles governing the constitution of their mode of social being were deeply moulded by external penetration. The phenomenon of colonialism, for example, represented the imposition and installation of principles of the political that violated the bond between national sovereignty and the constitution of social being. In this sense then the geopolitical for these other societies has been grounded in the violation of their right to bear their own principles of social being. Furthermore,as the history of this century shows, the end of colonialism has not signified the demise of such violations. This approach to the geopolitical is embedded in the imbrication of the external and the internal, but we can also think the geopolitical in relation to changing modes of territorial subjectivity within peripheral societies. The ways in which insurgent ethnic-regional identities have been emerging,

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whereby the meanings invested in particularinternal regions or territories have acquired a refusing, challenging dimension to the encompassing authority of the central state, define another form of the geopolitical.35 Similarly, the struggles for the territorialization of democracy and the installation of regional governments express a challenge to the socially and spatially given. In both components of the geopolitical mentioned above, one relating more to the interlocking of the external and the internal and the second to the more specifically internal, we can posit a clear connection to our previous thoughts on development and power. Clearly, in both waves of Western development theory there has been a belief in the superiority of the Occidental model and a general acceptance of the supposedly beneficial impact of the West's will to geopolitical power over the non-West. In contradistinction, dependency thinking called into question the geopolitical principles governing the varying modalities of the West's impact within the societies of Latin America. As far as the more particularly internal component of the geopolitical is concerned, the new forms of ethnicregional identity and the struggles for a territorialization of democracy provide an emerging frame for rethinking development along the lines of popular empowerment and a more enabling politics of social justice. Finally, it may be suggested that future theorizations of development need to give greater priority to the challenge of geopolitics, whilst political geographers might give greater attention to the relevance of the North-South divide for today's politics of spatial power. At the same time, and in the way in which feminist writers have used the term 'politics of location', new imaginations will need to include more self-reflexivity for the writer who imagines since, across the interface between development studies and political geography, the decolonization of the imagination is as critical as is the need for critique. NOTES
1. This differentiation is to be found in Spivak (1988,

2. Of coursegeopolitical has a longerandmuch analysis more chequered history,which it is not the purpose of this article to pursue;for a recent overview of many of the relevantthemes,see Taylor(ed.),1993. 3. In the work of Rodolf Kjellen,for example, the was further extendedinto the claim organic metaphor that states were conscious, rational entities with interests, prejudices and an instinct for selfFora detailedconsideration of Kjellen's preservation. work,see Holdar(1992). 4. Foran overviewof some of the most central features of this 'genre' of geopolitical strategy, see Child (1979) and Pion-Berlin (1989).For a specifictext see tica. (1968) Geopol Augusto Pinochet's 5. In the contextof what I referto as the interlocking of therearea number of contentious issues.Der spheres, Derian (1990), for instance,has argued that when chronolsimulation, analysing speedandsurveillance, ogy can be elevatedover geography,and pace over space in their political effects. Here, Der Derian follows Virilio, noting that we can think of 'geo(Der politics' being displaced by 'chronopolitics' Derian,297). Now whilst this might be possible in certain kinds of discussions concerning war and intelligence questions, it is much less relevant in issues pertainingto Gramscian 'wars of position'. Herethe intricate of territorial identities intertwining and contesting social forces requires an analysis which prioritizes the politics of territoriality, an analysis which is grounded in space as well as situated in time. Furthermore, I would argue that Virilio's(1986) treatmentof speed and politics is concernedwith nuclearstrategy and miliprimarily tary technology,in which a certainreadingof geolocalization and its positedloss of strategic graphical value is unduly generalized.In the protracteddiscursive war for people's minds, knowledge of and remains a powerover particular spacesand territories crucial vector of (inter)national politics.We do have to remember, however, that Virilio'soriginalFrench
text was written in 1977. 6. In the English language literature, the recent contributions of Sidaway (1991, 1992) on Mozambique also draw the reader's attention to the significance of the internal in geopolitical formulations. 7. However, in the Brazilian case, one can also find interpretations of geopolitics that prioritize the external dimension; see, for example, Martinez (1980) and Vesentini (1987). 8. On other occasions I have gone into more detail on the post-modern, development and the politics of difference across the North-South divide; see, for instance, Slater 1992a, 1992b and 1993. 9. It is worth noting here that in the case of military intervention in the Southern Cone and, specifically in relation to state terror in Argentina, defence of the 'West' as a mythical construction, was an important

between glo279). Althoughpositing a relationship bal capitalism and dominationin geopolitics,in her and Deleuze,Spivakemphasizes critiqueof Foucault the continuingvalidity and vitality of the Marxist

analysis of the international division of labour and distances herself from what she argues to be their underprivileging of global (economic) power.

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DAVID SLATER element of the junta's overall discourse. One Admiral commented, 'the West today is a state of the soul, no longer tied to geography', and another posited, 'the West is for us a process of development more than a geographical location' - see Graziano (1992, 123 and 271). The continuance of what we might call the geopolitics of 'ways of life' found expression in the work of highly influential geographers. In the early sixties, for example, in a discussion of the Cold War, Ackerman (1962, 296) wrote, 'we are fighting for the adherence of nations and social groups to a way of life on which we believe the future of mankind depends'. At the same time, Cuba and North Vietnam were described by Ackerman as 'geographical losses', so that decisive positions in the Cold War 'must be measured ultimately in the coinage of geography'. I am particularly grateful to Arturo Escobar for communicating this reference - see Escobar (1993). This is a 1970 citation taken from the influentialwork of Gabriel Almond who was Chair (1954-63) of the American SSRC Committee on Comparative Politics - see Cruise O'Brien, 1979. Similarly, one of Pool's colleagues, Lucien Pye, a founder of counter-insurgency, and Almond's successor as Chair of the SSRC Committee on Comparative Politics, wrote in 1966 of the importance of 'protecting a traditional society politically and militarily from the calculated attempts by well organized enemies of freedom to use violence to gain totalitarian control of vulnerable societies' - quoted in Cruise O'Brien (1979, 62). Pye's statement clearly echoed the Truman doctrine. As one critic noted in the mid-1980s, certainly not without justification, since the late 1940s the 'depiction of the international scene as one of chronic threat has colored the thinking of governments of the US and its NATO allies ever since' (Horesh, 1985, 504). This statement is taken from a National Security Council paper, referred to by Kolko (1988, 130), in his well-documented study of US strategy towards the Third World in the post-war period. It should also be remembered that the strategy being developed was closely linked to the role played by a number of key social science advisors. W. W. Rostow, for example, who argued that Communism was an 'international disease' of the transition to modernization, was highly influential in the policy circles of the time (Kolko, 1988, 130-3). I shall return to the deficiencies of the modernization approach in the section on dependencia perspectives. It ought not to be forgotten, however, that most of the Bank'slending continued to be orientated toward large-scale projects to promote economic growth but now, for the first time, key resources were devoted to programmes targeting the ruraland urban poor. For example, while in 1974 the number of anthropologists working on a full-time basis for US AID was one, the number had grown to 22 by mid-1977 and to at least 50 by mid-1980. In addition, the number of anthropologists working for other governmental development bodies also increased substantially in this period (see Escobar, 1991, 665). At the beginning of 1988, the World Bank set up the Private Sector Development Review Group to stimulate initiatives for the further extension and strengthening of the private sector in developing countries. As was noted in 1989, 'the World Bank Group has long emphasized the advantages of market discipline and private initiative in promoting efficient development' (World Bank, 1989, v). The following examples are given: in Argentina, a $325 million Bank loan, approved in 1992, was to support reforms which are to include a reduction of about 20 per cent in federal employment and a reversal of wage compressions from 3:1 to over 10:1. Other related operations were approved for Madagascar, Mauritania and Pakistan; further, structural adjustment operations in Bolivia, Bulgaria, Burundi,India, the Lao People's Democratic Republic, Peru and Romania all had public-sector restructuring components (see World Bank, 1992a, 62). Mexico and the United States are seen to have complementary economies and, through NAFTA, the access of US firms to Mexico's low-cost production conditions will be improved whilst Mexican companies will benefit from an 'infusion of technology', 'the disparity in per capita income levels between Mexico and its northern neighbours would narrow rapidly, and the excess supply of labor in Mexico would be absorbed locally' (see IDB, 1991, 11). For instance, investment should be encouraged to flow to those activities with the highest expected economic return; workers should be encouraged to move to occupations and sectors in which they are most productive and hiring and firing procedures should be reasonably flexible; private entrepreneurship should be facilitated by eliminating bureaucratic and legal impediments, and price controls and subsidies should be phased out - all these recommendations and others are to be found in IDB (1991, 14). For example, as the data collected by ECLAC show, from 1980 to 1989 the percentage of the Latin American population living in poverty increased from 41 per cent to 44 per cent (see United Nations, ECLAC, 1991, 66). In a related article, I have briefly explored some features of the history of these ideas (see Slater, 1993). For a recent and useful discussion of the political sources of privatization in Latin America and Western Europe, see Schami (1992).

19.

10.

20.

21.

11. 12.

13.

22.

14.

23.

15.

16.

24.

17. 18.

25.

The geopoliticalimaginationand the enframingof development 435 theory 26. For a detailed analysis of the Taiwanese case see, and 1993). I am not advocating an anti-Marxist for example, Amsden (1985) and for an excellent perspective, since there are still many relevant orienreview of some recent analyses of East Asian tations within Marxism seen in its fullest scope and industrialization see Henderson (1992). this is especially the case for the lineage going back 27. In a recent intervention in the debate on the political to Gramsci. conditionalities of aid in Africa, Barya (1993) makes 35. For one recent account of such a phenomenon in a number of relevant propositions noting the Colombia, see Findji's (1992) interesting essay. emergence of a global scheme by the West to create a new economic and military world order following the collapse of state socialism and the end of the Cold REFERENCES War. ACKERMAN, E. A. (1962) 'Public policy issues for the 28. 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