Papers by Anthony Bebbington
Journal of Political Ecology, Dec 1, 2000
In what seems at first a great jump we are introduced to hairstyles in Tanzania in the early 1990... more In what seems at first a great jump we are introduced to hairstyles in Tanzania in the early 1990's. Amy Stambach contemplates the war of words on the editorial pages of Tanzanian papers that made hair curling among young women a nationalist issue. This was a discussion not just of the costs to the economy of imported curling lotions and implements. It was also a discussion of consumerism, of "white aesthetics" and their debilitating effects, and finally, of the moral basis of society. Individual morality, and perhaps especially, the morality of young females and soon-to-be mothers, can be the key metaphor for the relation between citizen and state. We are reminded of "Mother India", "La Belle France", "Lady Liberty", and all those other images of the strength of women as the warrant of the health of the state. How crucial this public morality is to the health of the nation is driven home in Andrew Apter's tracing of the historical process of decline in the Nigerian economy and concomitant decline in public trust, in political probity, and in the processes of governance in Nigeria. In a sort of chicken and the egg conundrum, Apter traces the falling prices of oil and the collapsing trustworthiness and transparency of political processes through the rise in criminality of a sort Nigerians call "the 419". This is the section of the Nigerian criminal code that deals with fraud, forgery, impersonation and a host of scams. One is reminded of the hollow mockery of capitalism that followed the collapse of state socialism in the Soviet Union. One is carried towards the conclusion that without a moral consensus there is no state responsibility. Is it also the case that without state responsibility, there is no civil order? One is tempted to conclude that the focus on State-Civil Society relations is misplaced if it turns on forms of association. One should rather concern oneself with the content of relations. The ideal of the liberal state may carry a heavy baggage of historically specific forms that were forged in the particularities of the West, but these forms are separate from the content of the ideas. In the post-colonial era of global markets and global media these historically situated institutions may not be the vessels of liberal democratic relations among citizens in relation to vast transnational corporations and to states whose powers are visibly limited. Yet it is clearly too early in the game to write off the liberal state as a dead form. The post-colonial world is yet aborning, and the outcome of the processes underway is far from clear. Perhaps what one might say is that this book is good for thinking about these processes and is a useful rebuke to those politicians who consider Africa irrelevant in the geopolitical landscape.
Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 2018
Routledge eBooks, Mar 21, 2014
RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, 2010
Recent years have seen increasingly aggressive expansion of the extractive economy in the Andean-... more Recent years have seen increasingly aggressive expansion of the extractive economy in the Andean-Amazonian region, as both hard-rock mining and hydrocarbon frontiers move into new territories and deepen their presence in old ones. In ways reminiscent of the film Avatar, this expansion drives conflicts over land, territory and political control of space with populations that reside in the areas targeted by the extractive economy. This expansion is occurring as much in overtly neoliberal regimes as in self-styled, and self-consciously post-neoliberal regimes. This paper documents this convergence, as well as the convergence among the different governments' ways of governing extraction and responding to socioenvironmental conflicts. The paper then explores the reasons for this apparent convergence. It identifies factors related to: long-standing resource curse effects; the need to generate resources to fund social policy instruments that are integral to the governments' overall political strategies; power and information asymmetries among companies and governments; and global divisions of labour and trade agreements, among others. We conclude that convergences among Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru regarding the governance of extraction and the conflicts that it catalyses suggest the need for great critical caution before using the terminology of post-neoliberalism.
Non-Governmental Organizations and Development, 2009
The emergence of the indigenous movement in Andean countries of late has mobilised great numbers ... more The emergence of the indigenous movement in Andean countries of late has mobilised great numbers of people and has challenged modern society with its recommendations for profound change (see, for example, Van Cott 2005, Yashar 2005, Pajuelo Teves 2007, and Lucero 2008). It has, moreover, forced administrations to change and new Constitutions to be ratified in Bolivia and Ecuador, situations that promise to redefine social and power relations in both countries in the course of the coming decades. However, these winds of change seem to have been shunted away from Peru for three reasons: 1) subtler yet more effective exclusionary mechanisms, 2) Andean communities that used call themselves “agricultural” rather than “indigenous communities”, and 3) a politically and geographically isolated Amazonian indigenous movement, that is, until the expansion of extractive industries into rural areas at the end of the 20 and beginning of the 21 centuries increased its visibility throughout the Ama...
Rethinking Global Land Use in an Urban Era, 2014
Land use is being fundamentally transformed worldwide. G overnance mechanisms that manage land us... more Land use is being fundamentally transformed worldwide. G overnance mechanisms that manage land use are changing from territorial organizations to global institutions anchored to specific resource flows between urban and rural areas. This shift reflects an underlying change of v alues attached to land, from the creation of new monetary values to the assertion of social values. Such a r evalorization has, in turn, fueled global competition and led to governance arrangements that may appear fragmented from the vantage point of any particular land plot. In addition, rising urbanization impacts and reflects governance arrangements for land use. This chapter addresses the governance of land use in an urban era, with a focus on the emergence of global arrangements to address land competition and the t elecoupling effects that arise between coupled multiscalar systems.
Progress in Development Studies, 2001
necessarily summary generalization of a short overview of this kind actually adds to the complace... more necessarily summary generalization of a short overview of this kind actually adds to the complacency and supports those, particularly some African political leaders, who are in denial. The linking of environmental issues with population is clearly important and the publication anticipates the focus of the UN Commission on Population and Development in March 2001 on precisely this topic. However, the selection of relevant topics to consider under this heading could be argued about. In particular the choice of the 19 topics considered here, while covering a wide ground does so very unevenly and in particular fails to argue for the priority of some issues over others. The topics included in the order they appear are: grain production, fresh water, biodiversity, energy, oceanic fish catch, jobs, infectious disease, cropland, forests, housing, climate change, materials, urbanization, protected natural areas, education, waste, conflict, meat production and, income. With only a few pages available for each in this short book the reader is likely to be frustrated by the brevity of each presentation and the lack of an adequate argument about the salience of each issue to the general case being made in the book. However, this is probably to miss the purpose of this publication by an important lobby institute whose aim is to produce authoritative statements that can be widely disseminated through a variety of media. In its role as lobbyist one welcomes the strong call by the authors in their conclusion for the industrial countries and the US in particular to honour the commitments made at the 1994 Cairo Conference and at Cairo+5 in 1999 to adequately finance the UN Population Fund for the provision of reproductive health services and international assistance in the population field.
Journal of International Development, 1998
Abstract In the search for alternatives to state-managed agricultural research and extension, the... more Abstract In the search for alternatives to state-managed agricultural research and extension, there has been much interest in assessing the pros and cons of, and the mechanisms for, varying forms of private sector involvement. One experience of privatization that has ...
Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 2006
Development is embedded in networks that extend across space and time. These networks—maintained,... more Development is embedded in networks that extend across space and time. These networks—maintained, reworked, and given meaning through the practices of the actors who constitute them—bring together assemblages of institutions, knowledges, and commitments that make possible and shape the ways in which development is done through them. The authors explore the usefulness of concepts of network and assemblage for conceptualizing development, elaborating their ideas through two case studies. In the first they discuss colonial officers' experiences of living and working outside the United Kingdom, the ideas and practices that informed this mode of being, and their influence on the development work they did both in colonial and in postcolonial contexts. In the second they discuss the embeddedness of nongovernmental aid networks in religious, political, and other institutions, and the ways in which these institutions fashion the flows of such aid and the types of intervention linked to i...
Cornia and Riddell (eds) Toward a, 2008
... Anthony Bebbington Professor of Nature, Society and Development Institute for Development Pol... more ... Anthony Bebbington Professor of Nature, Society and Development Institute for Development Policy and Management School of Environment and Development University of Manchester Harold Hankins Building Precinct Centre Booth Street West Manchester M13 9QH UK ...
Antipode, 2002
Social capital is a fascinating and perplexing concept-not only (and perhaps not even mainly) bec... more Social capital is a fascinating and perplexing concept-not only (and perhaps not even mainly) because of its strengths or weaknesses qua concept, but also because of the vibrancy and virulence of the debates to which its post-Putnam popularization has given rise. I have encountered and been part of these debates as they have played out in development studies, and in particular in how they contribute to my own research in the Andes on the political and economic roles of indigenous and peasant federations and the livelihood strategies of their members. I have also been part of these debates as they pertain to discussions of the role of the World Bank (where I have spent two eight-to-twelve-month stays) in the production of development discourse. This, then, is the position from which I write these comments. Many critical things can be, and have been, said about the concept of social capital (see in particular Fine 2001). Without rehearsing them here, it seems important to distinguish between criticisms of its coherence as a concept, criticisms of its potential normative effects, and criticisms of the types of policy and practice to which it might give rise. Though related, these domains of criticism are not the same, and we ought be careful before dismissing the concept because of effects it might have, or because of uses to which it might be put. That said, the criticisms that the concept is loosely specified and has been used in different ways by different authors are important ones. Similarly pertinent are the observations that its quantification has often hidden more than it reveals, and that some authors employ the term not for its conceptual cogency but rather in the hope that it might give their work more visibility. My sense, though, is that these same criticisms could apply to a disconcertingly large number of concepts used in these pages, and more generally in the academy. Recognizing all this, what might be useful here? I will first say something about conceptual utility, and will close with a briefer comment on communicative utility. From my own perspective, there are several
Springer eBooks, 2021
Development anthropology is a contact sport,' Michael Cernea likes to tell his students . His car... more Development anthropology is a contact sport,' Michael Cernea likes to tell his students . His career, from junior researcher in the Romanian Academy of Sciences in the early 1960s to joining the World Bank in Washington D.C. in 1974 as its first-ever in house staff sociologist, and then advancing there to the high level position of the World Bank's Senior Advisor for Social Policies and Sociology, is testament to this observation. Cernea's has been a professional life characterised by constant high-stakes struggles over social development ideas within different bureaucratic and political settings. His has been a career where the thinking through of ideas, and the acting upon them, have been one and the same process. As a thinker in development, Cernea has to be understood as much in terms of his relationships to particular institutions as to development anthropology and sociology. Indeed, many might argue that Michael Cernea's most critical contribution has not been his intellectual work on the use of social science knowledge in crafting new social policies and designing development projects, or on the inherent risks of impoverishment in projects designed to reduce poverty; rather, his most critical and enduring achievements were the embedding of those ideas in World Bank policies and philosophy. From the early 1970s to the late 1990s, Cernea contributed more than anybody in pushing the 'social envelope' at the Bank. He had the ear of Presidents and Vice-Presidents in the process, and from time to time was unrepentant in giving those ears a good chewing. He has been one of those quintessential reformists (and at times I am very grateful to Michael Cernea for the interviews, materials and time he gave me during the preparation of this entry as well as for our conversations over the years. David Simon also graciously shared insights and information. An earlier version of this essay appears in D. Simon (ed.) Key Thinkers on Development (Second Edition, 2019). London: Routledge.
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Papers by Anthony Bebbington