In Spiritual Contestations: The Violence of Peace in South Sudan, Naomi Pendle dissects the interactions between Nuer- and Dinka-speaking communities amid national and international peacebuilding efforts, exploring the role of spiritual culture and belief in these processes. Based on extensive ethnographic and historical research, the book offers valuable insights for scholars and policymakers in conflict management and peace-building, writes Nadir A. Nasidi.

Spiritual Contestations: The Violence of Peace in South Sudan. Religion in Transforming Africa Series, Vol. Number: 12. Naomi Ruth Pendle. James Currey. 2023.

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The history of South Sudan includes a series of protracted conflicts and wars, which have attracted the attention of many researchers covering their socio-economic and political dimensions. Following in this vein, Pendle’s Spiritual Contestations explores the interactions between Nuer- and Dinka-speaking communities within the context of national and international peace-making processes. This also includes the role of the clergy and traditional rulers in such processes, which is complicated by politics, sentiments, and the urge to profit from the South Sudan’s protracted conflicts. Pendle also assesses the experiences of ordinary South Sudanese people in peace-making, including their everyday peace-making meetings. The book is divided into three sections and 14 engaging chapters based on the author’s ethnographic and historical research conducted between 2012 and 2022 among the Nuer- and Dinka-speaking peoples.

Pendle’s Spiritual Contestations explores the interactions between Nuer- and Dinka-speaking communities within the context of national and international peace-making processes

Chapter one describes the historical evolution of the hakuma (an Arabic-derived, South Sudanese term for government) in the 19th century and the physical violence which South Sudan has experienced through its mercantile and colonial history, as well as many years of war that influenced contemporary peace-making. It also shows how the hakuma claimed “divine” powers (as a result of god-like rights the government arrogated to itself). Chapters two, three, four and five discuss the contemporary making of war and peace, oppositions to the Sudan government’s development agenda, the 1960s and 1972 Addis Ababa Peace Agreement and South Sudan’s 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement. These chapters also examine the Wunlit Peace Meeting, which was a classic example of what the author calls “the ‘local turn’ in peace-making whereby international actors championed ‘local’ forms of peace-making” (35-119).

Chapter seven largely focuses on the escalation of violence in Warrap State as a result of having an indigenous hakuma alongside ever-evolving ideas of land, property, resources, and cattle ownership. Chapters seven to fourteen then focus on the proliferation of peace meetings in Gogrial and the cosmological crisis brought by the years of war (which involves the disruptions or perceived threats to cosmic order and by overarching beliefs about the universe held by the Nuer- and Dinka-speaking communities), a crisis which was met with a proliferation of prophets. This section also covers wars in South Sudan since 2013, the prevalence of revenge in giving meaning to armed conflicts, the post-2013 power of the Nuer prophets, the post-2013 era in Warrap State, and the role of the church in South Sudan’s peacekeeping through the activities of Dinka priests who are popularly known as the baany e biith.

Although the title of the book appears oxymoronic, the author argues that peace remains violent when understood in a context wherein the methods employed to establish or foster peace involve force, suppression, and coercion

Although the title of the book appears oxymoronic, the author argues that peace remains violent when understood in a context wherein the methods employed to establish or foster peace involve force, suppression, and coercion. This is especially true in the context of South Sudan’s “unsettled cosmic polity”; a polity characterised by periods of questioning, restructuring or conflict in response to perceived disruptions of cosmic order and balance, which further push the boundaries of contemporary discourse on the meaning and conceptualisation of peace and peace-making (179-189).

The author further explains how […] religious connotations are used to contest the moral logic of government, particularly in the rural areas of South Sudan

Pendle bases her arguments on the “eclectic divine” and religious influences among communities located around the Bilnyang River system. The author further explains how these religious connotations are used to contest the moral logic of government, particularly in the rural areas of South Sudan. Through this means, the author clarifies how religion and religious assertions shape the peoples’ social and political life. This includes issues such as spiritual and moral contestations, as well as the making and unmaking of norms within the “cultural archive” (including traditional, economic and historical recollections) that reshape the violence of peace, feuds, and its associated political economies. She advances this argument in her study of conflicts over natural resources and cultural rights that are understood as cosmological occurrences by the people of South Sudan, the meanings of war and peace, and the assertion of power within these events.

Pendle states that to understand the real politics and violence of peace-making, one must also understand ‘how peace-making interacts with and reshapes power not only in everyday politics’, but also ‘in cosmic polities’

Pendle states that to understand the real politics and violence of peace-making, one must also understand “how peace-making interacts with and reshapes power not only in everyday politics”, but also “in cosmic polities” (75-99). Looking at the nature of human societies, she concludes that they are largely hierarchical, mostly located within the purview of a cosmic polity that is populated by “beings of human attributes and metahuman powers who govern the people’s fate” (7).

Basing her arguments on Graeber and Shalins’ research, Pendle observes that South Sudanese society’s secular governments and self-arrogating divine powers can pass for a cosmic polity. It is within this context that the South Sudanese Arabic term for government, ‘hakuma’ operates; the term refers not only to government, but to a broad socio-political sphere including foreign traders and slavers.

Pendle also documents the various ways in which South Sudanese people use cultural symbols, rituals, norms, and values, as well as theology, to contest ‘predatory power and to make peace’

Pendle also documents the various ways in which South Sudanese people use cultural symbols, rituals, norms, and values, as well as theology, to contest “predatory power and to make peace” (75). Examples include the Dinka use of leopard skin (which is used for conflict resolution between two warring factions), cultural diplomacy through festivals, as well as the ceremonial blessings of cattle as a symbol of wealth.

The book is not without flaws. The author often oscillates between the use of ordinal and cardinal numbers when a chapter is mentioned Even if this is done for convenience, it is at the expense of chronology and consistency. Although written in plain and straight-to-the-point language, the author’s use of compound-complex sentences throughout the book makes it difficult for readers to comprehend easily.

Considering the ongoing conflicts and wars in and around the South Sudan region, Pendle’s Spiritual Contestations is a timely work. Using a close analysis, the author provides incisive insights into the changing nature of wars and conflicts, as well as the violence of peace among the Nuer- and Dinka-speaking communities. The book is a significant resource for scholars in the field of conflict management and peace-building, international organisations, policymakers and anyone interested in considering the interplay of religion, governance, tradition, peace-making, and conflict management.

This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science. The LSE RB blog may receive a small commission if you choose to make a purchase through the above Amazon affiliate link. This is entirely independent of the coverage of the book on LSE Review of Books.

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In China and Latin America: Development, Agency and Geopolitics, Chris Alden and Álvaro Méndez examine Latin America and the Caribbean region’s interactions with China, revealing how a complex, evolving set of bilateral economic and political relations with Beijing – from Buenos Aires to Mexico City – have shaped recent development. Mark S. Langevin contends that the book is a noteworthy contribution to an understanding of China’s footprint in the region but does not offer a robust framework for comparative analysis.  

China and Latin America: Development, Agency and Geopolitics. Chris Alden and Álvaro Méndez. Bloomsbury. 2022.

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China and Latin America offers a thoroughly researched account of China’s economic and political impacts in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Alden and Méndez pivot on China’s centuries-long presence in LAC to weave an analysis of trade, investment and migration patterns, detailing a thick description of economic and political relations with the region’s governments and stakeholders. Their historical examination and assessments of national government responses to China are appropriately framed by the unfolding geopolitical rivalry between Beijing and Washington. The book details China’s underlying logic and overwhelming importance to LAC, providing a valuable contribution to the growing literature assessing Beijing’s role in the region’s economic development and international relations.

China is not new to LAC; its longstanding ties with the region provide an economic and social foundation for the massive trade and investment flows in recent decades.

In the introduction, Alden and Méndez remind readers that China is not new to LAC; its longstanding ties with the region provide an economic and social foundation for the massive trade and investment flows in recent decades. In chapter one, the authors tell an intriguing story of China’s dependence on “New World silver,” European and LAC elite thirst for Chinese-produced silks and ceramics during the fall of the Ming Dynasty in the seventeenth century, and the enduring impacts of the flow of indentured Chinese workers to the region in the eighteenth century. Accordingly, Chinese working-class immigrants settled in “cities like Lima, Tijuana, Panama City and Havana…” providing a human bridge to China while suffering through waves of xenophobia and anti-Chinese repression. China and Latin America documents the economic and social linkages tempered through centuries-long trade, investment and migration – a neglected foundation for understanding LAC’s economic development in recent decades.

The book raises several leading questions. In the introduction, Alden and Méndez explore the “interests, strategies and practices of China,” questioning whether Beijing’s approach to LAC is similar to its role in Africa (14). They ask what motivates Beijing’s interests in the region and how LAC governments, firms and social actors have responded to China’s “deepening economic and political involvement in the region” (15).

Although the book is thick on economic and historical detail, its thematic analytical framework does not guide comparative explanation within LAC and across developing regions, including Africa.

Although the book is thick on economic and historical detail, its thematic analytical framework does not guide comparative explanation within LAC and across developing regions, including Africa. Alden and Méndez offer three “broad themes” for narrating their analysis: development, agency and geopolitics. These dimensions can guide examination of Beijing’s underlying logic and regional economic and political relations but are insufficient to explain the variable regional results that could stem from Chinese policies, trade and investment or even geopolitical endeavours. Consequently, Alden and Méndez emphasise “diplomacy and statecraft” and “sub-state and societal actors” as conceptual references but without the formal specification for selecting cases, testing explanations and comparing outcomes at the national and regional levels.

For example, the book explores several groups of Latin American nations and case studies of Brazil and Mexico. Chapter three’s treatment of Chile, Peru and Argentina, chapter four’s analysis of Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia, and chapter seven’s assessment of Central America and the Caribbean reflect similar patterns of development and diplomacy. However, these chapters do not present a systematic comparative analysis between these cases. Moreover, the authors’ slim selection method excludes Paraguay and Uruguay without assessing these nations’ participation in the Common Market of South America (Mercosur) along with Argentina and Brazil. Indeed, Uruguay’s recent proposal to ditch Mercosur and negotiate a bilateral trade treaty with Beijing makes it an interesting case for comparison with Mexico, given its longstanding ties to Canada and the US through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and its successor pact (USMCA).

In chapter four, Alden and Méndez explain how the “sustained rise in commodity prices” – much of it fuelled by Chinese demand – “enabled these governments to seek rents from export tax revenues and direct them toward development and social programmes,” an approach the authors associate with “neo-extractivism.” Accordingly, the so-called Bolivarian republics of Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia sought to replace their dependency on the U.S. with China. Beijing embraced the opportunity, but the growing Chinese footprint “obscured the commercial intent and practices pursued by Chinese firms” (103). In response, these nations’ governments grappled with increasing Chinese debt, among other externalities brought by Chinese firms, including the “willful neglect of the concerns of local communities, environmentalists and labour activists.” Indeed, as the authors point out, even Beijing grew weary of the region’s “high expectations” and the growing “costs of entanglements” (104).

The book’s treatment of Venezuela is pivotal because it details the most extreme case of commodity export dependence and debt-trap diplomacy in the region.

The book’s treatment of Venezuela is pivotal because it details the most extreme case of commodity export dependence and debt-trap diplomacy in the region. This sets an analytical benchmark that sharply contrasts with Brazil’s diversified commodity exports to China and the parallel influx of Chinese goods, foreign direct investment and migrants, along with the incipient pattern of technology transfer through the localisation of Chinese manufacturing firms in Brazil.

On the energy front, Venezuela shifted to government control over petroleum production after Hugo Chavez’s rise to power in the late 1990s, while Brazil partially liberalised the sector during the same period. The authors assess China’s rise and growing demand for petroleum products but do not explain the divergent policy approaches taken by Caracas and Brasilia. Did Venezuela’s deepening authoritarianism and Brazil’s vibrant democracy shape Beijing’s approach to these countries and help determine the different outcomes in the petroleum sector, or are the differences limited to these countries’ respective opportunities for crude oil production for export? Moreover, do these contrasting policy-response patterns explain diplomatic outcomes, including Caracas’ growing distance from Washington? Alden and Méndez contribute to our understanding but fall short of a comparable explanation of Venezuela and Brazil’s two very different paths.

Chapter eight offers a vital perspective of China’s presence in LAC within the emerging geopolitical landscape that pits Washington against Beijing.

In conclusion, chapter eight offers a vital perspective of China’s presence in LAC within the emerging geopolitical landscape that pits Washington against Beijing. The authors explain China’s deepening engagements, becoming an observer to the Organization of American States (OAS) in 2004 and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in 2008, and President Xi Jinping’s trip to Brasilia in 2014 to attend the first Summit of Leaders of China and LAC. Xi’s confident embrace of the region did not initially spark concern in Washington, according to Alden and Méndez. However, as the authors recount, by 2018, the US National Defense Strategy Summary confirmed Washington’s acknowledgment of the strategic competition with Beijing throughout LAC.

Alden and Méndez raise a central question that should frame research and policymaking in the coming years: at what point do the citizens and leaders of LAC search for alternatives to ‘China’s dominant position in their country’s economic and political life?’

China and Latin America concludes, “No longer passive, Chinese diplomacy now looms large in the capitals and boardrooms across the region, leaving the once-unassailable US dominance scrambling to regain its standing” (175). Hence, Alden and Méndez raise a central question that should frame research and policymaking in the coming years: at what point do the citizens and leaders of LAC search for alternatives to “China’s dominant position in their country’s economic and political life?”

This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science. The LSE RB blog may receive a small commission if you choose to make a purchase through the above Amazon affiliate link. This is entirely independent of the coverage of the book on LSE Review of Books.

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In The Unequal Effects of Globalization, Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg looks at globalisation’s effect on inequality, emphasising regional frictions, rising corporate profits and multilateralism as focal points and arguing for new, “place-based” policies in response. Though Goldberg provides a sharp analysis of global trade, Ivan Radanović questions whether her proposals can effectively tackle critical issues from poverty to climate change.

The Unequal Effects of Globalization. Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg (with Greg Larson). MIT Press. 2023.

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Glancing at the megalopolis on the left and abandoned building on the right side оf the book cover, I made an assumption about its narration: from the 1980s onwards, trade unions and states were blamed for rising inflation and unemployment. Fiscal cuts, deregulation and privatisation replaced public interest with private ones: maximising profit, firms outsourcing manufacture. What at first went alongside and later instead of promised economic efficiency was wealth accumulation at the top and the surge of corporate profits. As workers’ real wages fell behind, inequality grew.

As an academic specialising in applied microeconomics, Goldberg investigates globalisation’s many dimensions and complex interactions, from early trade globalisation to the rise of China, from western deindustrialisation to its effects on global poverty, inequality, labour markets and firm dynamics.

I was wrong. As an academic specialising in applied microeconomics, Goldberg investigates globalisation’s many dimensions and complex interactions, from early trade globalisation to the rise of China, from western deindustrialisation to its effects on global poverty, inequality, labour markets and firm dynamics. The book does concur with my assumption, but it engages with it in a more unique way.

According to Goldberg, the increase in global trade is due to developing countries’ entry into international trade since the 1990s.

Starting from an economic definition of globalisation, the author emphasises the lowest ever levels of (measurable) trade barriers and, consequently, the highest global trade volumes. According to Goldberg, the increase in global trade is due to developing countries’ entry into international trade since the 1990s. It is inseparable from global value chains (GVCs), complex production processes that – from raw material to product design – take place in different countries. The author argues that “the increasing importance of developing countries in world trade reflects their participation in GVCs” (6). That is the creation story of hyperglobalisation. For Goldberg, it is observable by the total export share in global GDP: “being fairly constant in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it began rising after World War II and accelerated dramatically in the 1990s and early 2000s.” That is exactly when the World Trade Organization (WTO) was founded, and many multilateral trade agreements were signed. The key was trade policy.

But not everyone agreed. Some economists, including Land Pritchett and Andrew Rose, contended the growth was not due to trade, but the development of technology and fall of transportation costs. Goldberg rejects this argument, pointing out that technology was developing long before. Hyperglobalisation started because trade policies encouraged multilateralism; “Trade policy – especially the creation of a predictably stable global trading environment – was at least as important as technological development“ (17).

Since international trade is largely about distributional gains and losses, the key question is whether the recent tensions and protectionism – such as Brexit, Trumpism and American trade war with China, to name the most visible examples – are just blips in irreversible globalisation, or signs of deglobalisation.

This is important because international trade is a perennial source of discontent within globalisation, and exploring its causes is the primary focus of this book. Since international trade is largely about distributional gains and losses, the key question is whether the recent tensions and protectionism – such as Brexit, Trumpism and American trade war with China, to name the most visible examples – are just blips in irreversible globalisation, or signs of deglobalisation. It depends on policy choices.

In the second half of the book, Goldberg turns to inequality and differentiates it into global inequality and intra-country inequality. From the global perspective, the author points out two major contributions. The famous “elephant curve“ developed by Lakner and Milanovic (2016, p. 31) showed very high income growth rates for world’s poorer groups from 1980 to 2013. This primary observation is accompanied, however, by the almost stagnant income of the middle classes in developed countries (the bottom of elephant’s trunk) and high rates of growth for the world’s top one percent (its top). But how high? The answer came five years later, when Thomas Piketty and colleagues concluded (2018, p. 13) this elite group captured 27 per cent of global income growth between 1980 and 2016.

Analysing internal inequalities, Goldberg states that globalisation affects people twofold: as workers and as consumers.

This still does not refute that income rose for all groups, remarkably reducing poverty. But what about inequalities? Goldberg further investigates whether there is a trade-off between global inequality and within-country inequality. Analysing internal inequalities, Goldberg states that globalisation affects people twofold: as workers and as consumers. These effects are well-researched in developed countries like the USA, where trade liberalisation with China since the late 1990s brought multi-million job losses. Citing scholars such as David Autor, Gordon Hanson, David Dorn, and Kaveh Majlesi, Goldberg finds this trend disturbing for ordinary citizens. One could suppose that although jobs were lost, this was compensated by lower consumer prices which benefitted everyone. However, that’s exactly what did not happen in the US. Firms took almost all benefits, which meant that greater trade did not reduce consumer inequality. Crucially, even if it had, it would not compensate for the negative effects on the labour market. Therefore, as Deaton and Case argued, it is no surprise that the millions of jobless, low-educated Americans whose quality of life and even life expectancy is in decline oppose globalisation.

But the advent of trade with China cannot fully explain this issue. There are severe labour mobility frictions that prevent people from moving to another town, county or state to find a better job. That is an American trademark since, as Goldberg suggests, “Europe normalized their trade with China much earlier and in a much more gradual manner“ (55). In other words – a policy problem needs policy solution.

[Trade’s] adverse effects, such as the exceptionally high benefit claimed by the top one percent and the stagnation of the middle class in the Global North, cannot be attributed to trade per se, but to a lack of policies that absorb disruptions.

Goldberg is an optimist: poverty has fallen throughout the world, pulling hundreds of millions out of extreme poverty (defined living on or below 1.9 international dollars per day) particularly in countries that plugged themselves into GVCs. Trade, therefore, played a positive role. This implies that its adverse effects, such as the exceptionally high benefit claimed by the top one percent and the stagnation of the middle class in the Global North, cannot be attributed to trade per se, but to a lack of policies that absorb disruptions. More than tariffs, this includes workforce development, social protection, corporate taxation, and other policies that protect people from unregulated market forces. This is where real improvement lies, with broad and sincere international cooperation.

[Goldberg] seems to suggest that the global economy is functional; it just requires a little fix here and there in order to fight climate change as one of the ‘challenges of tomorrow’

The author writes from a “middle position“, so neutral that there is no mention of the word “capitalism“ in the whole book. Goldberg is aware of inequalities, but still emphasises dynamic poverty reduction. She seems to suggest that the global economy is functional; it just requires a little fix here and there in order to fight climate change as one of the “challenges of tomorrow“ (90). (This might be ok if climate change was a challenge of tomorrow – but it is not.) The evidence has been mounting for decades: polar ice caps melting, rising sea levels, deforestation and biodiversity loss, desertification and soil depletion, plastic pollution and fishery collapse. Our world is dying today, and the consequences are fierce and unequal. While the common poverty-reduction argument based on $1.9 a day is severely disputed, economic equality is highly correlated with desired outcomes including higher longevity rates, political participation, better mental health and life satisfaction.

This position, which one could view as reinforcing a profit-centred status quo from the former chief economist of the World Bank does not surprise. Her monograph has certain strong points, namely its neutral overview, its in-depth analysis of trade and and its insight into new, relevant literature. But writing about globalisation today demands more. To confirm that a problem exists is not enough. We need immediate action.

This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science. The LSE RB blog may receive a small commission if you choose to make a purchase through the above Amazon affiliate link. This is entirely independent of the coverage of the book on LSE Review of Books.

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Who cares what celebrities think?

On 1st December 2015, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan announced the intention to set up the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a limited liability company financed by infusions of shares from Facebook. A signatory of the ‘giving pledge’ (founded by Warren Buffet and Bill Gates) which encourages the super-wealthy to donate at least half of their wealth within their lifetime, Zuckerberg’s initiative represents another media-intense event in the rise of ‘philanthrocapitalism’. Philanthrocapitalism encompasses a set of overlaps, between super-wealthy individuals, political agents within global development organisations, some academics and scientists (but by no means a majority), and those celebrities who have committed themselves to some poverty- or welfare-related cause.

A prominent response to announcements like Zuckerberg’s or the media-prominent statements of Bill Gates or Bono is to debate the merits of their motives. Is he doing this for publicity reasons? Is this a way of avoiding tax? Or, conversely: isn’t Mark Zuckerberg nice? Good for him; we need more like him. This debate is rather limited and distracting because it falls into the trap that so much public discussion about celebrity does: an obsessional focus on the personalities of the celebrity.

In 2013, when teaching African Politics, I asked students for their response to the legal and ethical controversy surrounding Madonna’s attempts to adopt a Malawian child. I was expecting some thoughts or questions about the dubious legalities of her actions, the symbolism (even written into her name!) of the White Saviour that the public act provoked, or perhaps something about whether the act of ‘saving’ an individual has any relevance to Malawi’s pervasive poverty. Instead, students spontaneously started discussing the content of Madonna’s soul: ‘she means well…’; ‘she’s been doing this kind of thing for years so she must be serious’; ‘I hope she succeeds’ and so on.

This is what the phenomenon of celebrity is based in. A kind of emotional sovereignty in which the feelings of these individuals seem to have far broader social and political meaning. In some cases – most notably Bono – celebrity seems to entitle individuals to strive to ‘feel’ on the part of mass publics, to represent them emotionally. You might notice how effusive Bono always is about his feelings, even when doing so in ways that seem ostensibly modest or self-deprecating. He sometimes seems almost in pain in his efforts to broadcast his sentiments not only as heart-felt but also as a way to make great swathes of public opinion empathise. Once one is discussing the personality or the celebrity it does not matter if you wish to claim that they are being vainglorious or virtuous; you have already conceded the ground to the celebrity episteme: how can we judge the feelings of these people and thus make sense of a moral or political issue?

In this spirit, I want to say: forget you, Zuckerberg; I am not interested in you ‘as a person’ in the slightest. There is only one very obvious point to draw from the altruism of those on the spectrum of Bono, Madonna, Zuckerberg, Branson, Gates, Buffet and others: that they possess such massive amounts of wealth that they have it in their hands to influence the world in ways that now outweigh the agency of many states and even intergovernmental organisations. They vastly outweigh the collectivities and projects of labouring classes, civil society and social movements: those sources of democratic and progressive politics. In light of this, rather than concerning oneself with the moral motivations of philanthrocapitalists, we should rather address something more obvious and important: the broader structures of power that they create and the ways in which it influences how we understand mass poverty and development.

The corporate developmental Weltanschauung

The Foundations and Limited Liability Companies, wealthy donors, advisory groups of ‘experts’, and celebrity endorsers have constructed a global social project of philanthrocapitalism and they command a considerable amount of resource. The Gates Foundation has an annual spend in excess of that of the World Health Organisation. By virtue of their celebrity benefactors, they also have considerable influence over politicians, institutions, and broader publics. This influence is exercised through social events (private and public), connections to major international development campaigns, lobbying, and close connections to individual politicians. Philanthrocapitalism is also closely connected to a bundle of transnational corporations that have created ‘development projects’, given (small) amounts of money to ‘socially responsible’ activities and (less highly publicised on their glossy webpages) received public money from development budgets. Structurally, philanthrocapitalism looks as oligarchic and Putinesque as any Russian oil and property dynasty, or the military-industrial complex of the Cold War.

This oligarchy shares a broad vision of the meaning of development which can be summarised as follows.

• Development is about the release of economic activities within free markets which promotes both growth and a reduction in poverty.
• This process can be galvanised by ‘smart’ and ‘incentivised’ grant giving by privately-supported and managed foundations and companies. These organisations – contrasted with a supposed ‘bureaucratic’ intergovernmental institutionalism within the UN – use ‘business models’ to generate ‘value for money’ and ‘impact’.
• Private business has the key – and up to recently neglected – role in promoting this kind of development.

Taken together, this development framing is a radical departure from previous development practices. It contrasts strongly with what one might call the liberal intergovernmentalism development practice which emerged in the mid 1950s under the auspices of the United Nations and World Bank, coming to be supported by a raft of governments and development agencies. It reformulates development as best promoted by private foundations and businesses. It is garbed in an ideology that profit and ‘good’ development are mutually-supportive: ‘frictionless development’ in Bill Gates’s phrase. It also argues that change is best achieved through the dynamism of entrepreneurialism, and that the technologies and expertise of large transnational corporations are the key to ‘unleashing’ development. To be clear: this is not simply the oft-repeated argument that a country needs to attract foreign private investment in order to grow. It is rather that foreign companies and private foundations should run the development project itself.

Good examples of this shift can be found in East and Southern Africa agriculture. Under initiatives like AGRA and the related Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor (SAGC) in Tanzania, one can easily identify heavy corporate involvement in what is increasingly rather misleadingly labelled as ‘development aid’ and ‘development projects’, both of which tend to suggest ‘official’ or governmental projects and programmes.

The UK government’s development agency, DFID, supports the SAGC by providing co-financing projects run by Unilever, Diageo, SAB Miller, Monsanto, Syngenta, Du Pont, and Yara. These are large international companies involved in chemical inputs into agriculture and brewing (the latter being a major demand for grass crops). They exercise immense power in global ‘chains’ of commodity production through their scale, control of retail, branding, and control of high value technologies.

The vision of SAGC is to transform agriculture into large-scale commercial farms to supply inputs into global industries, and to re-make smallholder farmers into contracted producers of specifically-selected cash crops. In the process, these smallholders become more strongly locked into the purchase of chemical inputs, proprietorial seeds (rather than seeds from their own crops) and fertilisers (which might be designed to ‘fit’ with the seeds). Genetic modification is the perfect instantiation of the commodification of agriculture: replacing a seed crop on-farm with an ‘intellectual property right’ encapsulated in a seed. Within the AGRA programme the Gates Foundation is supporting efforts to disseminate genetically modified seeds through the African Agricultural Technology Foundation. Private money goes into a rolling show of workshops and events to proselytise the model of entrepreneurial farmer investing in new seeds. This ideological work is based on the belief that, in the words of the Director of Communications at DSM (an health and nutrition chemical company), ‘we care about people, planet, and profit. We believe we possess the capacity to help others solve the world’s greatest issues.’ This world vision is now entirely accepted throughout elite development circles, as one could see in all of the announcements that emanated from the UK government hosted and revealingly titled Nutrition for Growth: Beating Hunger through Business and Science in 2013.

One can easily find a raft of messianic statements about the potential of philanthropcapitalism, a queasy mixture of aspirational business-speak and ersatz hippie-discourse. This is a discourse of dreams, hope, new tomorrows, an end to poverty forever. It is the discourse of a TED talk soundbite. In one sense these statements are easily critiqued or satirised; in another, they are the building blocks for a dominating corporate development strategy. In an age of relentless and vacuous irony, perhaps the strongest ideologies are those most easily laughed at.

Neoliberalism and the dynamics of indirect and direct rule

Neoliberalism is a term based in a critique of governance that highlights how public authorities have based their policies and programmes on the promotion of liberal capitalism. The sense of the concept is that governments and other intergovernmental organisations increasingly try to conform to market logic and the promotion of transnational capitalism. That a shift of this nature has taken place over the last thirty years or so is now so obvious as to be unremarkable and politicians happily declare that this is what the ‘business’ of government is about: more market in the economy and within government.

But, there is a potential shift in the governance of development implied in the philanthrocapitalist model. Private foundations and companies promote transnational companies as the key agent in global development, and they directly fund projects devised and managed by those companies. So do major Western donor states. Those international companies that declare that they have a developmental mission have become increasing habituated to intervening in the livelihoods of the poor. These are the practices of corporate social responsibility and partnership between companies, aid donors, and foundations. Private foundations, companies and governments also put money into nationally-based advocates of the corporate development model: think tanks, research centres, universities.

The trend is away from the indirect rule of neoliberalism in which governments allocate aid and loans to promote market-friendly macroeconomic policy and programmes, and towards a set of practices within which private companies are directly involved in development. Governments are still responsible for the promotion of capitalist development, but it is increasingly the case that transnational capitalists are also directly responsible for capitalist development. There is in the present-day a combination of indirect (policy-based) and direct (‘philanthropic’ investment-based) neoliberal rule.

What’s the problem?

The Great Global Governmental-Philanthrocapitalist-Corporate Development Project exists and is growing. And, it is not modest. Celebrity donors, politicians, and spokespeople from the development industry – notably some economists who have become public intellectuals – all offer praise for the new model. They do so because the article of faith that underpins this venture capitalism to transform the poor is that development is win-win. It is not people before profits but people and profits. Corporations get into new markets, development agencies get financial leverage and ‘value for money’, and the poor get new opportunities to improve their livelihoods. To use the hackneyed cliché: doing good by doing well.

To entrust the fates of the world’s poorest to the world’s wealthiest seems – to put it mildly – naïve: like trusting the welfare of lambs to eagles. Here are some reasons why the win-win logic needs to be questioned.

• In agriculture, corporately-owned technologies and production contracts where smallholders commit to supply crops to transnational agricultural traders introduce substantial risk and market exposure to farmers. The evidence that GM seeds improve productivity and livelihoods is weak. The model of agrarian transition that ‘solving malnutrition through business and science’ relies upon is as generalised and abstract as the most vulgar state-based villagisation or modernisation programme.
• Corporations remain motivated by profit seeking and as such will aim to generate as much cheap produce or advantageous contracts for services provided as possible. Within the ‘partnership’ logic that pervades the philanthrocapitalist approach, there is little space for governments of poor countries to push companies beyond voluntary ‘social responsibility’ commitments which are weakly monitored and not connected to a strong process of accountability. Also, in spite of the pizzazz about risk taking and dynamism, large corporations are risk-averse, often commit very small proportions of revenue, and have no intrinsic commitment to a project because they are accountable to no-one but their shareholders, credit-rating agencies, and boards of directors.
• The development model itself assumes that properly-integrated small-scale livelihoods can thrive and promote development. This ignores the plain fact that small-scale livelihoods are structurally vulnerable and unlikely to generate the kinds of economic growth that transform economies. The kinds of processes that create the possibility (but no more) of transformational development have historically been based in state intervention and the rise of new ‘national capitalists’. Both of these possibilities are anathema to the philanthrocapitalist project. They want their happy and globally-disciplined mini-entrepreneurs in the countryside buying their chemical ‘property right’ inputs and growing their cash crops for corporately-dominated commodity chains. The result is that poor communities are locked into a life of contracted production, microfinanced small-scale investments, and social projects that aim for healthy and appropriately skilled workers.
• The Great Global Governmental-Philanthrocapitalist-Corporate Development Project is only accountable to whom it wishes, in the ways it wishes, and for as long as it wishes. It is entirely based in a kind of naïve and fatalistic trust that foundations and companies have the ‘vision’ to re-energise the global development project. Unlike governments or intergovernmental organisations, there is no public deliberation about development practice, not external auditing or review of the institutions of development, and no clearly-defined constituency that can clearly endorse or reject its activities. If profit margins fall, share prices dive-bomb, or property bubbles burst, philanthrocapitalists and companies can simply change their minds.

As this development model expands, the practice of development becomes indistinguishable from the strategising of large international companies who have some interest in agriculture, health, and nutrition. This is the meaning of neoliberal direct rule. To call this a new development model is not only to define away issues of redistribution, social justice, and economic transformation; it is also to assume that many of the woes created by indirect neoliberalism are best resolved by encouraging a more direct version of the same.