In The anti politics machine, James Ferguson challenges the widely accepted development discourse and the world’s institutions operating with a development agenda. The primary importance of this work is its encouraging the discussion about the meaning and functioning of “development,” which is at once the dominant discourse, practice and value-based system that largely forms our understanding of the way the world works. Ferguson’s analysis relies on a Foucauldian methodology that stresses the anonymous– yet clear consequences of subscribing to dominant social discourses. Ferguson’s critique of the concept of development is housed in his holistic examination of the “development apparatus;” its engagements and practices measured via the lens of “failure”. The author writes broadly about the numerous "development agencies" that have influenced and funded extensive development projects and draws attention to the enduring failure of these (hegemonic) interventions to produce their intended results¬– mainly, economic stability and growth. …show more content…
First, Ferguson argues that the development discourse produces and sustains the invented “less-developed country”– mainly, the “Third World” concept. Second, the author explains how the “development fantasy’s” detachment from what is really occurring in a particular locale (reality on the ground) often causes projects to fail at their specified goals. Last, Ferguson explains why the development community has produced the almost constant growth and underpinning of bureaucratic state power. The central claim here, and the greatest takeaway, is that the development discourse should be considered a form of knowledge that is (often) institutionally created to support the actions of development agencies via a forced reconstruction of social, cultural, and economic realities at the local
Orwell himself is the one who coined the term of political purpose, and because of this, he seems to be the best person to compare other writers to when discussing political purpose. Orwell defined political purpose as, “Desire to push the world in a certain direction,” and he writes, “…no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude” (3). Orwell, therefore, believes that art is ultimately political in purpose whether that was the intention or not. He believes that no work can be “free from political bias.” He seems to be of the opinion that art must have political purpose or else it will be “lifeless,” much like his earlier writing. Alternately,
Hardball: How Politics is Played Told by One Who Knows the Game by Christopher Matthews compares politics to a game played by individuals seeking to gain and maintain power. Matthews defines hardball as “clean, aggressive Machiavellian politics. It is the discipline of gaining and holding power, useful to any profession or undertaking, but practiced more openly and unashamedly in the world of public affairs,” (13). Matthews offers maxims to explain tactics and truths that better a person’s position in the game of politics. These maxims include “It’s Better to Receive than Give”, “Keep Your Enemies in Front of You”, and “Hang a Lantern on Your Problem”. These three maxims have proven successful in bringing success to those who utilized the tactic.
Stanley Kubrick’s sexual parody, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, illustrates an unfathomed nuclear catastrophe. Released in the midst of the Cold War, this 1964 film satirizes the heightened tensions between America and Russia. Many sexual insinuations are implemented to ridicule the serious issue of a global nuclear holocaust, in an effort to countervail the terror that plagued America at that time. Organizing principles, such as Kubrick’s blunt political attitudes about the absurdity of war and the satirical genre, are echoed by the film style of his anti-war black comedy, Dr. Strangelove.
In the Educational Leadership article entitled “The Story Behind Ferguson” the author, Richard Rothstein, states, “Avoidance of our racial history in the United States is pervasive. And by failing to give our students the facts, we are ensuring that this avoidance will persist for subsequent generations. ” In this article, Rothstein is investigating the racial history of Ferguson, Missouri, a city now infamous for the tragic death of Michael Brown. Ferguson, despite it being casted as a white suburb, is an “urban ghetto.” Rothstein provides statistics such as Ferguson schools have eighty-five percent black people and eighty-three of their students need either free or discounted lunch. Student achievement has been at all time lows with thirty percent of them being proficient in math and twenty-five percent being proficient in reading. The author saw how odd it was how a city like Ferguson could be so segregated and so decided to investigate further on the racial history of the metropolitan area.
Political machines were supported by continuing immigration, sustained by patronage, enlarged by wealth, and in the end were weeded out by reformers progress for public rather than private good, and caused by the need for public works and skilled workers, after the population of cities expanded.
Routledge, P. "Resisting and reshaping destructive development: social movements and globalising networks." Geographies of Global Change (2002): 310-327.
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary Democracy is a form of government by the people; especially: rule of the majority(Webster). This is what the United States is represented as, and this is based on the United States Constitution from which the United states draws all legal powers. In Robert Dahls book How democratic Is the American Constitution? He challenges this idea by trying to appeal to his readers in a way that they may view the United States Constitution in a different light. Dahl does this by pointing out flaws that the Constitution has and, draws on facts based on the other democracies around the world that the United States is compared too. He points out how many democratic ideas and innovations have a occurred since the conception of the American Constitution yet it has only adopted some of those idea.
This book was a good read for me, but I also read book reviews to help me keep track on what I am reading. These book reviews just made a better understanding of what I was reading.
Nixonland is four stories put into one novel that was written by Rick Perlstein. Each story was about a different campaign that had happened between the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. Besides Nixonland, Perlstein has also written another novel which is “Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus”. Although he does go into detail about some of the Presidents that were mentioned in the book, but the book is not a biography. It is classified as nonfiction. The author is also a political historian, and has written many articles for magazines over the country. He was a history major from the University of Chicago, and later on, Pearlstein went and received his PhD at the University of Michigan for American culture.
The book Encountering development by Arturo Escobar is an opening basis of post-development theory for which the author is an affiliate. The good intention to improve the life of others according to Escobar (2011), has turned to a ‘nightmare’ and readers he said, should consider his book ‘as the history of the loss of an illusion’ (p.4). Escobar (2011) building on the ideas of Michael Foucault, Edward Said and James Ferguson suggests that, development should be viewed as a tool for exercising knowledge and power by the west over the people of the south than, a desire to improve the situation of the disadvantaged. In this paper, I will discuss how power relation undermines initiatives put in place to overcome the spread of hunger.
Smith, R.K. (1996). Understanding third world politics: theories of political change and development. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
When looking through the topic of development, two drastically different ways to assess it arise. The majority of the western world looks at development in terms of per capita GNP. This means each country is evaluated on a level playing field, comparing the production of each country in economic value. Opposite this style of evaluation is that of the alternative view, which measures a country’s development on its ability to fulfill basic material and non-material needs. Cultural ties are strong in this case as most of the population does not produce for wealth but merely survival and tradition.
McMichael, Philip, ed 2012. Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective, 5th ed. London: Sage Publications, Inc.
Extractive institutions are used throughout this book to explain that the upper class extracts resources and goods from the lower class. They don’t allow growth or competition, but rather they just exploit the rest of society into doing their labour. It’s used to please a few, rather than the majority, and can still be seen in most places in the world. Whereas, inclusive institutions are the ideal way nations should be run, allowing for fair economical systems, property ownership, educational facilities and allowing all citizens to participate in the growth of the economy. Acemoglu and Robinson argue that this is the main factor in distinguishing the rich countries from the poor and, moreover, how they treat their citizens. This system is relatively used in North America and Western Europe.
It is becoming a fashionable issue in the world of theoretical writings whenever we come across the two philosophical phenomena of “Governance and Development”. Governance is simply referring to the way societies are organized, govern, control and of course develop, it’s a personal overview of the numerous definitions. Development is seen as the overall goal for good governance, however, it implies change and it is in a sense used to describe the process of economic and social transformation (Thirwall: 1986). Governance historically was pioneered firstly by the United States of America and it developed modern principles of ‘good governance’ such as elected government, separate