I align myself with your contribution. The case of Singapore is indeed very instructive as an illustration of what we're arguing. As is India. They both inverted the architecture of the global capitalist system, gaming it to benefit their countries while playing by its rules and generating benefits for its Western guardians. I raised China earlier and someone invoked India. All of these cases point to the permeability of the global capitalist order. It is not a death sentence. Its massive constraints are real, but so are its limited opportunities. Visionary leadership will perceive it as a challenge to be overcome, not as an alibi for serial failures and incompetence. The way I see it, the global capitalist order is not going anywhere. It will keep evolving but it will always disempower and place strictures on some countries while conferring advantages on others. We know the usual suspects and how this breaks down. In fact, I see the regime of global capital expanding, and becoming even more "global" than it already is. China, Russia, and India have to varying degrees broken through and are now bona fide protagonists in the global economic hegemony. In other words, menacing global capital is no longer coterminous with the West; it is now as Asian as it is Euro-American. What's more, the Chinese are arguably now more capable of determining the contours of this capitalist order than are the Western nations that historically superintended global capitalism.
In the light of all this, African states have two broad choices in my opinion:
1. Sit around and bemoan the debilitating prohibitions of global capital and work or hope for a better and just global economic order--a long shot, since the order is expanding and taking on new agenda-setting members from the former Third World who have successfully gamed it.
2. Nurture leaderships and movements/institutions that would make the right investment decisions, and strategically deploy their countries' resources to exploit the few crevices of the international economic order for maximum advantages to their countries--all this with the end goal of forcing their way into a much better bargaining (or even agenda-setting) position and forcing the major players to reckon with them.
Finally, just as structural arguments can become a foil for default thinking, a simplistic discursive investment in agency qua agency is intellectually barren. As a colleague of mine used to say, an argument which rests only on the agency of subjects is almost useless because it is like saying that everybody has a nose or a mouth or an anus, which is saying the obvious. There is nothing insightful, illuminating, or worthy of programmatic appropriation in such a simplistic proposition. The issue, as you eloquently framed it, is the use to which agency is put, the strategic deployment of individual or national agency for projects of empowerment and reclamation.
On Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 2:20 PM, Chikwendu Ukaegbu <c-ukaegbu@northwestern.edu> wrote:
Sorry, I meant that the debate should *not* be for intellectual excitement alone.
Cu
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This interesting and lively debate has continued for weeks now, I suppose. The debate has been between those who situate the African condition in the structure created by the continent's history, and those who argue that African agency, leadership agency especially, is to blame for lackluster performance in 50 years of independence. This debate is a good thing if we can learn something from it, and just for intellectual excitement alone.
Can any one, please, point to a case in history where a nation's development occurred as a gift from one benevolent country to a less prosperous and needy other? I mean development, I don't mean foreign aid. One could cite that the Tiger economies received billions of dollars of aid money from the West and access to Western markets to sell their goods. But someone or group decided how, and implemented the strategies, to use those forms of aid to eventuate in what is now called miracle economies. If that is not domestic agency, what is it? Chronicling his role, and that of his Singapore Action Party, in the process of extricating Singapore from underdevelopment Lee Kuan Yew stated that he was aware that the West possessed the modern technology of production which would benefit his country. That he was, therefore, determined to build a world class physical infrastructure and produce a well educated manpower to entice Western firms to produce in Singapore and sell their products in Western markets. Everyone knows that he, his party, and country achieved this goal. If this is not agency, what is it? What if Yew, his party and other Tiger economies, decided to send those aid monies to personal accounts in Western banks, buy palatial houses in advanced countries, send their kids abroad for education, get health care in foreign countries, and fly over potholes and dilapidated schools in helicopters and airplanes? That's also agency. The difference is that one agency accelerated development, the other perpetuates underdevelopment. Yew's vision shows that humans can scale developmental obstacles if they have a modicum of resources with which to do so. Africa has a lot of resources with which to do what Yew did.
The posting below is right on the mark. Academic arguments that continue to paint the African as slave to structure do a disservice to the continent because the commanding heights of the global economy will not and cannot philanthropically plant national development in African countries. Lee Kuan Yew and his team forced the global economy towards the needs of Singapore by doing those things of interest and utility to both global capital and Singaporeans. Is the global economy blindly bending to China's development needs or is Chinese agency through the instrumentality of its leaders bending the global economy to China's needs? Developmental structuralism is sexy and easy to understand. But structuration theory (a la Giddens) is more sophisticated, realistic and progressive i.e. the duality of structure and agency-- human beings create structures which turn around to influence them. What developmental structures have African leaders created? Ali Mazrui said it best. Africa produced extraordinary revolutionary leadership but has been unable to produce successful developmental leadership-- again agency. A structural argument is too simplistic and permits African leaders to hide in it and plead non culpability because the iron cage of the global economy makes them helpless. Africa will never come out of developmental doldrums if this line argument is the primary developmental paradigm. I want to be counted out that. African agency must take full responsibility for its developmental successes or failures. That has been the history of development through the ages.
Cu (Professor, Sociology of Development)
Anunoby, Ogugua wrote:
The evidence of history, human development, and progress is clear. Leaders build nations and make them great or not great. There is no informed person anywhere who would in good conscience, dispute the past and continuing terrible exploitation of Africa through slavery, colonialism, and neocolonialism. This is a settled subject for the most part.
The concern now should be about what needs to be done to extricate Africa from the steel clutches of exploiter-countries, and the tangled webs of underdevelopment that her leaders seem not to be worried about. It is even not clear that African leaders are not helping to spin the webs. What is oftentimes forgotten is that the countries that are believed to have and continue to exploit Africa are always able to produce leaders that maintain the status quo in favor of the countries at the same time that African countries seem to be unable to produce leaders that will challenge and end the said cycle of exploitation.
Right before our eyes and under our noses, China, India, and South Korea have joined the ranks of Africa's exploiter-countries. Where are Africa's leaders? Do they know that this is happening right now? Do they choose to benefit from the said exploitation in the advancement of their self interests at the expense of group interest? History can be real but this is no reason to allow history to successfully continue to take a perpetual mortgage on the present and the past. It seems to me that the case being made sometimes, is that the past, holding the present and the future hostage, is inevitable and unstoppable. History is a great teacher. It is little use however if its lessons are ignored or not/never learned.
oa
________________________________________
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com [usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of kwame zulu shabazz [kwameshabazz@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, December 18, 2010 7:41 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why is Africa in such a mess?
Peace OA--African nations of been "independent" from roughly two generations. How does that work out to "many years"? Moreover, we have inherited borders and political systems that were mostly imposed.
Re: Sudan--There is a lot more going on there than bad leadership. The Sudanese are divided by foreign religions. But they are also
* fighting over increasingly scarce resources, particularly in Darfur (arable land).
* The north-south skirmishes are being pushed along by Islamicists in Khartoum, by
* nationalists in Khartoum who believe that securing oil and other natural resources by any means necessary from southern Sudan is in the national interests
* Zionist who want to undermine Islamic regimes
* old and new imperialists (e.g. US and China)
* undisciplined rebel factions.
Re: Asia--Yes, Singapore, Japan, South Korea would appear to be far ahead of many African nations. Most of these nations have not abandoned their Gods and Ancestors, although Mau certainly tried to banish them China. Also these nations was not forced to deal with imposed languages and borders. This is especially daunting in Africa given the stunning level of cultural diversity.
Chinese elites still speak Mandarin and Cantonese. African elites often prefer English or French or Portuguese. Not only that but China's path towards "development" is wrecking havoc on the environment. And the level of poverty in some parts of India would embarrass many Africans.
My sense of things is that we Africans have been colonized psychologically in ways that Asian nations were not. This is what Biko was attempting to address.
Last and most importantly, I think the slave trades--transatlantic, saharan, red sea, indian ocean--have undermined African development profoundly. kzs
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There is enough in the world for everyone's need but not for everyone's greed.
---Mohandas Gandhi
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