Religion and the Politics of Development

P. Fountain, R. Bush, M. Feener, P. Fountain, R. Bush, M. Feener

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137438577
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Trade & Tariffs
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This volume brings emerging research on religion and development into conversation with politics. Deploying innovative conceptual frameworks, and drawing on empirical research from across contemporary Asia, this collection makes an incisive contribution to the analysis of aid and development processes.

1

Religion and the Politics of Development

Philip Fountain, Robin Bush, and R. Michael Feener

We live in a world where extreme disparities challenge notions of basic morality and human rights – in Singapore today, the ultra rich can sip on $26,000 cocktails, while globally 18,000 people die every year of hunger and poverty-related causes; 1,020 million people are chronically undernourished; 884 million people lack access to safe drinking water; and 2,500 million lack access to basic sanitation. In his impassioned moral critique, Politics as Usual, Thomas Pogge (2010) cites these and other statistics to show that the toll of global poverty today far exceeds the total devastation of the Second World War. Indeed, 360 million people have died from hunger and remediable diseases since the end of the Cold War, amounting to a third of all deaths on the planet during that period (p. 11).

For Pogge, this amounts to damning evidence of an extreme violation of the most fundamental human rights. It is made all the more obscene because the situation could be changed at relatively small cost to the wealthy. Noting the extraordinary global disparity of income – evidenced by an income ratio of 273:1 between the top and bottom decile of humanity1 – Pogge argues that a slight 2 per cent shift in global distribution of income from the wealthy to the bottom 45 per cent could wholly eradicate severe poverty (pp. 12–13). That this step has not been taken shows that poverty is fundamentally a matter of raw politics; it comes down to questions of distribution of resources and power rather than technical proficiency. On questions of blame Pogge is not shy to point his outraged finger: “World poverty is actively perpetuated by our governments and officials, and knowingly so” (p. 2). The world economy is shaped by rules and policies made by political and economic elites, including those of Western governments and transnational organisations such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Trade Organization (WTO), United Nations (UN), and European Union (EU), who designed and imposed an economic regime that benefits the wealthy and pays little meaningful attention to poverty. But the buck doesn’t just stop there. Pogge repeatedly singles out academics as being especially guilty of wilful neglect precisely because they should know better. More generally he argues that all citizens in wealthy democratic countries are morally accountable because they have enough information to know what is going on and their collective voices could make a real difference. Therefore it is “we” who actively disregard, trivialise, and condone this “monumental crime” against the world’s poor (p. 3). Instead of taking ownership for the task of reconfiguring transnational institutional arrangements to prioritise poverty alleviation, we merely affirm our apparent generosity through the offering of “development assistance” (p. 2).

Pogge’s voice is a useful starting point for our discussions here as a sharp reminder that politics and poverty are inseparably intertwined. Far from the natural state of things, poverty is produced through the actions and inactions of the systems and structures which shape our world. Development is political and politics shapes development; this is a key starting point for the discussions brought together in this volume. Into this politics–poverty nexus, however, we also introduce a third key element necessary for understanding how this plays out in contemporary Asia: religion. While Pogge deploys ethics as a key weapon in his arsenal, he – like many development scholars and practitioners – pays scant attention to “religion.” This has, we argue, impeded more nuanced understandings that could help in the formulation of better strategies for confronting the substantial challenges before us. The issues involved in this are, admittedly, far from straightforward. Careful attention must be given to the complexities involved in all three concepts. The dynamic interactions that take place between “religion,” “politics,” and “development” further complicate analysis – and each of these elements in turn is a moving target being formed and re-formulated in relation to each other. The ground to be covered here is complex, and fraught. Yet analytically, practically, and politically we argue that critical attention to all three is necessary for addressing the kinds of concerns about poverty and inequality that Pogge so urgently raises.

Politics

It is by now passé to make the observation that, far from an apolitical and purely technical endeavour towards the well-being of those less fortunate, “development” is in fact inherently and unambiguously political. Critics of development have reiterated this point time and again over the past half century. The seminal work of Frantz Fanon and Paulo Freire in the 1960s and 1970s exposed the global relations of power that contribute to poverty. Dependency and World Systems theorists, inspired by Marxist analysis, forcefully sought to recast debates away from discussion about the “lacks” and “failings” of the poor so as to make room for analysing unequal power relationships. “Underdevelopment” in this view was not simply a stage in a Rostowian linear progression towards industrialisation and mass consumption, but rather a consequence and outcome of exploitative global capitalism. Drawing on these currents, post-development theorists in the 1990s also challenged the self-representation of development as “doing good” to propose instead that development was the problem, rather than a solution, to poverty. Arturo Escobar (1995, p. 4) characterises development as a hegemonic tool of neo-imperial domination, (in)famously arguing that “the discourse and strategy of development produced . . . massive underdevelopment and impoverishment, untold exploitation and oppression.” In a more detailed and nuanced manner than Escobar, James Ferguson (1994) has advanced similar arguments. For Ferguson, development is an “anti-politics machine” which makes it appear as if the highly invasive technical, governmental, and bureaucratic interventions of development actors are devoid of politics and conflict. This argument has recently been picked up by Tania Murray Li (2007, p. 7) who suggests that development actors “render technical” complex problems such that “experts tasked with improvement exclude the structure of political-economic relations from their diagnoses and prescriptions,” and instead frame development problems purely in technical terms which consequently require purely technical solutions. Excluding other complex dimensions of the issues at hand, however, can contribute to the production of dire unintended consequences (Mitchell 2002).

Arguments about the inherently political nature of development have also recently been picked up within mainstream development circles. Over the past decade development scholars and practitioners have begun advocating for an approach of “working politically” towards poverty alleviation (Leftwich 2010). While they agree with the critics that development is political and that concealing this fact is disingenuous, their solution is not a disavowal of politics but rather an attempt to deploy politics for developmental ends. One of the leaders in the field has been Adrian Leftwich (1994; 1995; 2005; 2000; 2010) who argued tirelessly for the primacy of politics within development – both at a nation-state level (the developmental state) and as a strategy within development projects. According to Leftwich, development actors and academics have concentrated too intently on institutional concerns and neglected the vital roles played by political elites. All development interventions prior to their implementation require careful political mapping, identification of elites and decision-makers with the capacity to effect change, attention to their incentives and disincentives, and the building of alliances among informal and formal political players. Leftwich views politics as a set of “activities of conflict, cooperation and negotiation involved in the use, production and distribution of resources, whether material or ideal, whether at local, national, or international levels, or whether in the private or public domains” (2000, p. 5). In addition to working closely with the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the UN, Leftwich also headed AusAID’s Developmental Leadership Program (DLP)2 which has produced a wealth of analysis, case studies, and policy recommendations aimed at furthering the role of developmental leadership and coalitions in the political processes of poverty alleviation.3

By the early 2000s, in part because of the work of Leftwich and others, a number of major donors began acknowledging that active steps in poverty reduction required acts of political will and policy action, not merely infusions of funding and technical assistance. The subsequent focus on “governance” that emerged especially in DFID and the World Bank reflected this shifting awareness, and led to an emphasis on capacity building for the state “so governments could create the conditions and deliver the services necessary to reduce poverty” (DFID 2010, p. 2).4 It is interesting to see that the value of a “political approach” (predicated on power relations and political economy analysis) has now become so accepted within the development industry that the primary critique of some currently popular “evidence-based” approaches to development is that it “deflects attention from the centrality of power [and] politics . . . in shaping society.”5 That is, as the development industry has responded to increasing pressure from various constituencies to provide evidence of the efficacy of its interventions, and as data has gained increasing prominence in this endeavour, donor projects and prescriptions can veer towards bean counting and technical approaches which provide more easily processed data for assessors. Advocates of a more political approach remind us that acts of policymaking that produce lasting change, often cannot be reduced to a formula in which data alone is the independent variable.

This mainstreaming of “working politically” has, however, not been without controversy. Indeed, it is probably too much to expect major development donors to fully embrace a political approach to poverty alleviation in the near future. One key reason for this is itself political. There are strong incentives for making one’s development work appear to be as non-political as ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction
• 1 Religion and the Politics of Development
• 2 The Purification, Sacralisation, and Instrumentalisation of Development
• 3 Gender, Development, and the “De-privatisation” of Religion: Reframing Feminism and Religion in Asia
• 4 Islamic Activism and Palliative Care: An Analysis from Kerala, India
• 5 Buddhist Cosmopolitan Ethics and Transnational Secular Humanitarianism in Sri Lanka
• 6 Buddhist and Protestant Philanthropies in Contemporary Southeast China: Negotiating the “Grey Zone”
• 7 Patronage, Welfare Provisions, and State–Society Relations: Lessons from Muslim-Dominant Regimes in Southeast Asia (Indonesia and Malaysia)
• 8 Between Ideology and International Politics: The Dynamics and Transformation of a Transnational Islamic Charity
• 9 Remaking the Russian State from the East: The Role of Asian Christians as Civic Activists
• 10 The Politics of Nonreligious Aid: A Japanese Environmental Ethic in Myanmar
• Outlook: Research on Religion and Development
• Index