Violence and ordering of the Third World: an introduction

Abstract

The decisive role violence has played in the ordering of the Third World cannot be ignored or consigned to the past. Accordingly, we argue for a more systematic and determined attention to the connections between the devastation unleashed by colonialism, imperialism, and other forms of large-scale violence in the post-independence periods. In contradistinction to situating violence in and against the Third World as a backdrop of incomplete modernization, we recognize that its proper location is in the larger dynamics of racialized and colonial international relations. The articles in this volume address these dynamics of violence.     

Killing the Third World: civilisational security as US grand strategy

Abstract

This article disputes explanations of American expansionism that are based on the requirements of national security or more abstract theories such as the balance of power. In contradistinction to the imperatives of defence and survival, the article shows how civilisational factors weighed heavily on the emergence of US grand strategy at the turn of the nineteenth century. In particular assumptions about the peoples of the Third World being lesser played an important role in the conception and legitimation of imperial expansion. During this period, the US Navy went through a dramatic build-up. The article shows the ways in which the worldviews of many of the key players (such as Alfred Mahan and Theodore Roosevelt) contributed to the militarisation of global racism, a development that led to widespread killing in the Philippines and elsewhere.     

On fighting for global justice: the role of a Third World international lawyer

Abstract

The life of a Third World international lawyer is devoted to resistance to the norms of international law designed by agents with power to promote the interests of the powerful sections of the international community. Increasingly the instrumental norms of international law are fashioned through the use of private power, making the positivist claim that public international law is a law between states illusory. The task of this paper is to identify a framework of common concerns so that a collectivity of Third World lawyers can work together, examine how mechanisms of power can be countered, and devise a confrontational strategy.     

The hares,the hounds and the African National Congress: on joining the Third World in post-apartheid South Africa

The utility of framing questions of global inequality in relation to a ‘First World’ and a ‘Third World’, a North and a South, or developed countries and developing (or underdeveloped) countries, has been much debated since the end of the Cold War. This article addresses the issue of the perceived weaknesses and possible continued strengths of the notion of the ‘Third World’ in general terms, and then grounds such a discussion through an analysis of the way that the African National Congress (anc) government in post-apartheid South Africa has approached the question of global inequality. Since its election in 1994, and more particularly since Thabo Mbeki succeeded Nelson Mandela as president, the anc has presented itself as having an especially important leadership role on behalf of the Third World. The profound contradictions inherent in the anc's effort both to retain its Third Worldist credentials and to present itself as a reliable client to the Bretton Woods institutions and foreign investors provides insights into how to design alternative strategies for overcoming world-wide poverty, strategies which might be more effective than those chosen by the anc. Since the anc was elected to government in 1994 it has pursued a brand of deeply compromised quasi-reformism, analysed here, that serves primarily to deflect consideration away from the options presented by other, much more meaningfully radical international and South African labour organisations, environmental groups and social movements. At the present juncture a range of increasingly well-organised grassroots movements in South Africa find that they have no choice but to mobilise in active resistance to the bankrupt policies of the anc. The increasing significance of these efforts points to the possibility that they might eventually be able to push South Africa—either through a transformation of the anc itself or through the creation of some new, potentially hegemonic, political project in that country—back into the ranks of those governments and groups that seek to use innovative and appropriately revolutionary approaches to challenge the geographical, racial and class-based hierarchies of global inequality.     

Evangelical violence: Western Christianity and the use of force against the Third World

Abstract

Recognising the impact of religion on state action, this article identifies two variables that interact to affect the type and level of violence employed by Western states against Third World targets. First, variation in the degree to which the prominent Christian denominations and organisations within these states view evangelisation as either an individual-level or national-level process – Christian individualism vs Christian nationalism – has determined church support for using violence as a tactic. Second, the level of influence that churches and missionary organisations have over their home states affects the ability of Christian actors to directly impact state actions. Western violence against Third World peoples is expected to be lowest when churches and Christian organisations view evangelisation in primarily individualistic terms and have significant influence over the state. The article examines the relationships between concepts of evangelisation, Christian influence over state policies, and levels of violence against the Third World by examining British, French and German colonialism during the late colonial period of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.     

Manhunt Presidency: Obama,race, and the Third World

Abstract

President Obama’s commitment to a creedal narrative of American exceptionalism and his understanding of the Third World as a space of ontological deficit together made for a presidency that could neither mitigate the structural racism of the United States nor deflect a racist foreign policy premised on an unending war against terror. By examining the murders of two American teenagers – Trayvon Martin and Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki – this essay argues that the very self-fashioning narratives that propelled Obama to the presidency of the United States rendered him incapable of effecting any substantive changes in the racism than animates its domestic and foreign policies.     

Mir-Said Sultan-Galiev and the idea of Muslim Marxism: empire,Third World(s) and praxis

Abstract

This paper revisits the idea of Muslim Marxism, as espoused through the life and work of the Tatar Muslim and Bolshevik intellectual and revolutionary Mir-Said Sultan-Galiev (1892–1940). I argue that Sultan-Galiev’s oeuvre – a unique synthesis of Marxist, Muslim modernist, anti-colonial and Third World praxis – represents a path-breaking take on Muslim selfhood and practices of belonging.     

From national bourgeoisie to rogues,failures and bullies: 21st century imperialism and the unravelling of the Third World

The East Asian financial crisis, the bursting of the dot.com bubble and the launching of the war on terrorism can be seen as three aspects of a single historical moment that marks the passage from one strategy of US imperialism to another. No longer based primarily on financial globalisation as the means through which the power and control of the corporations and government of the USA is extended over the world, as it was in the 1990s, US strategy is now more openly based on the direct control of productive assets and territory. This historical moment has also marked the definitive end of the idea of the Third World and its associated ideology of Third Worldism. Although this end has, of course, been repeatedly proclaimed, and contested, over the past two decades, this article argues that the idea of the Third World, and the associated ideas of development and non-alignment, were predicated upon the core concept of the national bourgeoisie and associated notions of the inherently progressive potential of nationalism. It traces the historical emergence of this idea in the work of Lenin and its subsequent trajectory during its cold war heyday. I emphasise that the idea of a united and rising Third World had a greater reality as a hope than it had as an objective historical possibility. The present moment in US imperialism is one where even that hope cannot be sustained—thus the definitive end of the idea of the Third World.     

Beyond the Third World: imperial globality,global coloniality and anti-globalisation social movements

The increasing realisation that there are modern problems for which there are no modern solutions points towards the need to move beyond the paradigm of modernity and, hence, beyond the Third World. Imagining after the Third World takes place against the backdrop of two major processes: first, the rise of a new US-based form of imperial globality, an economic–military– ideological order that subordinates regions, peoples and economies world-wide. Imperial globality has its underside in what could be called, following a group of Latin American researchers, global coloniality, meaning by this the heightened marginalisation and suppression of the knowledge and culture of subaltern groups. The second social process is the emergence of self-organising social movement networks, which operate under a new logic, fostering forms of counter-hegemonic globalisation. It is argued that, to the extent that they engage with the politics of difference, particularly through place-based yet transnationalised political strategies, these movements represent the best hope for reworking imperial globality and global coloniality in ways that make imagining after the Third World, and beyond modernity, a viable project.     

Denial and Distancing in Discourses of Development: shadow of the ‘Third World’ in New Zealand

Abstract

Anxieties about development in New Zealand show up in a deep-rooted fear of the ‘Third World’ in the country. We examine how the term ‘Third World’ is deployed in media discourses in economic, social and environmental contexts and how this deployment results in a ‘discursive distancing’ from anything associated with the ‘Third World’. Such distancing demonstrates a fragile national identity that struggles with the contradictions between the nation's desire to be part of the ‘First World’ of global capitalism and the growing disparities in health and wealth within it. The shadow of the ‘Third World’ prevents New Zealand from confronting the realities of its own inequities, which in turn comes in the way of a sound development agenda.     

"A Dime Store of Words": Liberty Magazine and the Cultural Logic of the Popular Press

Abstract

The essay posits the question of the end of May Fourth as a properly political sequence. If we consider May Fourth as a political movement, asking how it ends implies asking what kind of political subjects and political organizations were active then and ceased to be active at a certain point in time. Asking when and how the May Fourth movement ended implies, therefore, asking what ended. The essay analyzes a series of statements and actions signaling the “end” or the “defeat” of May Fourth in order to question whether there were collective practices, locations, and categories proper to the May Fourth period and how they got exhausted. Two elements appear to be crucial: the organizational structure of the xuehui and the category of “student.”     

Stories about the world economy: The quest for the grail

Equality, the Third World and Economic Delusion. Peter Bauer, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. 1981. 304pp. £15.00

Crisis: in the Third World. André Gunder Frank, London: Heinemann. 1981.. 375pp. £5.50pb

Crisis: in the World Economy. André Gunder Frank, London: Heinemann. 1980. 366pp. £4.95pb

Dependency Theory: a critical reassessment. Edited by Dudley Seers, London: Frances Pinter. 1981. 211pp. £15.00

Critical Perspectives on Imperialism and Social Class in the Third World. James Petras, London: Monthly Review Press. 1978. 314pp. £3.25

Recession, The Western Economies and the Changing World Order. Lars Anell, London: Frances Pinter. 1981. 181pp. £12.50     

People,personal projects and the challenging of social structures: a contribution to the reflection on the challenges of teaching development studies

Abstract

This article makes a critique of using Post-Development as a tool in teaching an introductory course in development studies. Such a debate was initiated by Harcourt in a previous issue of Third World Quarterly as she reflected on her teaching experience in a European Institution. Harcourt concludes that the lack of engagement of some of the students in the course reflects the unwillingness of privileged middle-class pupils to challenge western lifestyles. I draw on a critical realist meta-theory about the process of learning in higher education to challenge the ontological support of that conclusion and invite her to reconsider her teaching strategy.     

The Cold War and Third World revolution

Much of the Cold War took place in the Third World. The three works authored by Gregg A. Brazinsky, Winning the Third World: Sino-American Rivalry During the Cold War; Jeffry James Byrne, Mecca of Revolution: Algeria, Decolonization, and the Third World Order; and Jeremy Friedman, Shadow Cold War: The Sino-Soviet Competition for the Third World, are reviewed here and they provide historical details. A consistent theme that emerges is the importance of ideological factors in driving the events are discussed. It is also clear that the Third World states were not passive objects of pressure from great powers but had agendas of their own. These books provide useful material for theorists of international relations and policy makers.     

Towards an Emancipatory International Law: the Bolivarian reconstruction

In this article, we argue that a unique South American treaty known as ALBA—the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas—puts forward a cohesive counter-vision of international law rooted in notions of complementarity and human solidarity. We further argue that Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) scholars might use this initiative as a springboard to push forward a long-overdue reform of the international legal regime. While, on its own, ALBA is unlikely to pose much of a challenge to the structural imbalances that permeate global society, when juxtaposed alongside the many initiatives of the Bolivarian Revolution, it appears to possess significant democratic potential. With both scholarly and popular support, ALBA may even have the capability of sparking a renewal of a united Third World movement.     

Civil war and the coalition government of democratic Kampuchea

This article explores the relationship between the politics of international development and the reproduction of global inequality. I argue that contemporary discourses about— and the practices of—‘development for developing countries’ represent an attempt to reconstitute the political utility of the ‘Third World’. In an era of globalisation the deployment of the notion of a Third World of ‘developing countries’ which require immediate, systemic attention through the discourse and practice of international development continues to provide a way of both disciplining and displacing the global dimension of social and political struggle. I refer to this dynamic in terms of the political utility of the Third World, which, I argue, has been conducive to the organisation of global capitalism and the management of social and political contradictions of inequality and poverty. I develop this argument by drawing on the historical implications and legacy of ‘international development’ as practised in and on the Third World and through a critical analysis of the methodological premises that constitute international development. I illustrate this by drawing on a key strategy aimed ostensibly at development: the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (prsp) approach, promulgated by the World Bank and the imf, which I discuss in relation to the ‘development agenda’ inaugurated during the 1999 wto meeting in Doha (Qatar). I argue that the ideology and practice of the global politics of international development reinforce the conditions of global inequality, and must be transcended as both an analytical framework and an organising principle of world politics. While the prsp and related approaches are currently presented as key elements in the building of the ‘architecture for (international) development’, what is emerging is a form of governance that attempts to foreclose social and political alternatives.     

USSR's Third World orphans: Deterring desperate dependents

Making the Most of the Least: alternative ways to development. Edited by Leonard Berry and Robert W Kates, New York: Holmes &; Meier. 1980. 282pp. £17.25

The Study of Political Adaptation. James N Rosenau, London: Frances Pinter. 1981. 235pp. £15.00. £6.00pb

Perspectives on World Politics. Edited by Michael Smith, Richard Little and Michael Shackleton, London: Croom Helm. 1980. 431pp. £12.95

Vodka‐Cola: the explosive cocktail of detente. Charles Levinson Horsham, England: Biblias. 1980.328pp. £9.95

White Supremacy: a comparative study in American and South African history. George M Fredrickson, New York: OUP. 1981. 356pp. £12.50

The Third World Calamity. Brian May, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. 1981. 274pp. £8.95

Reflections on Economic Development and Social Change: essays in honour of Professor V K R V Rao. Edited by C H H Rao and P C Joshi, Oxford: Martin Robertson. 1979. 486pp. £19.50

Circle of Poison: pesticides and people in a hungry world. David Weir and Mark Schapiro San Francisco: Institute for Food and Development Policy. 1981. 101pp. $3.95pb

United States Food Aid in a Global Context. Mitchell B Wallerstein, London: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 1980. 299pp. £21.00

The World of States. J D B Miller, London: Croom Helm. 1981.179pp. £12.50

The Development Gap: a spatial analysis of world poverty and inequality. J P Cole Chichester, England: John Wiley. 1981. 454pp. £16.80

Agribusiness in the Americas. Roger Burbach and Patricia Flynn, London: Monthly Review Press. 1980. 314pp. £3.25

A Plough in Field Arable: western agribusiness in Third World agriculture. Sarah Potts Voll London: University of New Hampshire. 1981. 213pp. £7.25

Food Policies. John R Tarrant Chichester, England: John Wiley. 1980. 338pp. £15.00

The Political Economy of EEC Relations with African, Caribbean and Pacific States: contributions to the understanding of the Lomé Convention on North‐South relations. Edited by Frank Long, Oxford: Pergamon. 1980. 192pp. £10.50

EEC and the Third World: a survey. Edited by Christopher Stevens, London: Hodder &; Stoughton. 1981. 150pp. £5.00pb

A Framework for Development: the EEC and the ACP. Carol Cosgrove Twitchett, London: George Allen &; Unwin. 1981. 160pp. £12.00

The EEC's Generalised Scheme of Preferences and the Yaoundé and Other Agreements: benefits in trade and development for less developed countries. Delsie M Gandia Montclair, US: Allanheld Osmun. 1981. 178pp. $20.00

The Trade Union Movement in Africa: promise and performance. Wogu Ananaba, London: C Hurst. 1979. 260pp. £9.00

Organise... or Starve: the history of the South African Congress of Trade Unions. Ken Luckhardt and Brenda Walls, London: Lawrence &; Wishart. 1980. 520pp. £7.95. £3.50pb

Conflict and Intervention in the Horn of Africa. Bereket Habte Selassie, London: Monthly Review Press. 1980. 211pp. £8.00

The Development of Corporate Capitalism in Kenya 1918–77. Nicola Swainson, London: Heinemann Educational. 1980. 306pp. £3.95pb

Soviet and Chinese Aid to African Nations. Editd by Warren Weinstein and Thomas H Henriksen, New York: Praeger. 1980. 184pp. £13.00

Nepal in Crisis: growth and stagnation at the periphery P Blaikie, J Cameron and D Seddon, Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1980. 311pp. £17.50. Electoral Politics in the Middle East: issues, voters and elites. Edited by Jacob M Landau, Ergun Özbudun and Frank Tachau, London: Croom Helm &; Stanford: Hoover Institution. 1980. 335pp. £19.95

Survey of Economy, Resources and Prospects of South Asia. M L Qureshi Colombo: Marga Institute (in association with Third World Foundation). 1981. 274pp. np

Sociology of Southeast Asia: readings on social change and development. Edited by Hans‐Dieter Evers Oxford University Press. 1981. 292pp. £17.50.

State Manufacturing Enterprise in a Mixed Economy: the Turkish case. Bertil Walstedt, London: John Hopkins (for the World Bank). 1981. 354pp. £6.00

The Political Economy of Income Distribution in Turkey. Edited by Ergun Özbudun and Aydin Ulusan, London: Holmes &; Meier. 1980. 533pp. £22.95

Minangkabau Social Formations: Indonesian peasants and the world economy. Joel S Kahn, Cambridge University Press. 1980. 228pp. £15.00

Industrial Growth, Employment and Foreign Investment in Peninsula Malaysia. Lutz Hoffman and Tan Siew Ee Oxford University Press. 1980. 322pp. £19.50

Egypt: economic management in a period of transition. Khalid Ikram, London: John Hopkins University Press. 1980. 444pp. np

Korea: a decade of development. Edited by Yunshik Chang Seoul National University Press. 1980. 312pp. $10.00

Pakhtun Economy and Society. Akbar S Ahmed, London: Routledge &; Kegan Paul. 1980. 416pp. £15.00

Chinese Educational Policy. Jan‐Ingvar Lofstedt Stockholm: Almqvist &; Wiksell. 1980. 203pp. SKr 185

The Caribbean Issues of Emergence: socio‐economic and political perspective. Vincent R McDonald, Washington DC: University of America. 1980. 356pp. $21.25. $11.95pb

The Structure of Brazilian Development. Edited by Nuema Aguiar New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Books. 1979. 258pp. $14.95

Literacy and Revolution: the pedagogy of Paulo Freire. Edited by Robert Mackie, London: Pluto Press. 1980. 166pp. £3.50pb

Theories of Imperialism. Wolfgang J Mommsen, London: Weidenfeld &; Nicolson. 1981. 180pp. £8.50

Colonialism 1870–1945: an introduction. D K Fieldhouse, London: Weidenfeld &; Nicolson. 1981. 151pp. £8.95     

Challenges to the Theory and Practice of Polyarchy: the rise of the political left in Korea

This paper provides an analysis of the development of democracy in Korea since the transition from authoritarianism in 1987, and its implications for critical analyses of Third World democratisation. Accounts of ‘low intensity democracy’ or ‘polyarchy’ have noted Third World democratisation for its constrained and elite-centred nature, and as an outcome of US foreign policy, which has sought to demobilise restive popular movements and extend the reach of global capital. However, the Korean general elections of 2004 saw the historic entry of the explicitly socialist Korean Democratic Labour Party (kdlp) into the National Assembly. A re-examination of post-authoritarian politics in fact shows a process of continuous contestation that belies the claims made by the polyarchy literature. Formal democratisation has by its very nature allowed for a counter-movement to be mobilised. The paper also examines the relationship between the kdlp and the mass labour union movement and argues that, while democracy has provided opportunities for participation by previously marginalised social forces, concomitant neoliberal restructuring has limited the development of the mass movements from which such political projects draw their strength. Thus, inquiry into the implications of democratisation for a progressive challenge to neoliberal capitalism must also extend beyond ‘politics’ to mass movements in the socioeconomic sphere.     

Using and abusing the concept of the Third World: geopolitics and the comparative political study of development and underdevelopment

This article argues that, while the notion of a ‘Third World’ retains relevance and usefulness in the context of geopolitical analysis, generalisations about Third World politics are no longer helpful or justifiable. It begins by reviewing the historic rationales for the notion of the Third World together with criticisms made of these arguments. It then considers reasons why the term may retain some value at a geopolitical level: in signalling a major axis of inequality, providing a symbolic basis for collective action and, possibly, as an alternative to less attractive perspectives. The article then turns more specifically to the field of comparative politics, suggesting that in the past the notion of a Third World could be justified pragmatically as a response to the insularity of Western political science and because there was, up to a point, a common paradigm of Third World politics. Such justifications have been undermined by the growth in specialist knowledge of individual Third World countries or regions together with increasing differentiation among them.     

Regional Modernization in China: Project Concept and Organization

Abstract

During the May Fourth Culture Movement, Chen Duxiu from New Youth and Du Yaquan of Eastern Miscellany engaged in a series of heated exchanges in their common search for a solution to the Republican crisis and an understanding of World War I. Du argued that nation-states are founded on the cultural and civilizational orientation of its people, therefore the essence of war and the source of political conflict are functions of the thoughts of the people. This insight shifted the debate from the political to the cultural arena, and allowed the May Fourth intellectuals to examine the attributes of Eastern and Western civilizations as a way to counter the threats of Hongxian monarchism, China’s political and social fragmentation, as well as the inadequacies of Western nation-statehood. Du predicted that the future master of the twentieth century would be a scientific laborer with a cultural outlook derived from the mediation of the traditional Chinese and twentieth-century European civilizations.¹