Depoliticizing Development

by John Harriss

Book Summary of Depoliticizing Development:The World Bank And Social Capital The idea of social capital ?????? meaning, most simply put, 'social connections' ?????? was unheard of outside a small circle of sociologists until very recently. Now it is proclaimed by the World Bank to be 'the missing link' in international development, and it has become the subject of a flurry of books and research papers, including some, recently, on India. This book explores the origins of the idea of social capital, and its diverse meanings, in the work of James Coleman, Pierre Bourdieu, and of Robert Putnam ?????? who is responsible, more than any other, through his work on Italy and the United States, for its extraordinary rise. John Harriss then asks why this notion should have taken off in the dramatic way that it has done, and finds in its uses by the World Bank the attempt, systematically, to obscure class relations and power. Social capital has thus come to play a significant part in 'the anti-politics machine' that is constituted by the discourses of international development. This powerful and lucid critique will be of immense use to all those interested in development studies, including sociologists, economists, planners, and NGO and other activists. About the Author JOHN HARRISS is Professor of International Studies at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada. He has been a visiting researcher at the Madras Institute of Development Studies and has published extensively on aspects of India's political economy.

Genres: Economics

151 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2002

Reviews

[Laya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book for anyone interested in state-society relationships, and of course for development studies students. The book is

1) A scathing indictment of Robert Putnam - the way he and his colleagues have built the vaguest concept of social capital to fill in a massive void that economists have left in their development prescriptions after ignoring all other social science - and how gladly it was picked up by World Bank to bypass actual political processes.

2) An excellent argument for bringing back 'politics' - Harriss tears down into neoclassical scholars for ignoring the study of historical conditions, and their selective attribution of causality to whatever factors they liked, measuring however they wish. He highlights scholars who have done actual grounded research in the same regions that social capitalists have brought out their case studies.

While I have my reservations about a benevolent welfare state and Harriss himself is careful to not always conflate the state with politics, it is arguable that the democratic welfare state is an apparatus that is worth fighting for, despite its imperfections. The current development talk on 'community empowerment' and 'participation' largely bypasses the uncomfortable discussions on distribution of power and resources, to treat them only as technical deficit problems - without an understanding of why the deficit exists in the first place. In the words of late Shankar guha niyogi, both 'Sangharsh' and 'Nirman' are necessary for the radical manifesto of change.