Author: David Myer Temin
Affiliation: University of Michigan, Political Science
Organization/Publisher: American Political Science Review
Date/Place: July 18, 2022/USA
Type of Literature: Journal Article
Number of Pages: 14
Keywords: Development, Anti-colonialism, Third World, Political Theory
Brief:
Decolonization of political theory is a strategy used by theorists to challenge the eurocentrism that is found in epistemic categories and concepts used in the political-ideological domain. While there is no single strategy that all theorists adhere to, they all attempt to critique the universalism of European thinkers. One type of decolonization attempts to show the irredeemably Eurocentric nature of political thought and calls for the decontamination of Western political theory for more authentic non-Western political thought. However, the author of this article believes that this purist agenda of decontamination could work against decolonization. Instead, the author proposes exploring postcolonial forms of political modernity, which tried to rework western categories in service of decolonization projects.
A corollary to universalism is to frame modern ideas in a diffusionist framework, whereby modern ideas originated in Europe and then later are transferred into the non-West via unidirectional agendas of civilizational training. The author suggests a multidirectional framework whereby European ideas were transgressed, engaged and re-worked by many different actors allowing scholars to understand the hegemonic and counter-hegemonic variants of anti-colonial thought. Decolonization of political theory, according to the author, is then about mapping the debates among anti-colonial actors as they reworked modern concepts, which are co-created by a global intellectual, to further actual anti-colonial projects of liberation.
The author is particularly interested in how developmentalism was accepted by both anti-colonial actors and imperial thinkers as useful in thinking about colonial societies. For the French and the British, developmentalism was the reason colonization was necessary, and for anti-colonial actors, developmentalism was why self-determination was necessary. Famous Pan-African intellectuals such as Du Bois, C.L.R. James, Padmore, and others proposed that colonialism led to underdevelopment through slavery, semi-slavery, imperial domination, and resource extraction. In the 1950s and 60s, non-western economists debated the economics of underdevelopment and put forward variant development theories.
- Arthur Lewis, an anti-imperialist from Saint Lucia, argued that third-world countries must undergo the dual revolutions in agriculture and industrialization to uplift their societies. His aim was to increase the wages of agricultural workers because third-world economies were mostly dependent on the agrarian sector. Yet, his proposals mirrored US-based modernization theorists and placed colonial societies in a historical backward relationship to European societies. Lewis saw the main problem with colonial society as its traditionalism and held traditional society to blame for the lack of development. Many postcolonial leaders adapted state-led policies as described by Lewis. Their policies implemented import substitution industrialization, nationalization of major industries, and expropriation of land belonging to colonial settlers.
By the 1960s, there was a growing disillusionment with the first generation of development theories advocated by figures such as Nehru, Nasser, and Lewis. A new generation of dependency theorists from Latin America argued that third world countries had declining terms of trade which allowed western countries to maintain advantages in trade and push disadvantages upon non-western countries. Underdevelopment was a modern construct due to external constraints put on developing countries, exploiting their weakening leverage in international institutions.
Dependency theory argued that what looked like backwardness in postcolonial societies was the product of a global economy that integrated non-western countries into the world economy as structurally interdependent periphery states. This meant that development and underdevelopment were a structural part of a global interactive system. Third world countries were not simply on the pathway towards a European future but were facing a different trajectory altogether as permanent periphery, dependent and sustained by ever-declining terms of trade with powerful countries.
The author suggests that Walter Rodney’s 1972 classic, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, overcomes much of the previous debates and provides key insights to establish a more equitable future. European development, as an accumulation of capital, was contradictory in the sense that it relied on African underdevelopment. Extra-economic coercion was an in-built feature of the global world system. To prove the point, Rodney went into detail about the nature of pre-colonial economies and proved that African societies were not impoverished or in need of colonial upliftment. The slave trade marks the epitome of the ways in which Europe destroyed the pre-colonial engine of development and then did not replace it with anything of value.
Rodney argued that postcolonial societies must develop self-reliance and delink from those pathways of development that further entrench their dependency on white capital. One example of the kind of development he championed was unfolding in Tanzania during his life. Ujamaa or familyhood was a development program initiated by Nyerere in order to create self-reliant villages. He appreciated the ways in which the program built on the past and spoke to political conditions of the people. However, he soon became disillusioned with Ujamaa programs as the state used them against the people and solidified authoritarian pseudo-socialism.
The author of the article clearly demonstrates how Rodney repurposes interpretive categories of Eurocentric origin so as to navigate the specific constellations of power. Rodney did not freeze development discourse on the grounds that it was Eurocentric, but rather critiqued it in service of new futures, new horizons, and new notions of progress. The author pleads that current decolonization of political theory should follow the theoretical praxis of Rodney.
By: Üveys Han, CIGA Research Fellow
