Saturday, September 17, 2005
apologies for the rant, the product of a weekend spent reading about Anti-Americanism, the development episteme, and, althoughy i'm by no means there yet, the racialization of citizenship and immigration. (The good news is that the Escobar book, with its explorations of the "professionalization and institutionalization" of development discourse points directly towards some possible trajectories for my own project as i am currently attempting to figure it out. I like the tenth floor better than the eight floor at the moment, possiblt the proximity of the Tamiment and Wagner archives, full of all that leftitude and labory goodness.
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I wasn't a huge fan of the Escobar book when I read half of it last spring--I think he treats the post-WWII period as both too different from what went before (what continuities with the humanitarian and modernization projects of the formal empires?) and too uniform, and (as Barbara Weinstein commented) Escobar tends to ignore the fact that people really are hungry and materially needy, and that it probably is a good idea to try to do something about that.
ReplyDeleteActually, you might like BW's second book (blanking on the name at the moment), which treats intersections of labor politics, industrialization, and the imposition and appropriation of U.S.-based ideas about modernization and rationalization in Brazil in a slightly earlier period. (Confession: despite adoring Barbara, and being interested in said themes, I never made it past the introduction.)
-k
I have huge problems with Encountering Development, which i need to go finish, but I think you're right about his periodization issues. I also think he could complicate his methoidologies and objects of study more than he does. You get the feeling reading the book there's a bit of reification going on. I have to reread it in three weeks or so for another class, too, whcih feels like kind of a waste of time, though maybe that's when i can try to squeeze in the Deleuze and Guattari. That said i do think the Escobar book says some interisting hings about the role of universities in regimes of development, though not enough, and that's mostly what I wanted to get out of the book.
ReplyDeleteI will add Barabara Weinstein's book to the list of books i need to check out at some point in the future. Us Weinsteins gotta stick together. Except for my dad's entire family minus my uncle. Thanks for the suggestion.
"For Social Peace in Brazil." Is the name of Barbara's book that I couldn't remember before.
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