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Contours of a non-modernist discourse: the contested space of history and development
Review of Radical Political Economics 33 (2001) 255–263 www.elsevier.com/locate/revra
Contours of a non-modernist discourse: the contested space of history and development Eiman Zein-Elabdin* Department of Economics, Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster, PA 17604, USA
Abstract Conventionally, postcolonial analysis has been confined to the field of literary criticism and history. More recently, it has extended to philosophy and anthropology. Despite the powerful role that economics has played in shaping current conditions in formerly colonized regions, a postcolonial position has yet to be articulated in economics. This paper draws on postcolonial thought to explore the idea of “history” and its expression in economics through the discourse on “development.” The paper argues for an understanding of economics as a cultural practice in order to open up possibilities for non-Western ideas and interpretations of economic phenomena. © 2001 URPE. All rights reserved. JEL classification: A12; 21 Keywords: Postcolonial analysis; Economics and history
To attempt to provincialize “Europe” is to see the modern as inevitably contested, to write over the given and privileged narratives of citizenship other narratives of human connections that draw sustenance from dreamed-up pasts and futures where collectivities are defined neither by the rituals of citizenship nor by the nightmare of “tradition” that “modernity” creates [Dipesh Chakrabarty 1997: 290]. The ideas and claims presented in this paper form part of the very beginnings of an effort to carve out a space for a critique of economics from a particularly non-Western point of
I am very grateful to Tony Maynard for insightful comments and to S. Charusheela for an ongoing conversation. * Tel.: ⫹1-717-291-4045; fax: ⫹1-717-291-4369. E-mail address: [email protected] (E. Zein-Elabdin). 0486-6134/01/$ – see front matter © 2001 URPE. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 4 8 6 - 6 1 3 4 ( 0 1 ) 0 0 0 8 7 - 0
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view that does not lie within the conventional discourse of “development” and “modernization.” The purpose of this paper is to give a brief introduction to what may be identified as a postcolonial position in economics. The paper hopes to contribute to creating this space for an(other) voice, without which the arguments raised here would not be heard.1 My goal is not to put forward an “alternative, non-Western economic theory,” but to contemplate some of the deep premises of economics that are normally taken to be of universal appeal and applicability. This contemplation hopes to open up new horizons and possibilities for cultures and communities that have been historically dominated and contemporarily marginalized, for example African and indigenous (“fourth world”) communities, and whose patterns of material provisioning and cultural aspirations may not be well accommodated within current economic paradigms. Given the above preamble, it is necessary to stress that this work remains at the elementary stage of bringing to surface assumptions that undergird economics (as a discipline derivative from a much more foundational philosophy, i.e. Western tradition). It is far from presenting a developed body of analysis. Moreover, being a metacultural critique, this paper necessarily takes a panoramic view of economics that appears to gloss over its particular theories, fields, and different schools of thought, and focuses on what these share vis-a`-vis the “nonmodern.” Indeed, from a conventional economic perspective the paper may seem to have little to do with economics because it engages questions that lie at the pre-beginnings of the discipline, and situates itself at the intersection of economics and philosophy, undertaking a rigorous reflection on profound questions rather than dealing with particular policy problems or technical issues. This panoramic look should not be taken to imply that economics is homogeneous or simplistic. The theme of this essay is the problem of modernity for postcolonial peoples and cultures, focusing on the notion of “history” and its manifestation in economics through the idea of development. In the second portion of the essay, I discuss briefly the relation to postmodernism and the implications of a non-modernist analysis. The essay draws on the field of Postcolonial Studies that has emerged and rapidly expanded in the past two decades.2
1
For other literature engaged in the same effort see Zein-Elabdin (1998, 1999) and Charusheela (1999, 2000). Two of these contributions will appear in a forthcoming volume Postcolonialism Meets Economics, edited by Zein-Elabdin and Charusheela. The Union for Radical Political Economics (URPE) has been generously hospitable in giving forum to these contributions through annual meetings. 2 The term postcolonial refers both to contemporary societies formerly colonized by Europeans and currently subordinate to them within the international politico-economic hierarchy, and to a certain critique of the colonial European experience and the current ascendancy of Northern industrialized countries. Postcolonial critique originated in literary criticism with the work of Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, and Homi Bhabha. The pathbreaking arguments of the three authors can be found in Orientalism (Said 1978), Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (1988), and Bhabha’s essays “The Other Question” and “Signs Taken for Wonders,” which are contained in his volume The Location of Culture (1994). Also see Zein-Elabdin (1999).
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1. The others’ view of “modernity” Modernity is a vast and contentious term.3 In convention, it has been used as a synonym for the Western historical experience of approximately the past three centuries, signifying not merely the historical era but all that is associated with it, its philosophy, culture, and Enlightenment configuration of “reality,” extrapolated to cover the entire range of other human societies. It has rarely been used as a description of a general state of novelty or an undifferentiated self-consciousness of contemporaneity (or “attitude toward the present”) outside of Western culture.4 In this paper, hence, I speak specifically of European modernity. The engagement of postcolonial thinkers with this modernity, both from inside and outside of Western academy, has been a long and complex one, and may amount to an excessive— perhaps unavoidable—pre-occupation with it. The excessive pre-occupation with modernity stems partly from its historical repercussions, that is, the encounter with colonialism and economic and cultural domination in all its forms, whether effective eradication of indigenous populations (e.g., North America and Australia); settler and non-settler colonization in Africa, Asia, and Latin America; or episodes such as the Atlantic slave trade. This, of course, has been widely acknowledged, among other phenomena, as the “dark side” of the Enlightenment, and underlies much of the postmodern disenchantment with modernity (Foucault, for instance, 1979, and Bhabha 1994). Situating the postcolonial in relation to modernity has been perhaps the most difficult enterprise. This difficulty can be seen in the loss for words among many authors to articulate a vocabulary outside the parameters set by modern European discourse. Bhabha, for example, uses the expressions “otherwise than modernity” and “contra-modernity” (1994: 6). My use of the term “non-modernist” here is no exception. The difficulty of speaking outside the language of modernity originates in that modern Europe (to include European settlements worldwide) has largely succeeded, through material/discursive processes, in establishing a strong claim on “history” and, therefrom, all facets of human experience: reason/rationality, meaning, development, and of course modernity, appropriating all of these as uniquely European.5 Postcolonial thinkers themselves fall into this habit by ceding to modern Europe
3
Terms such as modernity, tradition, Western, or postcolonial are all to be understood as problematized by the hybridity and flux of cultures and by the lack of closure on all categories. Here the terms are used as ideal typical rather than accurately descriptive. 4 Foucault (1984) offers the notion of modernity as an “attitude” rather than a historical epoch, “a mode of relating to contemporary reality; a voluntary choice made by certain people; in the end, a way of thinking and feeling” (39). He suggests that this understanding allows one to see how and why modernity as a phenomenon has survived to the present. 5 See for example Gunnar Myrdal’s (1968) discussion of the “modernization ideals” for development, where he appropriates not merely rationality but also honesty and integrity as attributes of the modern industrial man. The place of socialism is not tackled separately here, but socialism in Eastern Europe and the former USSR may be regarded as a contemporary growth of the Western experience to the extent that it is grounded in industrybased material accumulation.
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the majority of what could possibly be generically human and open to different cultural interpretations.6 The imperial success of modern Europe, inseparable from its rise as an industrial power, laid the ground for its claim on history. This claim represents the discursive process that accompanied, and was perhaps necessary for, the rationalization and ideological purchase of modernity’s project of universal dominion. Thus, from a postcolonial perspective, the problem of modernist discourse lies not only in that it is centered around a linear, determinist interpretation of history, the (gendered) triumph of “reason,” and exceeding faith in an objective knowledge, but in claiming history itself for the European experience, and succeeding in defining the terms of “reality” and categories of discourse to the point where none could exist outside of its theoretical framework. In this framework, modernity became a condition inherently superior to age and tradition, with tradition being not the past of modern Europe, but also the present of non-European societies and cultures. I wish to rely here on the work of Dipesh Chakrabarty (1997), one of the Subaltern Studies writers, to illustrate the problem of the European claim on history.7 Chakrabarty is particularly concerned with the problem of the nation state, but his argument applies with equal precision to other categories of modernist discourse. He takes on the practice of historicism (interpreting history as a process that unfolds according to certain, immutable, and knowable a priori laws). So far such laws have been supplied by Western philosophy (for example, Hegel and Marx among a long line of less significant figures). Chakrabarty argues that historiography essentially entails a uniform application of European theories of history to all societies. Accordingly, history is perceived as “something which has already happened elsewhere [in Europe], and which is to be reproduced, mechanically or otherwise, with a local content” (Ibid: 283). He goes on to show that this reproduction has, in fact, been faithfully carried out by “third world” historians and social scientists who are firmly caught up in the theoretical framework of “Europe as history.” “Economics” and “history” are the knowledge forms that correspond to the two major institutions that the rise (and later universalization) of the bourgeois order has given to the world—the capitalist mode of production and the nation state. A critical historian has no choice but to negotiate this knowledge. She or he therefore needs to understand the state on its own terms, that is, in terms of its self-justificatory narratives of citizenship and modernity. Since these themes will always take us back to the universalist propositions of “modern” (European) political philosophy— even the “practical” science of economics that now seems “natural” to our constructions of world systems is (theoretically) rooted in the ideas of ethics in eighteenth-century Europe—a third-world historian is condemned to knowing “Europe” as the original home of the “modern,” . . . . Thus follows the everyday subalternity of nonWestern histories (Ibid: 285– 6).
6 For example, Escobar (1995), quoting the Peruvian author Anı´bal Quijano, writes, “Latin Americans ‘have to stop being what we have not been, what we will never be, and what we do not have to be,’ namely, (strictly) modern” (221). 7 The Subaltern Studies Collective is a group of historians from India who since the early 1980s have embarked on a project of rewriting Indian history from a post-nationalist stance. See Guha (1997).
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The captivity of postcolonial historians in the conceptual framework of Europe-as-history is reflected in what Chakrabarty calls “the paradox of third-world social science.” The paradox is that Western theories, written “in ignorance of the majority of humankind—that is, those living in non-Western cultures” (265), seem to illuminate many aspects of those societies for “third world” social scientists and “eminently” help in understanding their social problems. Chakrabarty finds the answer to his paradox to be that the reality illuminated by Western theories is present only in the minds of those social scientists who, having been thoroughly trained in Western tradition through the process of colonialism, share the European interpretations of history. Much more, they have accepted the negative characterization of their own cultures as permanently inadequate and undeveloped. In the classical Marxian interpretation, for instance, the British colonization of India—although condemned—was tolerated as the necessary evil of “modernization” and the transition to socialism.8 The modern European claim on history (interpreted as a teleological universalization of a particular rationality) finds its expression in contemporary economic analysis through the notion of development: namely, the form of large scale, material accumulation associated primarily with Western societies. In the 20th century postwar period, a tremendous investment in economic analysis as well as industrial projects was undertaken, and the notion of development has since been instituted in the binarism of developed/un(der/less)developed.9 The idea of development is, of course, deeply rooted in Western philosophical thought (see, for instance, Bury 1932; Zein-Elabdin 1998), but the imperative of its extension to other world regions draws particularly on the notion of universal history that emerged in eighteenth century Europe, and served to support the Enlightenment vision of progress by establishing universal laws according to which history unfolds. In Idea of a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View, Kant proposed a history in which nature brings about the development of all mankind (Teggart 1949). Similarly, Turgot in Discourses on Universal History envisioned the human race as one whole moving towards greater perfection (Bury 1932). Contemporary economic analysis carried on this tradition. The classical Marxian theory in this regard has just been mentioned, and postmodern Marxian economists (e.g., Amariglio and Ruccio 1994) have already identified its historicism. Neoclassical economics, on the other hand, lacking a formalized theory of history, focused on individual “rationality” as the catalyst for development, set against the backdrop of a general stages-of-growth notion borrowed from classical economics. For example, in his influential—if now defunct—Stages of Economic Growth, Rostow (1960) deployed the notion of universal history to suggest that all societies followed the path of industrial Europe. Institutional economics did not rely on
8
In 1853, Marx wrote, “England, it is true, in causing a social revolution in Hindustan, was actuated only by the vilest interests, and was stupid in her manner of enforcing them. But that is not the question. The question is, can mankind fulfill its destiny without a fundamental revolution in the social state of Asia? If not, whatever may have been the crimes of England she was the unconscious tool of history in bringing about that revolution” (from “British Rule in India,” Marx 1974: 41). 9 Escobar (1995) gives an ethnography of development from the first World Bank mission in 1949 to the remarkable expansion of the field of development economics in the following decades.
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a teleological apprehension of historical change, but saw a path dependent co-evolution of technology and institutions. Nevertheless, its paradigmatic emphasis on the dynamic role of technological innovation lends itself to a bias towards industrialization as progress, and presents a constant tension with the role of culture in institutional economic analysis.10
2. Why a non-modernist discourse? The term non-modernist (rather than postmodernist) denotes an engagement with modernity from the subaltern position of its former colonies and marginalized others.11 What is most crucial from this position is that the modernity from which the postmodern departure might take place survives and currently exercises its premises, approaches, and material consequences for non-Western peoples and cultures. For postcolonial societies, the postmodern age has not meant a transcendence of European hegemony, to the same extent that it has not meant the end of economic exploitation and other capitalist processes in the industrialized world. Instead, many of these have expanded and accelerated through globalization and other “triumphs.” A non-modernist discourse questions totalizing narratives, teleological understandings of history, and essentialist interpretations of subjectivity, and doubts objectified and universalized “reason,” “truth,” “knowledge,” and “reality.” Having said that, it should not be inferred that postmodernist critique logically extends to express the predicaments of cultures that represent the “other” of European modernity. Yes, the foundational elements of modernity that have been exposed by postmodernist literature underlay the project of colonialism and, through it, they unfolded brutally before the eyes of the colonized. However, their consequences and meanings to those in the colonies are not necessarily the same as to those living on the imperial side of modernity. Indeed, a desire to subsume the postcolonial critique of economic and political domination within the postmodern umbrella would amount to turning the Other into the Same, which, of course, postmodernism refuses to do (During 1987). The problem of postcoloniality, rather than a loss of faith in the modern self, is the relentless sovereignty of European modernity, lived in the contemporary relationship between the formerly colonial and the now “postcolonial.” The physical end of the colonial era did not fundamentally alter this relationship. Colonialism was, almost smoothly, succeeded
10
This bias was exercised most forcefully in the work of Clarence Ayres (1962). Ayres claimed “[t]his [scientific] conception of truth and of human values generally is at variance with all tribal legends and all tribal authority; and since the technological revolution is itself irresistible, the arbitrary authority and irrational values of pre-scientific, pre-industrial cultures are doomed . . . . The only remaining alternative is that of intelligent, voluntary acceptance of the industrial way of life and all the values that go with it” (Foreword to The Theory of Economic Progress: xxiv–xxv). 11 Postcolonial discourse within Western academy has itself been enabled by the rise of postmodernism, and there is an extensive catalogue of comparisons between the two “posts.” See, for example, Williams and Chrisman (1994) and Bhabha (1994). Of course, the comparison to postmodernism is not unique to postcolonial thought; several schools of economics have positioned themselves in relation to or discussed the tensions within them created by postmodernist philosophy. See Hoksbergen (1994) and Amariglio and Ruccio (1994).
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by the project of development through which former colonies were to oversee the reproduction of modern Europe on their own terrain (Zein-Elabdin 1998).12 The project of development, from the standpoint of “to-be-developed” societies, represents a negative ontology, namely, a process that defines being by negation. The development discourse of the past half century theoretically negated the actual experiences of those societies on the premise that their present realities and world conceptions were a mere prelude to a more significant existence in the form of an industrial, materially affluent society.13 The ideas of development (as economic growth) and modernity (as industrialization) are some of the pre-analytic givens of economics, together with truth elements such as instrumental rationality and self-interest.14 This is no surprise since economics itself was born out of the culture of European Enlightenment and industrial revolution. However, there is still little appreciation of the nature of economics as culturally specific thought.15 Only recently, primarily through feminist and postmodernist critiques (e.g., Ferber and Nelson 1993; McCloskey 1985; Samuels 1990; Amariglio and Ruccio 1994), have the roots of economics in modern Western philosophy been brought to light. Even so, discussions of the philosophical foundations of economics are largely confined to methodological issues, e.g., McCloskey (1985), Klamer (1991), and Hausman (1994).16 As Amariglio and Ruccio (1994) have argued, McCloskey, whose work is sharply critical of modernism in economics, still left the content of the discipline untouched. It is the perception that economics is devoid of metaphysics (which McCloskey identified as one of the paramount features of modernist method) that presents an obstacle to recognizing its cultural character and genealogy. Rather than a set of self-contained postulates and “technical” definitions, economics is an integral part of a larger cultural episteme. From another (non-Western) cultural standpoint, whether one employs positivism or relies on rhetoric makes little difference.
12 For a most current example of the persistence of the modernization doctrine see the “human development” efforts led by Martha Nussbaum, particularly her (1995) meticulous, but chilling, construction of the criteria to be used in identifying what may be considered a “human life.” Also see Charusheela (2000). 13 Most post-colonial leaders and intellectuals consented. On the axiomatic attitude of African elites, for example, to the problem of development see Zein-Elabdin (1998). Tom Mboya, head of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, stated in 1967 “ Fortunately, it is not necessary to explain why these [African] countries must develop.” Cited in Zein-Elabdin (119). 14 The problem of rationality has been previously discussed by many (see, for example, Elster 1986 and Ma¨ki et al. 1993). It is sufficient to add here that both the emphasis on rationality and the particular definition assigned to it in economics are distinctly Western modernist. 15 Again, the older school of institutional economics seems to be an exception. For the institutionalist idea of the role of culture in economics, see Veblen’s “Why is Economics not an Evolutionary Science?” (1898), and more recently Mayhew’s “Culture: Core Concept Under Attack” (1987). 16 For example, Hausman and McPhearson argue that when combined with the assumption of self-interest and perfect knowledge, the theory of rationality leads to the identification of well-being with preference satisfaction which, they believe, has certain undesirable moral implications (Hausman 1994). However, they make no attempt to interrogate the concepts of rationality or self-interest themselves.
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3. Contours The contours of a non-modernist discourse contain the interpretation of modern Europe as a historical, cultural site, which should eventually open up a space for economic processes and rationalities that are not founded on particularly Western notions, such as individual welfare maximization, labor, or productivity. This space is contingent on reclaiming an understanding of history as an incomplete and ungraspable lived experience by multiples of communities worldwide. This understanding requires dismantling the Hegelian notion of a “capability of history,” and apprehending history itself as a process of cultural evolution.17 The name that Chakrabarty (1997) suggests for this project is “provincializing Europe,” which I borrow here at the minimal level of a discursive interpretation of European modernity as a tale confined in space and time rather than a natural, prototypical state. Chakrabarty is very much aware of the impossibility of this project (“[t]he project of provincializing ‘Europe’ refers to a history that does not yet exist,” Ibid.: 286) since European modernity, through colonialism and contemporary hegemony, has in factual terms grown beyond its “historical” and “cultural” bounds. Provincializing Europe, then, should best be taken as a metaphor for a discourse in which modernity is no longer European modernity, and modernity itself is properly identified as a tradition. To place this abstract notion within the discipline of economics means to allow for the possibility that industrial and materially affluent society is the tradition of Western modernity, which may be neither inevitable nor desirable for all cultures. Provincializing Europe does not mean an atavistic return to ancient customs or a rejection of Western wisdom. It merely refers to a call for understanding economics as a culturally bound practice. The fact that economics is culture bound matters, of course, to the postcolonial perspective. Its further significance lies in making possible the recognition that the mainstream model in economics is itself representative of a particular social/cultural context within Western society.18 Further elaboration of this point, however, must be reserved for future work.
References Amariglio, J., & Ruccio, D. F. (1994). Postmodernism, Marxism, and the critique of modern economic thought. Rethinking Marxism, 7 (3), 7–35. Ayres, C. E. (1962). The theory of economic progress: a study of the fundamentals of economic development and cultural change. New York: Schocken Books [1944]. Bhabha, H. K. (1994). The location of culture. London: Routledge. Bury, J. B. (1932). The idea of progress: an inquiry into its origin and growth. New York: The Macmillan Company.
17 Hegel’s philosophy of history is well-known. In it, he speculated that “[t]hose peoples are alone capable of History, . . . who have arrived at that period of development at which individuals comprehend their own existence as independent, i.e., possess self-consciousness.” To him, “Hindoos,” for instance, were “incapable of writing History. All that happens is dissipated in their minds into confused dreams” (1956: 162). 18 Vernon Dixon (1970) has made this argument with respect to African-Americans. More recently, feminist economists have highlighted the same problem in the case of gender (Ferber and Nelson 1993).
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Chakrabarty, D. (1997). Postcoloniality and the artifice of history: who speaks for ‘Indian’ pasts? In R. Guha, A subaltern studies reader, 1986 –1995. Charusheela, S. (1999). Economic analysis, political activism and the post-colonial condition. Paper presented at the Allied Social Science Associations Annual Meeting, New York, NY, January 5–7. (Forthcoming in Zein-Elabdin and Charusheela). Charusheela, S. (2000). Marxism, liberalism and modernity in development economics. Paper presented at Marxism 2000, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, September 21–24. Dixon, V. J. (1970). The di-unital approach to ‘black economics.’ American Economic Review, 60 (2), 424 – 429. During, S. (1987). Postmodernism or post-colonialism today. Textual Practice, 1 (1), 32– 47. Elster, J. (Ed.). (1986). Rational choice. New York: New York University Press. Escobar, A. (1995). Encountering development: the making and unmaking of the third world. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Ferber, M. A., & Nelson, J. A. (Eds.). (1993). Beyond economic man: feminist theory and economics. Chicago, University of Chicago Press. Foucault, M. (1979). Discipline and punish: the birth of the prison. New York: Vintage Books [1975]. Foucault, M. (1984). What is enlightenment? In P. Rabinow, The Foucault reader. New York: Pantheon Books. Guha, R. (Ed.) (1997). A subaltern studies reader, 1986 –1995. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Hausman, D. M. (Ed.) (1994). The philosophy of economics: an anthology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [1984]. Hegel, G. W. F. (1956). The philosophy of history. New York: Dover Publications [1881]. Hoksbergen, R. (1994). Postmodernism and institutionalism: toward a resolution of the debate on relativism. Journal of Economic Issues, 28 (3), 679 –713. Klamer, A. (1991). Towards the native’s point of view: the difficulty of changing the conversation. In D. Lavoie, Economics and hermeneutics. London: Routledge. Ma¨ki, U., Gustafsson, B., & Knudsen, C. (Eds.). (1993). Rationality, institutions and economic methodology. London: Routledge. Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1974). On colonialism. Moscow: Progress Publishers [1959]. Mayhew, A. (1987). Culture: core concept under attack. Journal of Economic Issues, 21 (2), 587– 603. McCloskey, D. N. (1985). The rhetoric of economics. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Myrdal, G. (1968). Asian drama: an inquiry into the poverty of nations. Vol. I. New York: Twentieth Century Fund. Nussbaum, M. C., & Glover, J. (Eds.). (1995). Women, culture, and development: a study of human capabilities. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rostow, W. W. (1960). The stages of economic growth: a non-communist manifesto. London: Cambridge University Press. Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books. Samuels, W. (Ed.). (1990). Economics as discourse: an analysis of the language of economists. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Spivak, G. C. (1988). Can the subaltern speak? In C. Nelson & L. Grossberg, Marxism and the interpretation of culture. Urbana: University of Illinois Press [1985]. Spivak, G. C. (1996). Poststructuralism, marginality, postcoloniality and value. In P. Mongia, Contemporary postcolonial theory: a reader. London: Arnold [1990]. Teggart, F. J. (Ed.). (1949). The idea of progress: a collection of readings. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press. Veblen, T. (1898). Why is economics not an evolutionary science? Quarterly Journal of Economics, 12, 373–397. Williams, P., & Chrisman, L. (Eds.) (1994). Colonial discourse and post-colonial theory: a reader. New York: Columbia University Press. Zein-Elabdin, E. (1998). The question of development in Africa: a conversation for propitious change. Journal of African Philosophy, 11 (2), 113–125. Zein-Elabdin, E. (1999). Articulating the postcolonial Paper presented at the Allied Social Science Associations Annual Meeting, New York, NY, January 5–7. (Forthcoming in Zein-Elabdin and Charusheela). Zein-Elabdin, E., & Charusheela, S. (Eds.). (Forthcoming). Postcolonialism meets economics.
Contours of a non-modernist discourse: the contested space of history and development Eiman Zein-Elabdin* Department of Economics, Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster, PA 17604, USA
Abstract Conventionally, postcolonial analysis has been confined to the field of literary criticism and history. More recently, it has extended to philosophy and anthropology. Despite the powerful role that economics has played in shaping current conditions in formerly colonized regions, a postcolonial position has yet to be articulated in economics. This paper draws on postcolonial thought to explore the idea of “history” and its expression in economics through the discourse on “development.” The paper argues for an understanding of economics as a cultural practice in order to open up possibilities for non-Western ideas and interpretations of economic phenomena. © 2001 URPE. All rights reserved. JEL classification: A12; 21 Keywords: Postcolonial analysis; Economics and history
To attempt to provincialize “Europe” is to see the modern as inevitably contested, to write over the given and privileged narratives of citizenship other narratives of human connections that draw sustenance from dreamed-up pasts and futures where collectivities are defined neither by the rituals of citizenship nor by the nightmare of “tradition” that “modernity” creates [Dipesh Chakrabarty 1997: 290]. The ideas and claims presented in this paper form part of the very beginnings of an effort to carve out a space for a critique of economics from a particularly non-Western point of
I am very grateful to Tony Maynard for insightful comments and to S. Charusheela for an ongoing conversation. * Tel.: ⫹1-717-291-4045; fax: ⫹1-717-291-4369. E-mail address: [email protected] (E. Zein-Elabdin). 0486-6134/01/$ – see front matter © 2001 URPE. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 4 8 6 - 6 1 3 4 ( 0 1 ) 0 0 0 8 7 - 0
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view that does not lie within the conventional discourse of “development” and “modernization.” The purpose of this paper is to give a brief introduction to what may be identified as a postcolonial position in economics. The paper hopes to contribute to creating this space for an(other) voice, without which the arguments raised here would not be heard.1 My goal is not to put forward an “alternative, non-Western economic theory,” but to contemplate some of the deep premises of economics that are normally taken to be of universal appeal and applicability. This contemplation hopes to open up new horizons and possibilities for cultures and communities that have been historically dominated and contemporarily marginalized, for example African and indigenous (“fourth world”) communities, and whose patterns of material provisioning and cultural aspirations may not be well accommodated within current economic paradigms. Given the above preamble, it is necessary to stress that this work remains at the elementary stage of bringing to surface assumptions that undergird economics (as a discipline derivative from a much more foundational philosophy, i.e. Western tradition). It is far from presenting a developed body of analysis. Moreover, being a metacultural critique, this paper necessarily takes a panoramic view of economics that appears to gloss over its particular theories, fields, and different schools of thought, and focuses on what these share vis-a`-vis the “nonmodern.” Indeed, from a conventional economic perspective the paper may seem to have little to do with economics because it engages questions that lie at the pre-beginnings of the discipline, and situates itself at the intersection of economics and philosophy, undertaking a rigorous reflection on profound questions rather than dealing with particular policy problems or technical issues. This panoramic look should not be taken to imply that economics is homogeneous or simplistic. The theme of this essay is the problem of modernity for postcolonial peoples and cultures, focusing on the notion of “history” and its manifestation in economics through the idea of development. In the second portion of the essay, I discuss briefly the relation to postmodernism and the implications of a non-modernist analysis. The essay draws on the field of Postcolonial Studies that has emerged and rapidly expanded in the past two decades.2
1
For other literature engaged in the same effort see Zein-Elabdin (1998, 1999) and Charusheela (1999, 2000). Two of these contributions will appear in a forthcoming volume Postcolonialism Meets Economics, edited by Zein-Elabdin and Charusheela. The Union for Radical Political Economics (URPE) has been generously hospitable in giving forum to these contributions through annual meetings. 2 The term postcolonial refers both to contemporary societies formerly colonized by Europeans and currently subordinate to them within the international politico-economic hierarchy, and to a certain critique of the colonial European experience and the current ascendancy of Northern industrialized countries. Postcolonial critique originated in literary criticism with the work of Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, and Homi Bhabha. The pathbreaking arguments of the three authors can be found in Orientalism (Said 1978), Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (1988), and Bhabha’s essays “The Other Question” and “Signs Taken for Wonders,” which are contained in his volume The Location of Culture (1994). Also see Zein-Elabdin (1999).
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1. The others’ view of “modernity” Modernity is a vast and contentious term.3 In convention, it has been used as a synonym for the Western historical experience of approximately the past three centuries, signifying not merely the historical era but all that is associated with it, its philosophy, culture, and Enlightenment configuration of “reality,” extrapolated to cover the entire range of other human societies. It has rarely been used as a description of a general state of novelty or an undifferentiated self-consciousness of contemporaneity (or “attitude toward the present”) outside of Western culture.4 In this paper, hence, I speak specifically of European modernity. The engagement of postcolonial thinkers with this modernity, both from inside and outside of Western academy, has been a long and complex one, and may amount to an excessive— perhaps unavoidable—pre-occupation with it. The excessive pre-occupation with modernity stems partly from its historical repercussions, that is, the encounter with colonialism and economic and cultural domination in all its forms, whether effective eradication of indigenous populations (e.g., North America and Australia); settler and non-settler colonization in Africa, Asia, and Latin America; or episodes such as the Atlantic slave trade. This, of course, has been widely acknowledged, among other phenomena, as the “dark side” of the Enlightenment, and underlies much of the postmodern disenchantment with modernity (Foucault, for instance, 1979, and Bhabha 1994). Situating the postcolonial in relation to modernity has been perhaps the most difficult enterprise. This difficulty can be seen in the loss for words among many authors to articulate a vocabulary outside the parameters set by modern European discourse. Bhabha, for example, uses the expressions “otherwise than modernity” and “contra-modernity” (1994: 6). My use of the term “non-modernist” here is no exception. The difficulty of speaking outside the language of modernity originates in that modern Europe (to include European settlements worldwide) has largely succeeded, through material/discursive processes, in establishing a strong claim on “history” and, therefrom, all facets of human experience: reason/rationality, meaning, development, and of course modernity, appropriating all of these as uniquely European.5 Postcolonial thinkers themselves fall into this habit by ceding to modern Europe
3
Terms such as modernity, tradition, Western, or postcolonial are all to be understood as problematized by the hybridity and flux of cultures and by the lack of closure on all categories. Here the terms are used as ideal typical rather than accurately descriptive. 4 Foucault (1984) offers the notion of modernity as an “attitude” rather than a historical epoch, “a mode of relating to contemporary reality; a voluntary choice made by certain people; in the end, a way of thinking and feeling” (39). He suggests that this understanding allows one to see how and why modernity as a phenomenon has survived to the present. 5 See for example Gunnar Myrdal’s (1968) discussion of the “modernization ideals” for development, where he appropriates not merely rationality but also honesty and integrity as attributes of the modern industrial man. The place of socialism is not tackled separately here, but socialism in Eastern Europe and the former USSR may be regarded as a contemporary growth of the Western experience to the extent that it is grounded in industrybased material accumulation.
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the majority of what could possibly be generically human and open to different cultural interpretations.6 The imperial success of modern Europe, inseparable from its rise as an industrial power, laid the ground for its claim on history. This claim represents the discursive process that accompanied, and was perhaps necessary for, the rationalization and ideological purchase of modernity’s project of universal dominion. Thus, from a postcolonial perspective, the problem of modernist discourse lies not only in that it is centered around a linear, determinist interpretation of history, the (gendered) triumph of “reason,” and exceeding faith in an objective knowledge, but in claiming history itself for the European experience, and succeeding in defining the terms of “reality” and categories of discourse to the point where none could exist outside of its theoretical framework. In this framework, modernity became a condition inherently superior to age and tradition, with tradition being not the past of modern Europe, but also the present of non-European societies and cultures. I wish to rely here on the work of Dipesh Chakrabarty (1997), one of the Subaltern Studies writers, to illustrate the problem of the European claim on history.7 Chakrabarty is particularly concerned with the problem of the nation state, but his argument applies with equal precision to other categories of modernist discourse. He takes on the practice of historicism (interpreting history as a process that unfolds according to certain, immutable, and knowable a priori laws). So far such laws have been supplied by Western philosophy (for example, Hegel and Marx among a long line of less significant figures). Chakrabarty argues that historiography essentially entails a uniform application of European theories of history to all societies. Accordingly, history is perceived as “something which has already happened elsewhere [in Europe], and which is to be reproduced, mechanically or otherwise, with a local content” (Ibid: 283). He goes on to show that this reproduction has, in fact, been faithfully carried out by “third world” historians and social scientists who are firmly caught up in the theoretical framework of “Europe as history.” “Economics” and “history” are the knowledge forms that correspond to the two major institutions that the rise (and later universalization) of the bourgeois order has given to the world—the capitalist mode of production and the nation state. A critical historian has no choice but to negotiate this knowledge. She or he therefore needs to understand the state on its own terms, that is, in terms of its self-justificatory narratives of citizenship and modernity. Since these themes will always take us back to the universalist propositions of “modern” (European) political philosophy— even the “practical” science of economics that now seems “natural” to our constructions of world systems is (theoretically) rooted in the ideas of ethics in eighteenth-century Europe—a third-world historian is condemned to knowing “Europe” as the original home of the “modern,” . . . . Thus follows the everyday subalternity of nonWestern histories (Ibid: 285– 6).
6 For example, Escobar (1995), quoting the Peruvian author Anı´bal Quijano, writes, “Latin Americans ‘have to stop being what we have not been, what we will never be, and what we do not have to be,’ namely, (strictly) modern” (221). 7 The Subaltern Studies Collective is a group of historians from India who since the early 1980s have embarked on a project of rewriting Indian history from a post-nationalist stance. See Guha (1997).
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The captivity of postcolonial historians in the conceptual framework of Europe-as-history is reflected in what Chakrabarty calls “the paradox of third-world social science.” The paradox is that Western theories, written “in ignorance of the majority of humankind—that is, those living in non-Western cultures” (265), seem to illuminate many aspects of those societies for “third world” social scientists and “eminently” help in understanding their social problems. Chakrabarty finds the answer to his paradox to be that the reality illuminated by Western theories is present only in the minds of those social scientists who, having been thoroughly trained in Western tradition through the process of colonialism, share the European interpretations of history. Much more, they have accepted the negative characterization of their own cultures as permanently inadequate and undeveloped. In the classical Marxian interpretation, for instance, the British colonization of India—although condemned—was tolerated as the necessary evil of “modernization” and the transition to socialism.8 The modern European claim on history (interpreted as a teleological universalization of a particular rationality) finds its expression in contemporary economic analysis through the notion of development: namely, the form of large scale, material accumulation associated primarily with Western societies. In the 20th century postwar period, a tremendous investment in economic analysis as well as industrial projects was undertaken, and the notion of development has since been instituted in the binarism of developed/un(der/less)developed.9 The idea of development is, of course, deeply rooted in Western philosophical thought (see, for instance, Bury 1932; Zein-Elabdin 1998), but the imperative of its extension to other world regions draws particularly on the notion of universal history that emerged in eighteenth century Europe, and served to support the Enlightenment vision of progress by establishing universal laws according to which history unfolds. In Idea of a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View, Kant proposed a history in which nature brings about the development of all mankind (Teggart 1949). Similarly, Turgot in Discourses on Universal History envisioned the human race as one whole moving towards greater perfection (Bury 1932). Contemporary economic analysis carried on this tradition. The classical Marxian theory in this regard has just been mentioned, and postmodern Marxian economists (e.g., Amariglio and Ruccio 1994) have already identified its historicism. Neoclassical economics, on the other hand, lacking a formalized theory of history, focused on individual “rationality” as the catalyst for development, set against the backdrop of a general stages-of-growth notion borrowed from classical economics. For example, in his influential—if now defunct—Stages of Economic Growth, Rostow (1960) deployed the notion of universal history to suggest that all societies followed the path of industrial Europe. Institutional economics did not rely on
8
In 1853, Marx wrote, “England, it is true, in causing a social revolution in Hindustan, was actuated only by the vilest interests, and was stupid in her manner of enforcing them. But that is not the question. The question is, can mankind fulfill its destiny without a fundamental revolution in the social state of Asia? If not, whatever may have been the crimes of England she was the unconscious tool of history in bringing about that revolution” (from “British Rule in India,” Marx 1974: 41). 9 Escobar (1995) gives an ethnography of development from the first World Bank mission in 1949 to the remarkable expansion of the field of development economics in the following decades.
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a teleological apprehension of historical change, but saw a path dependent co-evolution of technology and institutions. Nevertheless, its paradigmatic emphasis on the dynamic role of technological innovation lends itself to a bias towards industrialization as progress, and presents a constant tension with the role of culture in institutional economic analysis.10
2. Why a non-modernist discourse? The term non-modernist (rather than postmodernist) denotes an engagement with modernity from the subaltern position of its former colonies and marginalized others.11 What is most crucial from this position is that the modernity from which the postmodern departure might take place survives and currently exercises its premises, approaches, and material consequences for non-Western peoples and cultures. For postcolonial societies, the postmodern age has not meant a transcendence of European hegemony, to the same extent that it has not meant the end of economic exploitation and other capitalist processes in the industrialized world. Instead, many of these have expanded and accelerated through globalization and other “triumphs.” A non-modernist discourse questions totalizing narratives, teleological understandings of history, and essentialist interpretations of subjectivity, and doubts objectified and universalized “reason,” “truth,” “knowledge,” and “reality.” Having said that, it should not be inferred that postmodernist critique logically extends to express the predicaments of cultures that represent the “other” of European modernity. Yes, the foundational elements of modernity that have been exposed by postmodernist literature underlay the project of colonialism and, through it, they unfolded brutally before the eyes of the colonized. However, their consequences and meanings to those in the colonies are not necessarily the same as to those living on the imperial side of modernity. Indeed, a desire to subsume the postcolonial critique of economic and political domination within the postmodern umbrella would amount to turning the Other into the Same, which, of course, postmodernism refuses to do (During 1987). The problem of postcoloniality, rather than a loss of faith in the modern self, is the relentless sovereignty of European modernity, lived in the contemporary relationship between the formerly colonial and the now “postcolonial.” The physical end of the colonial era did not fundamentally alter this relationship. Colonialism was, almost smoothly, succeeded
10
This bias was exercised most forcefully in the work of Clarence Ayres (1962). Ayres claimed “[t]his [scientific] conception of truth and of human values generally is at variance with all tribal legends and all tribal authority; and since the technological revolution is itself irresistible, the arbitrary authority and irrational values of pre-scientific, pre-industrial cultures are doomed . . . . The only remaining alternative is that of intelligent, voluntary acceptance of the industrial way of life and all the values that go with it” (Foreword to The Theory of Economic Progress: xxiv–xxv). 11 Postcolonial discourse within Western academy has itself been enabled by the rise of postmodernism, and there is an extensive catalogue of comparisons between the two “posts.” See, for example, Williams and Chrisman (1994) and Bhabha (1994). Of course, the comparison to postmodernism is not unique to postcolonial thought; several schools of economics have positioned themselves in relation to or discussed the tensions within them created by postmodernist philosophy. See Hoksbergen (1994) and Amariglio and Ruccio (1994).
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by the project of development through which former colonies were to oversee the reproduction of modern Europe on their own terrain (Zein-Elabdin 1998).12 The project of development, from the standpoint of “to-be-developed” societies, represents a negative ontology, namely, a process that defines being by negation. The development discourse of the past half century theoretically negated the actual experiences of those societies on the premise that their present realities and world conceptions were a mere prelude to a more significant existence in the form of an industrial, materially affluent society.13 The ideas of development (as economic growth) and modernity (as industrialization) are some of the pre-analytic givens of economics, together with truth elements such as instrumental rationality and self-interest.14 This is no surprise since economics itself was born out of the culture of European Enlightenment and industrial revolution. However, there is still little appreciation of the nature of economics as culturally specific thought.15 Only recently, primarily through feminist and postmodernist critiques (e.g., Ferber and Nelson 1993; McCloskey 1985; Samuels 1990; Amariglio and Ruccio 1994), have the roots of economics in modern Western philosophy been brought to light. Even so, discussions of the philosophical foundations of economics are largely confined to methodological issues, e.g., McCloskey (1985), Klamer (1991), and Hausman (1994).16 As Amariglio and Ruccio (1994) have argued, McCloskey, whose work is sharply critical of modernism in economics, still left the content of the discipline untouched. It is the perception that economics is devoid of metaphysics (which McCloskey identified as one of the paramount features of modernist method) that presents an obstacle to recognizing its cultural character and genealogy. Rather than a set of self-contained postulates and “technical” definitions, economics is an integral part of a larger cultural episteme. From another (non-Western) cultural standpoint, whether one employs positivism or relies on rhetoric makes little difference.
12 For a most current example of the persistence of the modernization doctrine see the “human development” efforts led by Martha Nussbaum, particularly her (1995) meticulous, but chilling, construction of the criteria to be used in identifying what may be considered a “human life.” Also see Charusheela (2000). 13 Most post-colonial leaders and intellectuals consented. On the axiomatic attitude of African elites, for example, to the problem of development see Zein-Elabdin (1998). Tom Mboya, head of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, stated in 1967 “ Fortunately, it is not necessary to explain why these [African] countries must develop.” Cited in Zein-Elabdin (119). 14 The problem of rationality has been previously discussed by many (see, for example, Elster 1986 and Ma¨ki et al. 1993). It is sufficient to add here that both the emphasis on rationality and the particular definition assigned to it in economics are distinctly Western modernist. 15 Again, the older school of institutional economics seems to be an exception. For the institutionalist idea of the role of culture in economics, see Veblen’s “Why is Economics not an Evolutionary Science?” (1898), and more recently Mayhew’s “Culture: Core Concept Under Attack” (1987). 16 For example, Hausman and McPhearson argue that when combined with the assumption of self-interest and perfect knowledge, the theory of rationality leads to the identification of well-being with preference satisfaction which, they believe, has certain undesirable moral implications (Hausman 1994). However, they make no attempt to interrogate the concepts of rationality or self-interest themselves.
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3. Contours The contours of a non-modernist discourse contain the interpretation of modern Europe as a historical, cultural site, which should eventually open up a space for economic processes and rationalities that are not founded on particularly Western notions, such as individual welfare maximization, labor, or productivity. This space is contingent on reclaiming an understanding of history as an incomplete and ungraspable lived experience by multiples of communities worldwide. This understanding requires dismantling the Hegelian notion of a “capability of history,” and apprehending history itself as a process of cultural evolution.17 The name that Chakrabarty (1997) suggests for this project is “provincializing Europe,” which I borrow here at the minimal level of a discursive interpretation of European modernity as a tale confined in space and time rather than a natural, prototypical state. Chakrabarty is very much aware of the impossibility of this project (“[t]he project of provincializing ‘Europe’ refers to a history that does not yet exist,” Ibid.: 286) since European modernity, through colonialism and contemporary hegemony, has in factual terms grown beyond its “historical” and “cultural” bounds. Provincializing Europe, then, should best be taken as a metaphor for a discourse in which modernity is no longer European modernity, and modernity itself is properly identified as a tradition. To place this abstract notion within the discipline of economics means to allow for the possibility that industrial and materially affluent society is the tradition of Western modernity, which may be neither inevitable nor desirable for all cultures. Provincializing Europe does not mean an atavistic return to ancient customs or a rejection of Western wisdom. It merely refers to a call for understanding economics as a culturally bound practice. The fact that economics is culture bound matters, of course, to the postcolonial perspective. Its further significance lies in making possible the recognition that the mainstream model in economics is itself representative of a particular social/cultural context within Western society.18 Further elaboration of this point, however, must be reserved for future work.
References Amariglio, J., & Ruccio, D. F. (1994). Postmodernism, Marxism, and the critique of modern economic thought. Rethinking Marxism, 7 (3), 7–35. Ayres, C. E. (1962). The theory of economic progress: a study of the fundamentals of economic development and cultural change. New York: Schocken Books [1944]. Bhabha, H. K. (1994). The location of culture. London: Routledge. Bury, J. B. (1932). The idea of progress: an inquiry into its origin and growth. New York: The Macmillan Company.
17 Hegel’s philosophy of history is well-known. In it, he speculated that “[t]hose peoples are alone capable of History, . . . who have arrived at that period of development at which individuals comprehend their own existence as independent, i.e., possess self-consciousness.” To him, “Hindoos,” for instance, were “incapable of writing History. All that happens is dissipated in their minds into confused dreams” (1956: 162). 18 Vernon Dixon (1970) has made this argument with respect to African-Americans. More recently, feminist economists have highlighted the same problem in the case of gender (Ferber and Nelson 1993).
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