Recently, Charles Buxton spoke with Jackie Jacobsen from Central Asia Newswire regarding his new title The Struggle for Civil Society in Central Asia. Read Buxton's Interview from Newswire now.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Monday, August 8, 2011
Confronting Microfinance Set to Release This September
Beginning with the pioneering work of Dr Muhammad Yunus in 1970s Bangladesh, the concept of microfinance (more accurately ‘microcredit’) very soon captured the hearts and minds of a generation. Microfinance seemed such a blindingly obvious idea: provide tiny microloans to the poor and you will allow them to establish or expand a very simple income-generating activity, with the additional income that they would thenceforth earn helping them to escape poverty. The heady rhetoric and seductive vision put forward by Dr Yunus along these lines was more than enough to get the international development community to stand up and take notice. By the 1990s, microfinance had become the most popular anti-poverty program of all. Importantly, the spread of microfinance was usefully consolidated by a steadily growing number of impact evaluations undertaken by the microfinance institutions themselves and by their supporters in the international development community, all of which, inevitably, appeared to confirm that microfinance was indeed having an amazing effect upon the poor and poor communities. It also greatly helped to sell microfinance to the general public when its cause began to be taken up by a raft of influential individuals - Hollywood stars, CEOs, Western European and Middle Eastern Royalty, major sports personalities, high-profile politicians (notably Bill and Hilary Clinton) and self-styled ‘trouble-shooting’ economists, such as Jeffrey Sachs and Hernando de Soto.
However, thirty years into the microfinance movement and it is now becoming quite clear that the seductive vision elaborated so skilfully by Dr Yunus and others has turned out to be nothing more than a mirage. The evidence for this is now all around us and it is overwhelming, even to long-standing supporters of the microfinance model. And even though many microfinance supporters and institutions are desperately finding new goals for microfinance to address – notably ‘universal financial inclusion’ – or else have begun to stress the importance of other aspects of microfinance rather than just the original core idea of microcredit (e.g., micro-savings, micro-insurance, micro-leasing), it is perfectly clear that a major paradigm shift in development policy is well underway – that is, the original narrow Grameen Bank concept of ‘microcredit’ is now effectively dead in the water.
Consider first the problems that have arisen in Bangladesh, the ‘spiritual home’ of microfinance. We can do no better than to reflect upon its economic and social impact in the location it was first introduced in the late 1970s and thereafter rapidly proliferated; in and around the famed village of Jobra near Chittagong. If Yunus is to be believed, then here more than anywhere else in Bangladesh we should expect to see major poverty reduction gains registered this last thirty years. But, it is not like that at all. Instead, endemic poverty and deprivation still very much persist in Jobra today. Put simply, local demand for the simple items and services produced using a microloan does not automatically elastically stretch to ensure that everyone starting a new microenterprise will also find enough customers to earn an income and survive. Just because one basket-maker can find enough local buyers for her product and so survive, this does not mean that everyone else who then chooses to make baskets will enjoy the same outcome. Economists call this basic error the ‘fallacy of composition’, and it is this that Dr Yunus fundamentally misunderstood when formulating his plans for microfinance.
The generally finite level of local demand means that the constant new entry of ‘poverty-push’ microenterprises generally reduces the margins, wages and profits of all market participants, thanks to generally lower turnover per microenterprise. Local prices for microenterprise outputs are also depressed because of the additional (but largely unnecessary) local supply. These factors are, of course, why most existing microenterprises when asked about what would help them in their micro-business, all too often reply ‘very much less competition’. The typical snapshot of village life is that of many traders and retailers sat alongside each other waiting for hours on end for the few customers able to buy their wares. Local demand constraints are also one of the reasons why a very high percentage of new microenterprises in Jobra, and right across Bangladesh, quickly fail – they simply can’t find any customers (at least at a price commensurate with basic survival). Micro-business failure is very important to consider because it all too often plunges the hapless micro-entrepreneur into irretrievable poverty and deprivation. This is especially the case if they have had to sell their land or housing in order to repay the microloan, as is very often expected of them. Finally, there is now a serious new social problem to deal with in Jobra - personal over-indebtedness. In the last few years the increasingly commercialised Grameen Bank and its competitors have taken to hard-selling microloans in order to build and maintain market share and profitability, and as a direct result far too many poor individuals have wound up in possession of a bundle of unrepayable microloans.
Crucially, Bangladesh as a whole stands out as having been almost entirely left behind by its rapidly growing East Asian ‘tiger’ economy neighbours. This is not a coincidence, but a result of policy choice. By and large, the successful ‘tiger’ economies all opted to deploy a pro-active, subsidised, policy-based but nevertheless well-managed local financial model radically different to the Grameen Bank microfinance model that today dominates in Bangladesh. Simplifying, the heterodox East Asian local financial model is marked out by the provision of affordable financial support for scaled-up formal sector small businesses and family farms that can efficiently link up with other sectors of the economy (i.e., with state companies, large private businesses, marketing cooperatives). Consider just the experience of Vietnam. It is well known that in the 1990s Vietnamese government officials checked out the Grameen Bank with a view to replicating it in their own country. But they came home disenchanted, and decided instead to establish the Grameen Bank model’s mirror opposite. Thank goodness they made this choice, one might say, because in less than twenty years Vietnam’s heterodox local financial system has played an important role in helping propel the country out of abject poverty and into near middle income status.
Turning to the very many developing countries, regions and localities that have also deployed the Grameen Bank microfinance model, they appear to have fared no better than Bangladesh. Effectively diverting their scarce financial resources into the tiniest of informal microenterprises, these countries have generally seen little economic or social benefit over the longer term and, indeed, most eventually ended up having to deal with a destructive sub-prime-style ‘microfinance meltdown’ scenario. Bolivia, Mexico, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Morocco and, most stunning of all, the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh in late 2010, all are now viewed as examples of how microfinance can seriously destabilise and undermine the local economic and social structures of most benefit to the poor, not strengthen them.
Are the Western Balkans countries any different?
The Western Balkans is one of the regions where microfinance was most brought to bear under the pressure of the international development community. In the aftermath of the collapse of the former Yugoslavia and the vicious civil war that ensued, microfinance was seen by the international development community to be one of the main recovery policies. It would supposedly address the region’s most pressing issues - poverty, inequality, exclusion and rising unemployment. Much was expected of it, especially in seriously devastated Bosnia. Many programs got started using large amounts of international reconstruction aid. Very soon the main international development agencies and key individuals were touting the apparent initial progress as indicative of a major boost to recovery and reconstruction.
However, from the vantage point of more than fifteen years of experience on the ground, our new book out in September with Kumarian Press - ‘Confronting Microfinance: Undermining Sustainable Development’ – offers a very sobering estimation of the ultimate sustainable impact of microfinance. Put together by an almost uniquely experienced group of academic economists, enterprise development advisors, policy consultants, and high-level government officials (including several previous government Ministers), the general message that emerges from the book is that the hype and PR surrounding the microfinance model in the region simply does not reflect the reality on the ground. Going further, the accusation is raised that the microfinance model has actually been a major contributory factor in what is now increasingly accepted as a failed recovery in the region.
The book outlines the most pressing problems directly or indirectly precipitated by the microfinance model since 1995. Some contributors see the overarching problem to be the channelling of financial support to the very simplest of microenterprises, a trajectory that has manifestly accelerated the primitivisation, deindustrialisation and informalisation of the average local economy. In many of Serbia’s regions, for instance, a growing number of local communities are swiftly losing all touch with the formal sector, and are becoming resigned to a future of informal, non-tax-paying microenterprises servicing what little local demand exists. In Bosnia, the formal sector has also been ‘crowded out’ by this new microfinance-induced informalisation trajectory, especially the small-scale industry and industrial services sectors that history shows often provides the most number of sustainable and well-paying local jobs.
Another theme touched upon by virtually all of the chapters is the huge opportunity cost represented by the lack of funding for the crucial SME sector. Virtually all of the chapter contributors were at pains to emphasise that their respective SME sectors have been disadvantaged because of the effective diversion of scarce funds (savings and remittances) into the least productive informal sector, and so away from potentially more productive - and desperately needed - formal small and medium businesses. The authors all argue that such a process of financial intermediation cannot be an efficient economic development trajectory for society, no matter how profitable it is for the individual financial institutions directly involved. In fact, it took the global financial crisis to finally shake governments and the international development community into urgently providing major new programs of financial support for the SME sector. For profit-maximisation reasons, of course, the private commercial banks were simply unwilling to engage with the risky and low return SME sector, much preferring the high and relatively risk-free profits to be made by hugely upping the supply of microloans to poor households. Indeed, a noted feature brought out by several of the chapters is that the commercial banks have not been lending to enterprises of any size, but have jumped into providing simple consumption loans to households right across the Western Balkans. The result is that many local communities have been artificially pumped up with consumer demand fuelled by such household microloans, but only for things to fall apart later on when these household microloans were retired, called in or defaulted on. A great many towns across the region are now pockmarked with only recently renovated but now hastily abandoned stores and warehouses, a testament to the temporary uptick in local consumer demand facilitated by simple household microloans, but at the cost of wasted resources into the longer term.
In agriculture, several chapters outline why only the most primitive and least sustainable agricultural operations have been supported, leaving the much more efficient family farms and agricultural cooperative structures to go without any serious form of affordable financial support. The Croatia case illustrates this problem well. Several of the microfinance institutions entered into providing support for the proliferation of ‘two-cow farms’, thinking that they were doing some good in a particularly hard-hit post-war region. But this was entirely the wrong sort of support for a recovering dairy industry, and it resulted in nothing more than a wasteful process of entry and exit, and it also depressed raw milk prices thanks to the inevitable local over-supply. Several of the chapters, including a special chapter on gender and microfinance, went on to deal with the widely celebrated issue of gender empowerment. While the websites of the main microfinance institutions typically display their own ‘role models’ of success, the conclusion reached is that real evidence of ‘gender empowerment’ is simply not there. Indeed, with one of the most high-profile gender-driven microfinance institutions - Žene za Žene (Women for Women) - now having to cope with a flood of delinquent women clients, the conclusion is that the wisdom (not to say morality) of blithely encouraging poor women to supply petty items and services to already vastly over-supplied local markets needs to be very strongly challenged. Finally, the book also touches upon the impact of the global financial crisis. We find very similar sub-prime style misadventures in several countries. However, thanks to its uniquely damaging microfinance ‘boom to bust’, it is the people and government of Bosnia that have by far the most daunting set of microfinance-related problems to first overcome before they can get their economy and society on to a road leading to sustainable economic and social development.
All told, ‘Confronting Microfinance’ argues that the microfinance model has probably been one of the most damaging of the many neoliberal economic and social policies to have been implemented in the Western Balkans after 1995. These largely negative experiences therefore resonate with what is being uncovered in almost all of the developing countries in recent years, as I noted earlier, which is that microfinance simply doesn’t work.
_________________
Milford Bateman is the editor of ‘Confronting Microfinance: Undermining Sustainable Development’ which comes out with Kumarian Press in September 2012. He is also the author of ‘Why Doesn’t Microfinance Work? The Destructive Rise of Local Neoliberalism’ that was released by Zed Books in 2010. Dr Bateman is a freelance consultant on local economic development and also, since 2005, A Visiting Professor of Economics at Juraj Dobrila University at Pula, Croatia.
However, thirty years into the microfinance movement and it is now becoming quite clear that the seductive vision elaborated so skilfully by Dr Yunus and others has turned out to be nothing more than a mirage. The evidence for this is now all around us and it is overwhelming, even to long-standing supporters of the microfinance model. And even though many microfinance supporters and institutions are desperately finding new goals for microfinance to address – notably ‘universal financial inclusion’ – or else have begun to stress the importance of other aspects of microfinance rather than just the original core idea of microcredit (e.g., micro-savings, micro-insurance, micro-leasing), it is perfectly clear that a major paradigm shift in development policy is well underway – that is, the original narrow Grameen Bank concept of ‘microcredit’ is now effectively dead in the water.
Consider first the problems that have arisen in Bangladesh, the ‘spiritual home’ of microfinance. We can do no better than to reflect upon its economic and social impact in the location it was first introduced in the late 1970s and thereafter rapidly proliferated; in and around the famed village of Jobra near Chittagong. If Yunus is to be believed, then here more than anywhere else in Bangladesh we should expect to see major poverty reduction gains registered this last thirty years. But, it is not like that at all. Instead, endemic poverty and deprivation still very much persist in Jobra today. Put simply, local demand for the simple items and services produced using a microloan does not automatically elastically stretch to ensure that everyone starting a new microenterprise will also find enough customers to earn an income and survive. Just because one basket-maker can find enough local buyers for her product and so survive, this does not mean that everyone else who then chooses to make baskets will enjoy the same outcome. Economists call this basic error the ‘fallacy of composition’, and it is this that Dr Yunus fundamentally misunderstood when formulating his plans for microfinance.
The generally finite level of local demand means that the constant new entry of ‘poverty-push’ microenterprises generally reduces the margins, wages and profits of all market participants, thanks to generally lower turnover per microenterprise. Local prices for microenterprise outputs are also depressed because of the additional (but largely unnecessary) local supply. These factors are, of course, why most existing microenterprises when asked about what would help them in their micro-business, all too often reply ‘very much less competition’. The typical snapshot of village life is that of many traders and retailers sat alongside each other waiting for hours on end for the few customers able to buy their wares. Local demand constraints are also one of the reasons why a very high percentage of new microenterprises in Jobra, and right across Bangladesh, quickly fail – they simply can’t find any customers (at least at a price commensurate with basic survival). Micro-business failure is very important to consider because it all too often plunges the hapless micro-entrepreneur into irretrievable poverty and deprivation. This is especially the case if they have had to sell their land or housing in order to repay the microloan, as is very often expected of them. Finally, there is now a serious new social problem to deal with in Jobra - personal over-indebtedness. In the last few years the increasingly commercialised Grameen Bank and its competitors have taken to hard-selling microloans in order to build and maintain market share and profitability, and as a direct result far too many poor individuals have wound up in possession of a bundle of unrepayable microloans.
Crucially, Bangladesh as a whole stands out as having been almost entirely left behind by its rapidly growing East Asian ‘tiger’ economy neighbours. This is not a coincidence, but a result of policy choice. By and large, the successful ‘tiger’ economies all opted to deploy a pro-active, subsidised, policy-based but nevertheless well-managed local financial model radically different to the Grameen Bank microfinance model that today dominates in Bangladesh. Simplifying, the heterodox East Asian local financial model is marked out by the provision of affordable financial support for scaled-up formal sector small businesses and family farms that can efficiently link up with other sectors of the economy (i.e., with state companies, large private businesses, marketing cooperatives). Consider just the experience of Vietnam. It is well known that in the 1990s Vietnamese government officials checked out the Grameen Bank with a view to replicating it in their own country. But they came home disenchanted, and decided instead to establish the Grameen Bank model’s mirror opposite. Thank goodness they made this choice, one might say, because in less than twenty years Vietnam’s heterodox local financial system has played an important role in helping propel the country out of abject poverty and into near middle income status.
Turning to the very many developing countries, regions and localities that have also deployed the Grameen Bank microfinance model, they appear to have fared no better than Bangladesh. Effectively diverting their scarce financial resources into the tiniest of informal microenterprises, these countries have generally seen little economic or social benefit over the longer term and, indeed, most eventually ended up having to deal with a destructive sub-prime-style ‘microfinance meltdown’ scenario. Bolivia, Mexico, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Morocco and, most stunning of all, the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh in late 2010, all are now viewed as examples of how microfinance can seriously destabilise and undermine the local economic and social structures of most benefit to the poor, not strengthen them.
Are the Western Balkans countries any different?
The Western Balkans is one of the regions where microfinance was most brought to bear under the pressure of the international development community. In the aftermath of the collapse of the former Yugoslavia and the vicious civil war that ensued, microfinance was seen by the international development community to be one of the main recovery policies. It would supposedly address the region’s most pressing issues - poverty, inequality, exclusion and rising unemployment. Much was expected of it, especially in seriously devastated Bosnia. Many programs got started using large amounts of international reconstruction aid. Very soon the main international development agencies and key individuals were touting the apparent initial progress as indicative of a major boost to recovery and reconstruction.
However, from the vantage point of more than fifteen years of experience on the ground, our new book out in September with Kumarian Press - ‘Confronting Microfinance: Undermining Sustainable Development’ – offers a very sobering estimation of the ultimate sustainable impact of microfinance. Put together by an almost uniquely experienced group of academic economists, enterprise development advisors, policy consultants, and high-level government officials (including several previous government Ministers), the general message that emerges from the book is that the hype and PR surrounding the microfinance model in the region simply does not reflect the reality on the ground. Going further, the accusation is raised that the microfinance model has actually been a major contributory factor in what is now increasingly accepted as a failed recovery in the region.
The book outlines the most pressing problems directly or indirectly precipitated by the microfinance model since 1995. Some contributors see the overarching problem to be the channelling of financial support to the very simplest of microenterprises, a trajectory that has manifestly accelerated the primitivisation, deindustrialisation and informalisation of the average local economy. In many of Serbia’s regions, for instance, a growing number of local communities are swiftly losing all touch with the formal sector, and are becoming resigned to a future of informal, non-tax-paying microenterprises servicing what little local demand exists. In Bosnia, the formal sector has also been ‘crowded out’ by this new microfinance-induced informalisation trajectory, especially the small-scale industry and industrial services sectors that history shows often provides the most number of sustainable and well-paying local jobs.
Another theme touched upon by virtually all of the chapters is the huge opportunity cost represented by the lack of funding for the crucial SME sector. Virtually all of the chapter contributors were at pains to emphasise that their respective SME sectors have been disadvantaged because of the effective diversion of scarce funds (savings and remittances) into the least productive informal sector, and so away from potentially more productive - and desperately needed - formal small and medium businesses. The authors all argue that such a process of financial intermediation cannot be an efficient economic development trajectory for society, no matter how profitable it is for the individual financial institutions directly involved. In fact, it took the global financial crisis to finally shake governments and the international development community into urgently providing major new programs of financial support for the SME sector. For profit-maximisation reasons, of course, the private commercial banks were simply unwilling to engage with the risky and low return SME sector, much preferring the high and relatively risk-free profits to be made by hugely upping the supply of microloans to poor households. Indeed, a noted feature brought out by several of the chapters is that the commercial banks have not been lending to enterprises of any size, but have jumped into providing simple consumption loans to households right across the Western Balkans. The result is that many local communities have been artificially pumped up with consumer demand fuelled by such household microloans, but only for things to fall apart later on when these household microloans were retired, called in or defaulted on. A great many towns across the region are now pockmarked with only recently renovated but now hastily abandoned stores and warehouses, a testament to the temporary uptick in local consumer demand facilitated by simple household microloans, but at the cost of wasted resources into the longer term.
In agriculture, several chapters outline why only the most primitive and least sustainable agricultural operations have been supported, leaving the much more efficient family farms and agricultural cooperative structures to go without any serious form of affordable financial support. The Croatia case illustrates this problem well. Several of the microfinance institutions entered into providing support for the proliferation of ‘two-cow farms’, thinking that they were doing some good in a particularly hard-hit post-war region. But this was entirely the wrong sort of support for a recovering dairy industry, and it resulted in nothing more than a wasteful process of entry and exit, and it also depressed raw milk prices thanks to the inevitable local over-supply. Several of the chapters, including a special chapter on gender and microfinance, went on to deal with the widely celebrated issue of gender empowerment. While the websites of the main microfinance institutions typically display their own ‘role models’ of success, the conclusion reached is that real evidence of ‘gender empowerment’ is simply not there. Indeed, with one of the most high-profile gender-driven microfinance institutions - Žene za Žene (Women for Women) - now having to cope with a flood of delinquent women clients, the conclusion is that the wisdom (not to say morality) of blithely encouraging poor women to supply petty items and services to already vastly over-supplied local markets needs to be very strongly challenged. Finally, the book also touches upon the impact of the global financial crisis. We find very similar sub-prime style misadventures in several countries. However, thanks to its uniquely damaging microfinance ‘boom to bust’, it is the people and government of Bosnia that have by far the most daunting set of microfinance-related problems to first overcome before they can get their economy and society on to a road leading to sustainable economic and social development.
All told, ‘Confronting Microfinance’ argues that the microfinance model has probably been one of the most damaging of the many neoliberal economic and social policies to have been implemented in the Western Balkans after 1995. These largely negative experiences therefore resonate with what is being uncovered in almost all of the developing countries in recent years, as I noted earlier, which is that microfinance simply doesn’t work.
_________________
Milford Bateman is the editor of ‘Confronting Microfinance: Undermining Sustainable Development’ which comes out with Kumarian Press in September 2012. He is also the author of ‘Why Doesn’t Microfinance Work? The Destructive Rise of Local Neoliberalism’ that was released by Zed Books in 2010. Dr Bateman is a freelance consultant on local economic development and also, since 2005, A Visiting Professor of Economics at Juraj Dobrila University at Pula, Croatia.
Monday, August 1, 2011
Seeing through Transparency
In the July 25th edition of The New Yorker there is a profile of Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, the world’s biggest hedge fund. Dalio prides himself on creating in Bridgewater, a culture of “radical transparency.” Among the rules of radical transparency in Bridgewater is that face to face encounters are encouraged and behind the back discussions are frowned upon. The goal is to create an organization where there are “no ego barriers, no emotional reactions to mistakes.” There is an implicit linkage between the presumed openness of radical transparency and accountability and organizational effectiveness. As depicted in the magazine article, Bridegwater sounds creepy to me, evoking images of brainwashing, the Cultural Revolution, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but it does stress one of the buzzwords in development discourse that is examined cogently in the Practical Action book Deconstructing Development that is distributed by Stylus.
In his essay on transparency, Jonathan Fox questions the assumption that transparency generates accountability and vice versa. As he notes, transparency mobilizes the power of shame, and truth and openness do not always lead to justice. Fox concludes that the real questions to ask are what kinds of transparency lead to what kinds of accountability and under what conditions. As Jenny Pearson observes in her recent KP book, Creative Capacity Development, her study of her work on capacity building (another development buzzword) for a Cambodia NGO, the historical and cultural contexts in which transparency is constructed are extremely important.
How would you define transparency and in what ways do your organizations promote or hinder transparency? What is the role of transparency in development?
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
It was just another Manic Monday
I doubt anyone truly likes Mondays. After a relaxing weekend - what's to enjoy about waking up at 6:00 A.M., all to stuff a bagel down your throat, throw on some wrinkled clothes and get in the car and rush to work? Mondays - I could do without them.
Do I sound all too bitter? Maybe I am. But first, give me a chance to explain myself. I never minded Mondays. Honestly, not until yesterday when it finally happened...
Yesterday morning carried on without any complaints. I ate breakfast, put on decent clothes, and hopped into my car with a full tank of gas. But, as I cruised down the highway -with only two exits to go, I might add - I couldn't help (a.k.a. didn't have a choice) but to notice the dancing lights behind me. Yes, I finally got my first speeding ticket. I suppose I didn't make a good enough case because the paperwork is waiting for me back home.
Sure, I suppose it's my fault for speeding (or at least getting caught), but I really didn't need that. Money is tight for everyone, and I am no exception. I spent the majority of yesterday disappointed with myself and thought about all of the people who are struggling to make ends meet and would love more money. For me, the State of Virginia will get their money this time; but what if one day I can't make ends meet? And, even though I know I will be fine today, all I could do yesterday was whine and think to myself "Where's my bailout money; and what is Washington, D.C. (my home away from home) really doing to help me in my time of need?"
I know I sound like a Free Market Purist, although I am not trying to sound like one at all. But, in times of desperation, don't we all wonder where or to whom the government's money is going and why we can't, as individuals, get freebies from the government so we will be okay in times of need? It may sound selfish, but money is the necessary-evil that keeps us alive and thriving.
Many wonder where our money is going and how we can obtain aid - especially in times of need. I suppose that we must first find out about aid assistance and then maybe Kumarian Press authors such as Steve Berkman can provide us with some blunt truths and insight into where our money is going. For example, in Berkman's book The World Bank and the Gods of Lending, he shows the mismanagement of aid assistance for programs that were meant to improve industries including healthcare and education as well as improve the status of the poor, but aren't. Berkman also exposes several fraud projects and declares that The World Bank's money is going to programs and thieves that are not deserving.
I don't know, but when I have one of those days when I feel like it couldn't get any worse, I tend to think about those that are struggling to make ends meet and think about what we can do to help those in need, and therefore help eachother. By reading up on finance and the aid industry, I think we can all learn how the aid industry works, where our money is going, and what we can do to help alleviate poverty and control theft. Maybe then we won't have to worry so much about economical issues and focus on more pleasant things.
Do I sound all too bitter? Maybe I am. But first, give me a chance to explain myself. I never minded Mondays. Honestly, not until yesterday when it finally happened...
Yesterday morning carried on without any complaints. I ate breakfast, put on decent clothes, and hopped into my car with a full tank of gas. But, as I cruised down the highway -with only two exits to go, I might add - I couldn't help (a.k.a. didn't have a choice) but to notice the dancing lights behind me. Yes, I finally got my first speeding ticket. I suppose I didn't make a good enough case because the paperwork is waiting for me back home.
Sure, I suppose it's my fault for speeding (or at least getting caught), but I really didn't need that. Money is tight for everyone, and I am no exception. I spent the majority of yesterday disappointed with myself and thought about all of the people who are struggling to make ends meet and would love more money. For me, the State of Virginia will get their money this time; but what if one day I can't make ends meet? And, even though I know I will be fine today, all I could do yesterday was whine and think to myself "Where's my bailout money; and what is Washington, D.C. (my home away from home) really doing to help me in my time of need?"
I know I sound like a Free Market Purist, although I am not trying to sound like one at all. But, in times of desperation, don't we all wonder where or to whom the government's money is going and why we can't, as individuals, get freebies from the government so we will be okay in times of need? It may sound selfish, but money is the necessary-evil that keeps us alive and thriving.
Many wonder where our money is going and how we can obtain aid - especially in times of need. I suppose that we must first find out about aid assistance and then maybe Kumarian Press authors such as Steve Berkman can provide us with some blunt truths and insight into where our money is going. For example, in Berkman's book The World Bank and the Gods of Lending, he shows the mismanagement of aid assistance for programs that were meant to improve industries including healthcare and education as well as improve the status of the poor, but aren't. Berkman also exposes several fraud projects and declares that The World Bank's money is going to programs and thieves that are not deserving.
I don't know, but when I have one of those days when I feel like it couldn't get any worse, I tend to think about those that are struggling to make ends meet and think about what we can do to help those in need, and therefore help eachother. By reading up on finance and the aid industry, I think we can all learn how the aid industry works, where our money is going, and what we can do to help alleviate poverty and control theft. Maybe then we won't have to worry so much about economical issues and focus on more pleasant things.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
A Friend’s Dinner with David Harvey and Reflections on Intellectuals, Progressive Publishing and Kumarian Press
At the post office the other day, I met a neighbor who works with the progressive nonprofit Solidago Foundation. She was all excited because she had just come back from New York City where she had dinner with David Harvey. In my opinion, David Harvey should be a household name, but in case his is a new name to you, Harvey is distinguished professor of anthropology at the CUNY Graduate Center.
His numerous books, heavily influenced by Marx and characterized by dialectical engagement with issues of social, political and economic injustice, are required reading for many graduate students in the social sciences. His online course on Volume One of Marx’s Capital is the best guide that I know to unraveling the complexities of this gargantuan and wonderful book.
Back to my friend: She hoped that she could encourage David to help spread the word about progressive organizations such as Solidago. Her comments got me to thinking about whom to enlist in progressive causes and the position of intellectuals (in the Gramscian sense of a distinctive class of individuals: clergy, philosophers, professors and teachers, etc. that engage in intellectual activity as a specific social, political and economic function) in these causes. I have heard David Harvey speak in both formal academic settings where his language (or “discourse,” rather) and argumentation is complex and “informal” gatherings where he communicates the same ideas with an awareness and sympathy to a “non-specialist” audience without condescension or dilution of his arguments and ideas. And he is a wonderful teacher: do watch his video on Marx!
But his books, marvelous and penetrating as they are, can be difficult, reinforcing the Marxian conviction found in Volume One of Capital that there “are no royal roads to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits.” This is not to denigrate the value or importance of Harvey’s work, but I doubt if many beyond the institutional venues where intellectual activity is commodified and exchanged would have the time and energy to read, say, Harvey’s The Limits of Capital, let alone in conjunction with Marx’s Capital itself!
In these times of economic, environmental and all manner of turmoil and conflict that indeed pose a threat to the very survival of the human race, the role of the intellectual and the role of Kumarian Press as a site for the transformation of intellectual labor into a commodity that both sustains and questions the structures, systems and practices that characterize our era is both paradoxical and critically important. Paradoxical in the sense that Kumarian Press is after all a capitalist business venture that has to be competitive and has to reap continued growth in terms of sales and profits in order to survive and important in the sense that Kumarian, in spite of its imbrications in the contradictions (and perpetuation, albeit slightly) of capitalism, seeks to provide viable alternatives that run counter to the interests and power of dominant groups in society.
One of my favorite passages in a David Harvey book comes early in his Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference.
While attending an academic conference on globalization with its tense and frequently hard to follow arguments afflicted by the radical and no doubt chic skepticism of poststructuralism, deconstruction, postmodernism and so on, he sat in on a conference of evangelical Christians that was taking place at his hotel. Harvey was struck by the enthusiasm of the crowd as they listened to the preachers and it was clear that what was happening at the evangelical conference was an “orchestration of emotions and passions rather than of intellect.” But it was an orchestration that was explicitly scored with expressions by the evangelical of foundational beliefs. Harvey wondered what would happen if he returned to the academic conference and spoke of foundational beliefs. He would probably be put out to pasture or seen as a dinosaur. While I believe, as does Harvey, that one should scrutinize all manner of foundational beliefs (including those of the secular Left), his experience with the evangelicals led him to a rather disturbing conclusion: “…when a political group armed with strong and unambiguous foundational beliefs confronts a group of doubting Thomases whose only foundational belief is skepticism towards all foundational beliefs, then it is rather easy to predict who will win.”
The tensions and imperatives of capitalist commerce, the necessity for global social, political and economic change, and encounters with the powerful armed with foundational beliefs: all these are familiar components of work at Kumarian. The bulk of my career at Kumarian has been during the bleak years of the second Bush administration. Talk about foundational beliefs and power! And as the evermore seemingly dysfunctional and rough beast that is the US government slouches towards Bethlehem (and possible default), I ask myself the same questions that I do every day: what is the role of Kumarian Press, what the role of its authors is and how to be “progressive” during periods of intolerance and myopia. I’ll conclude with another of my favorite David Harvey reflections, this one from The Limits of Capital as he gives me a valuable answer to my questions and hope. He writes about the need to project theory “into the fires of political practice” so that “new strategies for the sane reconstruction of society can emerge.” This statement I have emblazoned on my wall as it encapsulates for me the very essence and purpose of Kumarian Press and forms the framework for my editorial strategies. We need sanity now more than ever and Kumarian Press needs authors who can write for wide audiences with a diversity of experiences and knowledge so that the fires of political practice will burn brightly and guide us to, if not a promised land, at least one in which empathy, justice and equity and environmental preservation are primary concerns.
His numerous books, heavily influenced by Marx and characterized by dialectical engagement with issues of social, political and economic injustice, are required reading for many graduate students in the social sciences. His online course on Volume One of Marx’s Capital is the best guide that I know to unraveling the complexities of this gargantuan and wonderful book.
Back to my friend: She hoped that she could encourage David to help spread the word about progressive organizations such as Solidago. Her comments got me to thinking about whom to enlist in progressive causes and the position of intellectuals (in the Gramscian sense of a distinctive class of individuals: clergy, philosophers, professors and teachers, etc. that engage in intellectual activity as a specific social, political and economic function) in these causes. I have heard David Harvey speak in both formal academic settings where his language (or “discourse,” rather) and argumentation is complex and “informal” gatherings where he communicates the same ideas with an awareness and sympathy to a “non-specialist” audience without condescension or dilution of his arguments and ideas. And he is a wonderful teacher: do watch his video on Marx!
But his books, marvelous and penetrating as they are, can be difficult, reinforcing the Marxian conviction found in Volume One of Capital that there “are no royal roads to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits.” This is not to denigrate the value or importance of Harvey’s work, but I doubt if many beyond the institutional venues where intellectual activity is commodified and exchanged would have the time and energy to read, say, Harvey’s The Limits of Capital, let alone in conjunction with Marx’s Capital itself!
In these times of economic, environmental and all manner of turmoil and conflict that indeed pose a threat to the very survival of the human race, the role of the intellectual and the role of Kumarian Press as a site for the transformation of intellectual labor into a commodity that both sustains and questions the structures, systems and practices that characterize our era is both paradoxical and critically important. Paradoxical in the sense that Kumarian Press is after all a capitalist business venture that has to be competitive and has to reap continued growth in terms of sales and profits in order to survive and important in the sense that Kumarian, in spite of its imbrications in the contradictions (and perpetuation, albeit slightly) of capitalism, seeks to provide viable alternatives that run counter to the interests and power of dominant groups in society.
One of my favorite passages in a David Harvey book comes early in his Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference.
While attending an academic conference on globalization with its tense and frequently hard to follow arguments afflicted by the radical and no doubt chic skepticism of poststructuralism, deconstruction, postmodernism and so on, he sat in on a conference of evangelical Christians that was taking place at his hotel. Harvey was struck by the enthusiasm of the crowd as they listened to the preachers and it was clear that what was happening at the evangelical conference was an “orchestration of emotions and passions rather than of intellect.” But it was an orchestration that was explicitly scored with expressions by the evangelical of foundational beliefs. Harvey wondered what would happen if he returned to the academic conference and spoke of foundational beliefs. He would probably be put out to pasture or seen as a dinosaur. While I believe, as does Harvey, that one should scrutinize all manner of foundational beliefs (including those of the secular Left), his experience with the evangelicals led him to a rather disturbing conclusion: “…when a political group armed with strong and unambiguous foundational beliefs confronts a group of doubting Thomases whose only foundational belief is skepticism towards all foundational beliefs, then it is rather easy to predict who will win.”
The tensions and imperatives of capitalist commerce, the necessity for global social, political and economic change, and encounters with the powerful armed with foundational beliefs: all these are familiar components of work at Kumarian. The bulk of my career at Kumarian has been during the bleak years of the second Bush administration. Talk about foundational beliefs and power! And as the evermore seemingly dysfunctional and rough beast that is the US government slouches towards Bethlehem (and possible default), I ask myself the same questions that I do every day: what is the role of Kumarian Press, what the role of its authors is and how to be “progressive” during periods of intolerance and myopia. I’ll conclude with another of my favorite David Harvey reflections, this one from The Limits of Capital as he gives me a valuable answer to my questions and hope. He writes about the need to project theory “into the fires of political practice” so that “new strategies for the sane reconstruction of society can emerge.” This statement I have emblazoned on my wall as it encapsulates for me the very essence and purpose of Kumarian Press and forms the framework for my editorial strategies. We need sanity now more than ever and Kumarian Press needs authors who can write for wide audiences with a diversity of experiences and knowledge so that the fires of political practice will burn brightly and guide us to, if not a promised land, at least one in which empathy, justice and equity and environmental preservation are primary concerns.
Monday, July 11, 2011
Charles Buxton Announces New Civil Society Book
The Struggle for Civil Society in Central Asia:
April-June 2011… April 7th was “black and red” day as Bishkek’s evening paper put it: one year after Kyrgyzstan’s bloody uprising, during which the President’s forces shot over 80 protestors dead on the main square…That event happened as I was putting the finishing touches to my book for Kumarian “The struggle for civil society in Central Asia”. As Kumarian’s editors “got their teeth” into the book, an even worse loss of life took place, in June 2010 – over 400 people dead after inter-ethnic clashes in Kyrgyzstan’s southern capital Osh and neighbouring Jalalabad.
I have been living in this region for almost ten years, working in civil society development. The ex-Soviet countries that seemed so similar are now moving apart so fast. Kyrgyzstan having had two revolutions (2005 and 2010) while in Turkmenistan there are few independent NGOs at all, and in Kazakhstan President Nazarbaev has just won a new term with – apparently – 95% of the vote in a turnout of over 80%!
Some brief thoughts for Kumarian readers:
Indeed, civil society development is a “struggle”. Often we don’t see clearly where the CS struggle ends and the political struggle begins.
Over the last year, as the political struggle in Kyrgyzstan took more and more of people’s energies, CSO had the important role of trying to ensure some basic rules (legality, non-violent behaviour, not sacrificing everything for the sake of power) still obtained.
It is CS’s fate seemingly to be used by other actors. Unfortunately, our region has seen it used for neo-liberal gains, then sidelined by the foreign donors as their government focus on the search for oil or political stability. We see civil society used by national government (setting up their own “GONGOs”) and by political radicals. But the more it is used, the more important, it seems, is the struggle to keep open a space for debate and collective action by citizens.
Watching the news from the Middle East… Having seen violence close at hand in Central Asia, I can’t say I feel euphoric about the demonstrations. Like here, the motor for them is ordinary people’s pent up economic and social demands. It is not clear what the new regimes will or can do, especially as far as democracy is concerned. When big changes come, the little changes (our project work, more participative ways of doing things, attention to minority – or majority - groups of all kinds) seem to take a hit. All we can say is there are more difficult times ahead.
Last week I was in Osh starting a programme training local NGOs and government staff in analytical and research skills. The idea is to help develop new policy and practice around the idea of diversity – to increase government accountability to citizens and reduce the risk of violence. I hope my own analysis in the Kumarian book will be of use in the region – both to international development practitioners, and to local NGO activists.
Charles Buxton, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, 23.6.2011
About the Author:
Charles Buxton is an INTRAC Capacity Building Specialist based in Central Asia. The Struggle for Civil Society in Central Asia was published in May 2011 and is now available in paperback.
April-June 2011… April 7th was “black and red” day as Bishkek’s evening paper put it: one year after Kyrgyzstan’s bloody uprising, during which the President’s forces shot over 80 protestors dead on the main square…That event happened as I was putting the finishing touches to my book for Kumarian “The struggle for civil society in Central Asia”. As Kumarian’s editors “got their teeth” into the book, an even worse loss of life took place, in June 2010 – over 400 people dead after inter-ethnic clashes in Kyrgyzstan’s southern capital Osh and neighbouring Jalalabad.
I have been living in this region for almost ten years, working in civil society development. The ex-Soviet countries that seemed so similar are now moving apart so fast. Kyrgyzstan having had two revolutions (2005 and 2010) while in Turkmenistan there are few independent NGOs at all, and in Kazakhstan President Nazarbaev has just won a new term with – apparently – 95% of the vote in a turnout of over 80%!
Some brief thoughts for Kumarian readers:
Indeed, civil society development is a “struggle”. Often we don’t see clearly where the CS struggle ends and the political struggle begins.
Over the last year, as the political struggle in Kyrgyzstan took more and more of people’s energies, CSO had the important role of trying to ensure some basic rules (legality, non-violent behaviour, not sacrificing everything for the sake of power) still obtained.
It is CS’s fate seemingly to be used by other actors. Unfortunately, our region has seen it used for neo-liberal gains, then sidelined by the foreign donors as their government focus on the search for oil or political stability. We see civil society used by national government (setting up their own “GONGOs”) and by political radicals. But the more it is used, the more important, it seems, is the struggle to keep open a space for debate and collective action by citizens.
Watching the news from the Middle East… Having seen violence close at hand in Central Asia, I can’t say I feel euphoric about the demonstrations. Like here, the motor for them is ordinary people’s pent up economic and social demands. It is not clear what the new regimes will or can do, especially as far as democracy is concerned. When big changes come, the little changes (our project work, more participative ways of doing things, attention to minority – or majority - groups of all kinds) seem to take a hit. All we can say is there are more difficult times ahead.
Last week I was in Osh starting a programme training local NGOs and government staff in analytical and research skills. The idea is to help develop new policy and practice around the idea of diversity – to increase government accountability to citizens and reduce the risk of violence. I hope my own analysis in the Kumarian book will be of use in the region – both to international development practitioners, and to local NGO activists.
Charles Buxton, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, 23.6.2011
About the Author:
Charles Buxton is an INTRAC Capacity Building Specialist based in Central Asia. The Struggle for Civil Society in Central Asia was published in May 2011 and is now available in paperback.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Jenny Pearson's Creative Capacity Development - Now Available in Paperback
Ground control to Major Tom
Creative Capacity Development – reaching out across the space between multiple perspectives on capacity development
Several times in recent years I have found myself sitting in a room with some high powered people – bureaucrats, academics, technical experts, donor policy makers and the like – gathered together to discuss capacity development. At the first of these events I started by wondering what on earth I was doing there – I felt I was out of my depth and wouldn’t be able to contribute anything of value. Within an hour I had changed my mind and knew that what I had to contribute to the discussion was a much needed ‘voice of practice’. As I sat and listened to some eminent people saying some very interesting things, the title riff of the David Bowie number ‘Ground control to Major Tom’ kept popping into my head, and it just wouldn’t go away. From my perspective as a long term capacity development practitioner in a developing, post-conflict country it seemed to me that some of the ideas and opinions being expressed were just out there in the stratosphere. ‘Ground control to Major Tom’ is now my private mantra for all such meetings – it helps me stay grounded when the conversation is going off in directions I don’t understand, and it also helps me frame my contributions.
My book, Creative Capacity Development: Learning to adapt in development practice – launched June 2011, is the story of me and the organisation I founded trying to understand and integrate learning and change into our work as essential components of achieving sustainable capacity development. It explores the challenge of overcoming the profound blocks to capacity development that arise in complex cultural and post-conflict societies. It shows clearly that sustainable change only comes when you leave behind doing business as usual and embrace creative approaches that help people overcome their fears and move forward. My hope is that this book will make a contribution to building the bridges that are so badly needed to connect all the different groups concerned with capacity development – from practice on the ground to the upper echelons of political policy making, and all the levels in between, especially the in-country missions of international organisations, donors and INGOs.
I’m the first to admit that I don’t get it about the political and economic considerations and other mechanisms that drive aid and development policies, whether at global, home country or local office level. I realise that lack of understanding may reduce my capacity to be effective in facilitating positive change. However, on the other hand, I don’t very often hear any of the bureaucrats or experts I meet admit that they don’t get it about the realities of capacity development practice. The good news is that many are now recognising that the problem isn’t so much about knowing what good practice for capacity development should look like – the theory and some good examples are well documented - the problem is about knowing how to operationalise what is known. The bad news is that even in this changing understanding the voice of practice is rarely heard and even less valued in most of the debates about aid effectiveness, country ownership, and so on. Those who have something to say about the realities of actually doing capacity development don’t get a lot of air time in the complex agenda that seems mostly concerned with political considerations, accountability and measurable results. Despite the fact that we all (allegedly) have the same end goal in sight, there isn’t a lot of space for those who want to argue to doing things differently at the level of operations. Within the aid and development sectors there are multiple realities, world views and ways of doing business that are very far apart and this is reflected in the language we use, what we value and how we go about our business.
So who needs to learn to talk whose language? Who needs to understand whose perspective? Who needs to change their ways of working? The answer, of course, is that we need to learn how to understand each other in order to find a middle way that will increase the level and pace of change for the better. I learn about the issues and imperatives driving aid from going to meetings, reading position papers, research documents and so on. I hope that if some of the people working at other levels of the sector read my book, they will start to learn more about the challenges and realities on the ground and that will help us all move one small step closer to a shared understanding. Only when we all have appreciation and respect for each others perspectives and take them into account when framing our approaches to capacity development will we jointly be able to make a real difference.
Jenny Pearson has lived and worked in Cambodia since 1995. She has qualifications in social work and management and worked in the public sector in England before coming to Cambodia. She arrived in Cambodia as a volunteer and went on to found and direct VBNK, Cambodia's leading capacity building institution. She has played a leading role in developing the capacity of the not-for-profit sector in Cambodia, introducing creative approaches to capacity development and serving on the boards of several prominent development organisations.
In 2007 she was a visiting fellow at the Institute of Development Studies in the UK. Since her retirement from VBNK in 2008, Jenny spends her time consulting and writing about capacity development, drawing on her years of experience to contribute the voice of practice to the international discourse on capacity development. She holds dual British and Cambodian citizenship and lives in a village outside Phnom Penh with her adopted Cambodian family.
Creative Capacity Development – reaching out across the space between multiple perspectives on capacity development
Several times in recent years I have found myself sitting in a room with some high powered people – bureaucrats, academics, technical experts, donor policy makers and the like – gathered together to discuss capacity development. At the first of these events I started by wondering what on earth I was doing there – I felt I was out of my depth and wouldn’t be able to contribute anything of value. Within an hour I had changed my mind and knew that what I had to contribute to the discussion was a much needed ‘voice of practice’. As I sat and listened to some eminent people saying some very interesting things, the title riff of the David Bowie number ‘Ground control to Major Tom’ kept popping into my head, and it just wouldn’t go away. From my perspective as a long term capacity development practitioner in a developing, post-conflict country it seemed to me that some of the ideas and opinions being expressed were just out there in the stratosphere. ‘Ground control to Major Tom’ is now my private mantra for all such meetings – it helps me stay grounded when the conversation is going off in directions I don’t understand, and it also helps me frame my contributions.
My book, Creative Capacity Development: Learning to adapt in development practice – launched June 2011, is the story of me and the organisation I founded trying to understand and integrate learning and change into our work as essential components of achieving sustainable capacity development. It explores the challenge of overcoming the profound blocks to capacity development that arise in complex cultural and post-conflict societies. It shows clearly that sustainable change only comes when you leave behind doing business as usual and embrace creative approaches that help people overcome their fears and move forward. My hope is that this book will make a contribution to building the bridges that are so badly needed to connect all the different groups concerned with capacity development – from practice on the ground to the upper echelons of political policy making, and all the levels in between, especially the in-country missions of international organisations, donors and INGOs.
I’m the first to admit that I don’t get it about the political and economic considerations and other mechanisms that drive aid and development policies, whether at global, home country or local office level. I realise that lack of understanding may reduce my capacity to be effective in facilitating positive change. However, on the other hand, I don’t very often hear any of the bureaucrats or experts I meet admit that they don’t get it about the realities of capacity development practice. The good news is that many are now recognising that the problem isn’t so much about knowing what good practice for capacity development should look like – the theory and some good examples are well documented - the problem is about knowing how to operationalise what is known. The bad news is that even in this changing understanding the voice of practice is rarely heard and even less valued in most of the debates about aid effectiveness, country ownership, and so on. Those who have something to say about the realities of actually doing capacity development don’t get a lot of air time in the complex agenda that seems mostly concerned with political considerations, accountability and measurable results. Despite the fact that we all (allegedly) have the same end goal in sight, there isn’t a lot of space for those who want to argue to doing things differently at the level of operations. Within the aid and development sectors there are multiple realities, world views and ways of doing business that are very far apart and this is reflected in the language we use, what we value and how we go about our business.
So who needs to learn to talk whose language? Who needs to understand whose perspective? Who needs to change their ways of working? The answer, of course, is that we need to learn how to understand each other in order to find a middle way that will increase the level and pace of change for the better. I learn about the issues and imperatives driving aid from going to meetings, reading position papers, research documents and so on. I hope that if some of the people working at other levels of the sector read my book, they will start to learn more about the challenges and realities on the ground and that will help us all move one small step closer to a shared understanding. Only when we all have appreciation and respect for each others perspectives and take them into account when framing our approaches to capacity development will we jointly be able to make a real difference.
Jenny Pearson has lived and worked in Cambodia since 1995. She has qualifications in social work and management and worked in the public sector in England before coming to Cambodia. She arrived in Cambodia as a volunteer and went on to found and direct VBNK, Cambodia's leading capacity building institution. She has played a leading role in developing the capacity of the not-for-profit sector in Cambodia, introducing creative approaches to capacity development and serving on the boards of several prominent development organisations.
In 2007 she was a visiting fellow at the Institute of Development Studies in the UK. Since her retirement from VBNK in 2008, Jenny spends her time consulting and writing about capacity development, drawing on her years of experience to contribute the voice of practice to the international discourse on capacity development. She holds dual British and Cambodian citizenship and lives in a village outside Phnom Penh with her adopted Cambodian family.
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