Gendering the World Bank: Neoliberalism and the Gendered Foundations of Global Governance

Gendering the World Bank Neoliberalism and the Gendered Foundations of Global Governance Penny Griffin Gendering the ...

Author: Penny Griffin

50 downloads 818 Views 771KB Size Report

This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!
Report copyright / DMCA form

DOWNLOAD PDF

Gendering the World Bank Neoliberalism and the Gendered Foundations of Global Governance

Penny Griffin

Gendering the World Bank

This page intentionally left blank

Gendering the World Bank Neoliberalism and the Gendered Foundations of Global Governance Penny Griffin Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, University of New South Wales, Australia

© Penny Griffin 2009 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN-13: 978–0–230–21827–7 hardback ISBN-10: 0–230–21827–X hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Griffin, Penny, 1978– Gendering the world bank: neoliberalism and the gendered foundations of global governance / Penny Griffin. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–230–21827–7 1. Women in development. 2. World Bank. 3. Communication in economic development. 4. Economic development. 5. Economic assistance. 6. Technical assistance. 7. Globalization—Economic aspects. 8. Neoliberalism. 9. Discourse analysis. I. Title. HQ1240.G75 2009 332.1 532082—dc22 2008041046 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

This book is dedicated to my mother, Lesley Torry, who did not live to see its publication but whose role in supporting and encouraging the choices I have made is, and always will be, indescribably important to me.


Contents

List of Abbreviations

ix

Acknowledgements

xii

Preface

xiii

Part I Neoliberalism, Gender and Global Governance Introduction The World Bank Neoliberal development strategy in global governance Neoliberalism, the global political economy and gender analysis Structure of the book

1 2 8 15 20

1 Discourse, Sex and Gender in Global Governance The role of interviewing ‘Discourse’ as an approach to research ‘Gender’ analysis as an approach to research A gender(ed) discourse analysis of neoliberalism, the World Bank and global governance Summary

23 25 26 30

2 Analysing ‘The Economy’ Conventions in economic analysis Neoliberalism as (mainstream) economic discourse Gender, neoliberal globalisation and the Post-Washington Consensus Summary

49 49 60

3 Analysing the World Bank Why the World Bank? The structure of the World Bank Neoliberalism and the organisational culture of the World Bank The changing nature of Bank discourse Summary

83 84 84

vii

38 47

75 81

99 102 108

viii

Contents

Part II Gender in/and World Bank Policy-Making Introduction 4 World Bank Policy-Making (1): Gender in/and the World Bank Gender in contemporary global governance: from WID to WAD to GAD Making the ‘Business Case’ for gender analysis in Bank work Situating gender and sex in Bank discourse Failing to make the business case for gender analysis in World Bank policy-making Summary 5 World Bank Policy-Making (2): Reproducing (Economically Viable) Gender Norms Predicating, prescribing and reproducing neoliberal rationality Reproducing heterosexual (economic) viability in Bank discourse Summary

111 113 114 125 130 136 144 146 147 156 169

6 World Bank Policy-Making (3): Gender, HIV/AIDS and Sub-Saharan Africa Racism, the West and HIV/AIDS Why HIV/AIDS policy-making? Why HIV/AIDS and Sub-Saharan Africa? The World Bank and HIV/AIDS The Bank, HIV/AIDS and gender in Sub-Saharan Africa Summary

171 172 175 176 180 187 198

Conclusion(s) The power of neoliberalism as discourse The gendered foundations of neoliberalism Gendering the World Bank

200 200 203 206

Appendix 1. Interviewee Codes (Anonymised)

211

Appendix 2. Schedule of Questions for Interview

212

Notes

218

References

222

Index

234


ADB AfDB AFR AIDS CEO CIDA CSO DA DfID EAP ECA ECOSOC EDSR ESSD EU FGR FSE GAD GAO GDP∗ GNI GNP

Asian Development Bank African Development Bank Africa Regional Network (World Bank) Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome Chief Executive Officer Canadian International Development Agency Civil Society Organisation Discourse Analysis Department for International Development (UK) East Asia and the Pacific Regional Network (World Bank) Europe and Central Asia Regional Network (World Bank) The United Nations Economic and Social Council Estimated Debt Service Report (World Bank) Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development Network (World Bank) European Union First Generation Reform Financial Sector Network (World Bank) Gender and Development General Accounting Office (US) Gross Domestic Product Gross National Income Gross National Product

∗ Until 1992, GNP and GNI were used by the United States for national accounting purposes. GNP, GNI and GDP each indicate, in slightly different ways, the market value of the goods and services produced annually by a country. The key difference is that GNP includes net foreign income (the current account), adding net foreign investment income compared to GDP. GDP is also something of a ‘regional’ measurement: concerned with the market value of the yearly output produced in a nation, GDP focuses on where the output is produced rather than who produced it (i.e., GDP measures all output, regardless of a firm or corporation’s ‘nationality’). GNP and GNI, on the other hand, are measures of a ‘nation’s’ output, focusing on who owns the production, regardless of where they are located.

ix

x


GPE HDI HDN HIV IADB IBRD ICSID IDA IEG IFC IGO IHEU ILO IMF IO IPE IR LCR LDCs LICUS MIGA MNA MSMs NGO OAS OECD OED OPCS PREM PRGF PRSP PSD PWC

Global Political Economy Human Development Index (UN) Human Development Network (World Bank) Human Immunodeficiency Virus Inter-American Development Bank International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank Group) International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (World Bank Group) International Development Agency (World Bank Group) Independent Evaluation Group (World Bank) International Finance Corporation (World Bank Group) Inter-Governmental Organization International Humanist and Ethical Union International Labour Organization International Monetary Fund International Organisation International Political Economy International Relations Latin America and the Caribbean Regional Network Least Developed Countries Low Income Countries Under Stress (World Bank) Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (World Bank Group) Middle East and North Africa Regional Network (World Bank) ‘Men Who Have Sex With Men’ Non-Governmental Organisation Organization of American States Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development Operations Evaluation Department (World Bank) Operations Policy and Country services Network (World Bank) Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network (World Bank) Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (World Bank) Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper Private Sector Development Network (World Bank) Post-Washington Consensus

List of Abbreviations xi

SAP SAR SGR SSA UN UNAIDS UNDP UNFPA UNGASS USAIDS VPU WAD WDR WHO WID WTO

Structural Adjustment Programme South Asia Regional Network (World Bank) Second Generation Reform Sub-Saharan Africa United Nations Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS United Nations Development Programme United Nations Population Fund United Nations General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS United States Agency for International Development (US) Vice-Presidential Unit (World Bank) Women and Development World Development Report (World Bank) World Health Organisation Women in Development World Trade Organization

Acknowledgements Based in large part on research conducted for my PhD, this book would not have come about without the guidance, support and inspiration of Judith Squires and Jutta Weldes, my PhD supervisors at the University of Bristol. Judith and Jutta selflessly devoted their time and offered suggestions, readings and guidance without which my research would have been much the poorer. I was privileged enough to have been funded throughout my PhD research by the United Kingdom’s Economic and Social Research Council and I thank the ESRC for this contribution. I would also like to thank those staff at the World Bank, InterAmerican Development Bank and International Monetary Fund who generously gave their time and thoughts during August and September 2005. Where I am critical in this book of international development policy-making and practice, it is in no part intended as criticism of the devotion and diligence that many in the development community display throughout their work. As I discovered, policy-making staff at all levels are open to and keen to engage in a wide variety of discussion and are well aware of the shortcomings of the institutional frameworks within which they work. To those at the University of Bristol who have offered their invaluable time, energy and insight, I would also like to offer my very grateful thanks, particularly, Andrew Wyatt, Terrell Carver and Wendy Larner. For their encouragement, support and wisdom, I would like to thank Graham Harrison, at the University of Sheffield, and Juanita Elias, at Adelaide University. My thanks also go to Anne-Marie Goetz, at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, for her much appreciated help in contacting World Bank staff. To my brilliant and much treasured feminist colleagues at the University of Bristol (and now elsewhere), Laura Shepherd, Christina Rowley, Ana Jordan and Carole Spary, I extend a very special thanks. To all those closest to me, family, friends, and my lovely partner Conal, as always, all my love.

xii

Preface

I was once told that my work would be far more interesting, and reach a far wider audience, if I were to ‘drop the gender’. The gender part of my research, so my interlocutor believed, was marginal to relations of global economic governance; an agenda that might be useful to women in developing countries, but that had little wider relevance. This belief I have found to be a persistent one, and one that probably means that my work will be taken less seriously by those who consider economics a neutral science peopled by functionally similar, individualised and rational actors. This book addresses two key assumptions made by those who consider gender’s role in the global political economy either superficially valid or entirely insignificant; assumptions that have serious and detrimental implications for the kind of economic diagnoses and advice currently on offer from large sectors of the development community. First, I want to address the assumption that ‘gender’ corresponds simply and unproblematically to ‘women’ and only women. Secondly (and closely related to the imposed symbiosis of gender and women), I want to take issue with the assumption that gender is not one of the most basic, fundamental systems of identification through which we understand the world. My interlocutor was wrong, not only to equate gender with women alone, but to fail to see the power that gender brings to our everyday understandings, and especially to our understandings of economic common sense. I use this book to interrogate the ways in which so-called ‘economic’ discourses reproduce certain gendered limits of possibility in the global political economy. I do so by examining the gendered underpinnings of neoliberal development strategy as embodied in a key development institution, the World Bank, the key modus operandi of which is a discourse we might feasibly term ‘neoliberal’. Although global governance undoubtedly takes shape in a variety of forms and to different effects, the World Bank is worth examining in some detail: a prominent, but by no means uncomplicated, example of contemporary global governance, the World Bank embodies an association with the developing world riddled with narratives of imperialism and inequality, but also resistance, reconfiguration and the possibility of future change. The aim of this book is not to examine in a systematic and rather tedious way xiii

xiv

Preface

the bureaucratic structure and functions of the World Bank, although there are times when some consideration of these are necessary. The Bank is simply a current and particular example of global governance ‘in action’: a constituent and founding part of the contemporary international system with sufficient duties and responsibilities to make it an important player in the politics of development. It is, I believe, important to consider at all times the impacts and effects (positive, negative and indifferent) of certain policies and developmental interactions. Concerns about the loci, mechanisms and processes of delivery of development practice, policy and power may well make international development a more participatory and inclusive process. Understanding the contradictory and complex effects of global restructuring requires, however, challenging more than just cause and effect as conventionally conceived of in the global political economy. One of the abiding contradictions of ‘Post-Washington Consensus’ international development policy-making is its progression to an official discourse of ‘empowerment’, within an institutional and international context clearly hierarchical in form and effect. The World Bank takes pains to advertise itself as an ‘agency’, not a commander, of development, but how much room poor people have within the dictates of Bank-approved (but state-led) economic management programmes is certainly unclear. Empowering the poor, women included, such that they have control over their own life strategies, is certainly worth struggling for. A time when the ‘poor’ are so ‘empowered’ that they might reject the governance dictates of Western institutions will be a fascinating one to live through, not least for the responses of the institutions they reject. I argue in this book that neoliberalism is and has always been a political project with a market agenda: there is nothing purely ‘economic’ about it, even though its advocates and practitioners may specifically deploy the assumptions and modelling techniques most often associated with the study and practices of ‘Western’ approaches to Economics (i.e., those approaches most commonly found in the US, the UK, northern Europe and Australasia). I contend that neoliberal discourses communicate (constructed) universal facts and knowledges on a global scale as simple ‘common sense’. Predicated on economic ‘development’ through the social embedding of the market, neoliberalism constitutes part of a tradition of classical and neoclassical economic discourse and is deeply embedded in a history of economists searching for so-called ‘economic’ answers to problems of social organisation. Although scholars key to the formation of neoliberal discourses as they are experienced

Preface

xv

today may often be identified primarily as economists (F. A. Von Hayek, Milton Friedman and Joseph Stiglitz, for example), their theorising is intrinsically socio-political, depending on a vision of society organised around a particular idea of economic action. In terms of methodology, I employ in this book a poststructural discourse analysis to examine neoliberalism and the discourse of the World Bank. Bank discourse is gendered and sexually configured through diverse and historically specific rules and conventions. It makes sense of human relations and development by structuring the meanings we apply to types of endeavour, activity and modes of production. I thus seek to analyse how the language of neoliberalism constructs those practices, institutions and policies that constitute the global political economy. Through analysis of both neoliberalism, broadly defined, and the discourse of the Bank more specifically, my research aims to show, first, in what ways and through which discursive practices ‘sex’, ‘gender’ and ‘sexual practice’ are discursively constituted to render apparently ‘ungendered’ neoliberal discourses coherent and, secondly, how ‘gender’ is made intelligible in order to better serve neoliberal ideals of marketisation, privatisation, deregulation and flexibilisation. Neoliberal discourses in contemporary world politics constitute such powerful models for human interaction and behaviour because they are based on the assumption that people everywhere adhere to the rule of the market. To do this, and to therefore hope and dream of success, wealth and ‘development’, people must universally embrace the rules dictated largely by Western neoliberal models of capitalism. They must identify themselves with certain cultural models of humanity and internalise the key principles of neoliberal economic doctrine. In so doing, they reproduce centuries of liberal ideology and rhetoric that have naturalised the essentiality of trade, the accumulation of capital and the centrality of economic growth through the liberal ‘free market’. People thus tailor their identities, their sense of self and their ambitions to fit with the global mantra of more trade equals more capital equals good for everyone (this is the ‘globalist’ ideology that underscores the dominant globalisation thesis, which I argue is a thesis based on neoliberal assumptions and values). The potential for Western models of economic activity to interact with, affect and reconfigure global and social hierarchies and distributions of power and resources is enormous, and yet official discourse continues to describe (neoliberal) globalisation primarily in positive and progressive terms. Whether viewed as the saviour of modernity or the nemesis of social development, however, a picture of globalisation has

xvi

Preface

dominated contemporary global politics and governance, depicting a subject ‘North’, bearer of capitalist doctrine, and an object ‘South’, a permanently malleable resource responsive to and dependent upon the workings of the North. The assumption that the market is and should be the key distributor of precious and fragile social resources remains, however, entirely uncontested in ‘official’ development discourse.

Part I Neoliberalism, Gender and Global Governance

Introduction The formation of human identity is crucial in and to understanding the study, practices and effects of contemporary global governance and political economy. Unlike many who see gender as a side issue in global politics, I ask in this book how it is that sex and gender are not merely incidental to the formation and perpetuation of the global political economy (GPE), but absolutely central to it. The GPE is, I argue, entirely gendered: meanings, behaviours and identities concerning, for example, economic growth and stability, financial transactions and rational human behaviour have not evolved nor are they perpetuated in a social vacuum, although they may well be presented as universal and neutral. Rather, discourses of gender are critical in understanding how the world is structured such that individuals are enabled (or not) to act in certain ways and to certain ends. Gender matters to/in the GPE most obviously, at least to those who care to see it, because the global political economy is peopled by bodies, and bodies are important, diverse and everywhere. Throughout my research, gender matters most because its study concerns the analysis of norms and standards in the global political economy that many hold to be true, essential and universal, but a committed critique of which reveals as power-laden, regulatory and highly restrictive identity categories. A gender-sensitive approach to the GPE yields some powerful practical applications. Conventional approaches to International Political Economy (IPE)1 and International Relations (IR) tend to avoid talking about bodies. They assign, instead, human features to abstract objects (money, weapons, state, corporation or institution) while studiously avoiding the possibility that these objects are socially produced 1

2

Neoliberalism, Gender and Global Governance

and context-specific. An embodied approach to global politics (one that engages actively and carefully with the messier politics of everyday human social reproduction), on the other hand, has a variety of useful applications, namely that this approach: • Furnishes a more accurate and holistic approach (through, e.g., a more inclusive approach to the ‘global’ or the ‘economic’, or through the use of a variety of measurements, methodologies and analytical tools); • Offers a non-abstract and practically applicable form of theorising; • Constitutes a more realistic means of accounting for the interaction of various causal factors, implications and effects in global politics; • Therefore provides more intuitively realistic understandings of global exchange and economic discourses, their key mechanisms and global (and more localised) effects.

The World Bank Established in 1944, and with its headquarters in Washington, D.C., the World Bank commenced its operations in 1946. Covering a global area composed of middle- to low-income (creditworthy) countries, the Bank boasts a membership of 185 countries, 117 country offices, a staff of approximately 10,000 and a credit rating of AAA. I write this book in an effort to illuminate the tensions and possibilities that complicate the politics of development, global governance and international relations. It is important to note that the World Bank is an international institution that is important to and powerful in contemporary global politics but which is neither omnipotent nor uncontested. The importance and significance of challenges to and contestations within the international system as it operates today cannot be underestimated: international organisations (IOs) such as the World Bank have changed in dramatic and crucial ways as a consequence of their encounters with myriad actors, groups, communities and other organisations. We, as students, practitioners and participants in and of global politics, should be wary of assuming that the policies and practices of global governance are beyond the power and influence of everyday people. Each of us has a stake in understanding and engaging with the structures, practices and policies that govern us. To be sure, the structures and methods of global governance are frequently elitist, opaque and non-participatory. It is only through critical, extended and committed

Introduction

3

engagement with these structures and methods, however, that histories of exclusion and marginalisation are made known, deleterious and dangerous practices made visible and viable alternatives forged and maintained. Global power and capitalist expansion are in the process of being and have been effectively resisted and reformulated through numerous and multifaceted struggles (over, e.g., democratisation, equality, morality). Globalisation, as Rupert and Solomon contend, [C]an no longer be credibly represented as an inevitable, apolitical, and universally beneficial process of market-based integration. (2006: 132) Something of an afterthought to the International Monetary Fund at conception and inauguration (Peet 2003: 111), the Bank is more accurately described as a collection of ‘specialised agencies’, granting direct loans and setting policy conditions to recipient countries. Professing a concern for ‘getting the fundamentals’ of neoliberal economic development right, the Bank seeks to maintain for itself a stable position at the vanguard of international development, describing itself as ‘bridging the divide’ between rich and poor (i.e., as the crucial link between the economic affluence of the developed world and the poverty of the Global South). The Bank is also supremely confident of its ability to prescribe appropriate economic policy across the developing world. According to many Bank staff, developing countries, even those with less need for the Bank’s lending, call on the particular ‘expertise’ of the Bank, borrowing money for no other reason than to consult with staff who, as one interviewee commented, ‘are the best in the world’ in the development field (IvWB2 2005). With the resources to lend over US$20billion a year, the World Bank is indeed ‘a mighty institution’ (Peet 2003: 111). A powerful and pervasive discursive site of economic ‘common sense’, suitable economic behaviour and efficient development and trade practice, the World Bank plays a pivotal role in global politics, particularly with regard to its relationship with the world’s least developed countries (LDCs). This role in large part depends on the Bank’s ability to reproduce an economic and developmental common sense based on neoliberal discursive foundations, particularly those foundations that have, in recent years (at least since the mid to late 1990s), supported the ‘neoliberal globalisation’ thesis. As an organisational entity, the Bank socialises and educates its staff, and the countries and people it engages with, within a particularly gendered and hierarchical framework of understanding: not because as an

4


institutional environment it is itself particularly sexist or discriminatory, but because the Bank reproduces gender at the very heart of its work through the discourse with which it medicates the developing world, a discourse predicated on the attainment of certain, entirely gendered, desirable behaviours, identifications and attributes. In its own words, the Bank professes a mandate, [T]o help developing countries and their people reach their goals by working with our partners to alleviate poverty. To do that we concentrate on building the climate for investment, jobs and sustainable growth, so that economies will grow, and by investing in and empowering poor people to participate in development. (http://web.worldbank.org) The Bank is, of course, not the only embodiment of contemporary neoliberalism, identifiable by its commitment to the market, to private capital, to flexible labour and to deregulated economies. Neoliberal discourses derive from and are located within a multitude of sources, some state-led, others less so: each source, be it an individual government, a transnational corporation or multilateral organisation, operates within the parameters of its own historical conditions, which is why the Bank’s neoliberal discourse is not articulated in the same way, and with the same effects as that of, for example, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the United Nations (UN) or individual national governments.2 The Bank is pivotal in this research for its inextricable links to the field and politics of ‘development’, but it is not monolithic, nor does it enjoy unrivalled precedence in the cultures and politics of every so-called ‘developing’ and ‘underdeveloped’ economy. It does, however, enjoy something of a monopoly of economic wisdom in practices of development that cannot be disarticulated from the institution’s neoliberal doctrine. Neoliberalism, the World Bank and gender My aim with this book is to show how the Bank constitutes and gains much authority from its position as a culturally dominating and intrinsically gendered structure of global power. To make sense of the world around it, Bank discourse deploys certain assumptions, meanings, tropes and practices (e.g. by issuing policy, selecting and describing relevant development ‘issues’). These articulate, in tacit but important ways, the human identities, behaviours and meanings perceived as most suited to succeed in the global political economy. Such discursive practices

Introduction

5

and articulations are predicated, prescribed and reproduced, I argue, according to a heteronormative discursive framework; one that regulates persons, and the identities best suited to govern and be governed in the global political economy, according to the privileging of compulsory heterosexuality. The heteronormative reproduction of gender identities is crucial to and in contemporary neoliberalism because it allows for the maintenance of a particular vision of economic activity, one that is both highly masculinised and ethnocentric (i.e., based on a model of human activity derived from the privileging and experiences of White, Western and elite men). This model reproduces the constraints by which bodies may function through heterosexualised and essentialised discursive boundaries, ‘natural facts’ and gender/sex categories. The World Bank is one example of this, reproducing a discourse of economic viability through policy interventions that are predicated on an ideal of Western normative heterosexuality. Although articulated as value neutral, I argue that Bank discourse ‘straightens’ development by creating and sustaining policies and practices tacitly, but not explicitly, formulated according to gendered hierarchies of meaning, representation and identity. My research examines neoliberal discourse as gendered (but also sexually configured) through diverse and historically specific rules and conventions, making sense of our relations by structuring the meanings we apply to types of endeavour, activity, modes of production. Through analysis of neoliberalism broadly defined but also located more specifically in the discourse of the World Bank, my research seeks to show, first, in what ways and through which discursive practices ‘gender’ and ‘sex’ are discursively constituted to render apparently ungendered neoliberal discourse coherent, and, secondly, how ‘gender’ is made intelligible in order to better serve neoliberal ideals of marketisation, privatisation, deregulation and flexibilisation. Neoliberal discourses, I argue, embody specific notions of economic success and financial viability that have become thoroughly embedded in idealised forms of Western (i.e., AngloAmerican and Northern European) masculinities. By drawing from a regime of compulsory heterosexuality, neoliberalism establishes limits of intelligibility to the bodies over which it resides, concealing the extent to which its knowledges and truths have been historically and selectively produced and organised according to particular gender distinctions. Neoliberal discourses thus give particular meanings to human activity through the choices they provide, the regulatory ideals they impose and the identities they prescribe as most suitable.

6


The human (sexed) body assumes cultural meaning (gender) according to the structures, or discourses, that result from particular, historical and contingent relations of power. Neoliberalism is dominant precisely because it represents very much more than the ‘economic’ alone. The market logic at the heart of neoliberalism itself recognises no distinction between the economic, social and cultural: the project is and has always been one of marketising all aspects of social and political life. So rarely is the gendered and sexual configuration of neoliberal discourse questioned, however, that the sexual imperatives that constitute suitably market-able people, practices and behaviours are seldom interrogated, and their deleterious effects too often ignored. Gender is not, as many would have it, marginal to relations of economic governance, but the belief that it is remains persistent, not least among those who believe economics, even politics, to be neutral sciences peopled by functionally similar, rational actors. Since individuals are believed to be essentially similar, and their individual ‘tastes’ exogenous to economic models, there is, in conventional analyses at least, little room for categories of analysis that do not easily fit the economic mould, that cannot be easily measured, numbered and quantified, that refuse simplification and cannot be instrumentalised. Gender is thus easily trivialised in the minds of the mainstream (of Economics, IPE and IR), with the presumption long having been made that gender is not one of the most basic, fundamental systems of identification through which we understand the world. Such an assumption ignores the complex and different understandings that people hold about their environments, their abilities to survive and capacities to continue existing, how they organise themselves, their goals in life, and how they cope with their surroundings. The implications and effects of such ignorance are serious and highly detrimental for the kind of economic diagnoses and advice currently on offer from large sectors of the development community. My work instead refuses the all too frequent equation of gender with women, and argues that the repeated trivialisation of gender in economic analysis/es results from a failure to see the power that gender brings to our everyday understandings, and especially to our understandings of economic common sense.

The United Nations system and (neo)liberalism The World Bank Group forms part of what is commonly referred to as the ‘United Nations System’ or global organisations. This includes not only the United Nations (UN) itself, which is composed of the General

Introduction

7

Assembly, the Security Council, the Secretariat, the Trusteeship Council, the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the International Court for Justice, and also its associated programmes, funds and operations. ‘Specialised agencies’ are also associated with the UN, which include the World Bank Group, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Health Organisation (WHO), the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) and so on (see http://www.un.org for a complete listing). The World Bank Group is composed of five organisations: the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), the International Development Association (IDA); the International Finance Corporation (IFC); the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA); and, the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Dispute (ICSID). Development institutions such as the World Bank (but also including other inter- and non-governmental organisations operating explicitly in reference to the so-called ‘developing world’) make for interesting analysis as prominent, but by no means uncomplicated, examples of the contested nature of global governance. The discourses of governance that they reproduce take shape in varying, and sometimes contradictory, forms. The UN system ought not to be confused with the specific departments, commissions, courts, tribunals, conventions and so on of the United Nations as an organisation in its own right, although these undoubtedly contribute to the system as a whole. Taking its name from the members of the wartime alliance that were engaged in war against the Axis powers in the Second World War, the United Nations and its Charter have, of course, since been ratified by Japan, Germany and Italy. As such, our contemporary international system of organisations and institutions is very much the result of a particular historical effort to structure a post-Second World War ‘world order’ through the combination of a liberal political agenda with international capitalism. ‘Liberalism’ in this instance, however, should not be mistaken for the ‘bleeding heart’ liberal stereotype of US politics, but refers instead to a political philosophy that has dominated, and continues to do so, the practices and forms of government of many (if not most) state-based and international organisations. In terms of the functions, structures, practices and processes of the liberal state, liberalism refers to a political philosophy based on: • A belief in the fundamental autonomy of the individual and the concomitant inviolability of individual (human) rights;

8


• The desirability of democratic forms of government, based on the separation of public and private property; • A certain faith in the sanctity of the ‘free market’ (economic liberalism and neoliberalism) and the Enlightenment belief in progress and technological transformation. Practically and operationally, liberalism is embodied in structures of ‘rational’ governance, designated as such where they are based on the bureaucratic implementation of impersonal rules and procedures. The construction and perpetuation of bureaucratic hierarchy has been one of the most frequently used methods for reproducing such rules and procedures, such that the ‘modern bureaucratic form’ is common to most industrialised, capitalist societies. Bureaucracies distinguish themselves by the ‘breaking down of problems into manageable and repetitive tasks that are the domain of a particular office’ and which are then ‘coordinated under a hierarchical command’ (Barnett and Finnemore 2005: 164). To date, I can think of no Western, liberal bureaucracy that avoids hierarchy or repetitive task-making: thus has bureaucratic hierarchy found itself entrenched in the structures and working cultures of the institutions and organisations devised (largely by Western states) to steer international cooperation. Those international organisations that resulted from the Second World War negotiations are important to reflect on since they can, and so often do, reproduce across time and locale the conventional ‘expertise’, ‘wisdom’ and ‘common sense’ of contemporary global politics: the United Nations (as a singular organisation) is, for example, considered the authority on international law and human rights; the International Monetary Fund is thought to exemplify micro- and/or macro-financial and fiscal expertise; the World Trade Organization (WTO), is widely accepted as a reliable and practised arbiter of free market proficiency; the World Bank (and development banking more generally) is deemed by many to be the embodiment of contemporary developmental wisdom.

Neoliberal development strategy in global governance Contemporary neoliberalism gives particular meanings to human activity through the choices it provides, the regulatory ideals it imposes and the identities it prescribes as most suitable. In Western society, the sexed body assumes cultural meaning (gender) according to the structures, or discourses, that result from particular, historical and contingent relations of power. So rarely are the gendered foundations of neoliberal

Introduction

9

discourses questioned, however, and so naturalised and ‘unmarked’ is heterosexuality therein, that the sexual imperatives that constitute suitable market-able people, practices and behaviours are seldom interrogated, and their deleterious effects are very often ignored. Gender and sex are not, as many would have it, marginal to relations of economic governance, but the belief that they are remains persistent. The economic sphere is only artificially separated from questions of human identity formation, behaviour and interest. Neoliberal discourses have dominated the GPE precisely because they represent much more than the ‘economic’ alone, recognising no distinction between the economic, social and cultural. As a term in political analysis, ‘global governance’ achieved particular popularity post-Cold War as a means of referring to the processes by which international actors (mostly, in conventional analyses at least, states) could achieve their common aspirations and overcome conflict. Its prominence having risen within scholarly and policy-making circles, global governance has become ‘one of the defining characteristics of the current international moment’ (Barnett and Duvall 2005: 1). ‘Governance’ may be characterised as local, domestic, international or global in nature, and, much like national government, applies to the mechanisms and institutional (legal-juridical) structures by which people are governed. One difference is that the mechanisms and structures characterised as global in reach and origins are thought, in optimistic times, to bring out the best in the international community and to rescue it from its ‘worst instincts’ (ibid). The practices and processes of rule-making at the global level, however, rarely affect everyone or everywhere similarly, if at all. As espoused by the leading development institutions, neoliberal development strategy is based on four central tenets: 1 A confidence in the market (marketisation) as the mechanism by which societies should be made to distribute their resources (although market imperfections may hamper distributive patterns, should we remove these the ‘allocative efficiency’ of the market is restored); 2 A commitment to the use of private finance (in place of public spending) in public projects (privatisation); 3 Deregulation, with the removal of tariff barriers and subsidies ensuring that the market is freed from the potential tyranny of nation-state intervention, thereby granting capital optimal mobility; 4 A commitment to flexibilisation, which refers the ways in which production is organised in mass consumption society (i.e., dynamically and flexibly).

10


Development policy-making has undergone some noteworthy changes since the 1980s ‘Washington Consensus’ heyday of crude, hastily assembled and short-term structural adjustment programming. The neoliberal orthodoxy that emerged during the late 1970s (and which predominated internationally until the early 1990s) was primarily focused on market liberalism, the primacy of foreign direct investment (FDI), the outward-orientation of economies and the contraction of the state and its machinery. It would be a mistake however to read Washington Consensus rationality as a failure: although development policy-making of this period was heavily criticised for failing to integrate the social and economic dimensions of development and, in many cases, exacerbating social inequalities, its successor, the ‘Post-Washington Consensus’ (PWC), is, in methodology and formulation, much less of a radical departure than some have claimed (e.g. WHO 2008). PWC Second Generation Reform (SGR) has been no less market-centred than its predecessors, the difference being that it is simply more concerned to acknowledge and remedy ‘market imperfections’ (see Fine 2001). Neoliberalism, neoliberal globalisation and globalism Although it often goes unacknowledged, sexuality both underpins and undermines a variety of processes and institutions in both local and global systems. Sexuality supports gendered, classed, raced and aged power relations and privileges, and lubricates their smooth operation and reproduction . . . The international movement of bodies, business and the global spread of consumer culture extend beyond popular culture performance spaces or postindustrial production sites and reach into people’s daily lives, interpersonal relationships and their images of themselves and Others. As globalisation links populations in denser, faster and more complex ways, the political economy of desire will continue to complement and complicate the constantly unfolding global order. (Nagel 2006: 546–547) The question of whom and what is considered real and true is apparently a question of knowledge. But it is also, as Foucault makes plain, a question of power. Having or bearing “truth” and “reality” is an enormously powerful prerogative within the social world [ . . . ]. Knowledge and power are not finally separable but work together to establish a set of subtle and explicit criteria for thinking the world. (Butler 2004: 215)

Introduction 11

Today, we still have slave traders. They no longer find it necessary to march into the forests of Africa looking for prime specimens who will bring top dollar on the auction blocks in Charleston, Cartagena, and Havana. They simply recruit desperate people and build a factory to produce the jackets, blue jeans, tennis shoes, automobile parts, computer components, and thousands of other items they can sell in the markets of their choosing . . . [assuring themselves] that the desperate people are better off earning one dollar a day than no dollars at all, and that they are receiving the opportunity to become integrated into the larger world community. (Perkins 2005: 180–181) It is arguably the case that ‘globalisation’, once the explanatory term for contemporary forms of economic restructuring, has been usurped. Or, at least, it has been usurped by a slightly more specific term, ‘neoliberal globalisation’ (Larner 2003: 509). A global regime of ‘free’ trade has its roots in ancient civilisations, but it is the peculiarly twenteith-century processes of interchange that capture the contemporary imagination, led in large part by Western popular culture references to technological wizardry and cyberculture. The neoliberal globalisation thesis, applicable to a cultural form of late capitalism whereby ‘every society is now industrialised or embarked on industrialisation’ (Gray 2002: 55), advocates the process of ‘opening up’ national economies to increased monetary flows and global actors. Less a consequence of ‘a conscious decision of political leadership’, globalisation is perhaps more fruitfully read as the result of ‘structural changes in capitalism’ and ‘in the actions of many people, corporate bodies, and states, that cumulatively produce new relationships and patterns of behaviour’ (Cox 1992: 26). Involving very little agreement on definition and process, ‘globalisation’ is approached in various ways by those engaged in its study. Beyond academia, particularly within the policy-making community, the globalisation debate remains largely polarised between two (nominally economic) choices: economic ‘globalisation’ as a vital means of reducing world poverty, or as an uneven process of capital transfer, exacerbating and entrenching the division between rich and poor. In the hands of pro-globalisation ideology, globalisation is a progressive and modernising increase in patterns of global connectivity, which reproduces the ‘intensification of world-wide social relations which link distinct localities’ (Giddens 2002: 64). Humanity is modernised, integrated and advanced through a ‘borderless world’, within which

12


the world market is advocated over structures of local production and emphasis placed on the prevalence of Western-type consumerism (see, e.g., Friedman 1999; Ohmae 2002). For its critics, globalisation equates to human sacrifice, suffering, inequality and segregation, but exists as a rather vague and figurative ‘force’ behind the liberal capitalist agenda and certain capitalist processes (e.g. Bøås and McNeill 2003: 139). In either case, whether the consequences of globalisation are seen as ‘catastrophic’ or as ‘the ultimate unification of the world’, globalisation itself is often used in a rather loose and ideological sense (Kay 1997; Hettne 1999), such that it remains an abstract liberal capitalist projection superficially devoid of its political intent. Centered on the achievability of economic ‘development’ through the social embedding of the market, neoliberal globalisation discourse has rather effectively communicated culturally constructed facts and knowledges on a global scale as simple ‘common sense’, dominating official development policy-making. Deploying vivid images, clever metaphors and persuasive but highly manipulative narratives, neoliberal globalism (the dominant rhetoric, or ideology, of neoliberal globalisation) distorts our understanding of the globalisation ‘syndrome’ in order to sell Western global finance (Veseth 2005: 3). Such distortions conceal how, for example, globalisation might not constitute an unstoppable universal force but a fragile and socially contingent political project, or how one-dimensional ‘big pictures’ of global capitalism distort and misrepresent the gendered and racist underpinnings of global restructuring projects, with all their unevenness and developmental disjunctures. Descendent of a tradition of Western classical and neoclassical economic discourse, neoliberalism displays the racist and sexist underpinnings of a highly culturally specific discourse predicated on the expansion of Western capitalism through the colonising imperative of profit maximisation. Yet, although there is a lot of talk about globalisation, for globalism’s advocates, race, sex and gender do not feature much at all. Neoliberal globalisation’s loudest voices (particularly the World Bank, the OECD, the WTO, the IMF and the UN under Kofi Annan) have steadily saturated the agenda with the ‘inevitability’ and ‘fact’ of neoliberal globalisation, presenting the ‘liberalisation and integration of global markets as ‘natural’ phenomena that further individual liberty and progress in the world’ (Steger 2004: 5). In particular, the liberalisation of trade and the opening of development economies to global finance have been advocated as emancipatory, particularly with regards to the opportunities presented for poor women.

Introduction 13

The (official) relationship between development and globalisation Developing countries, the primary recipients of Western policy-making, tend to feature in the neoliberal globalisation thesis as ‘cultures of shortage or scarcity’, ripe for transformation into ‘markets of overabundance’ (Wichterich 2000: vii–viii). Defining the relationship between ‘globalisation’ and development as progressive and essentially of benefit to developing countries, Western development institutions cite the ‘impressive technological progress’ that has ‘spurred productivity gains around the world’ as resulting in an increasing number of countries ‘contributing today to world growth’, which ‘makes for a much more deeply integrated and vibrant world’ (IMF Director of European Offices, Saleh Nsouli 2007). Likewise, former UN Secretary-General (and key UN reformer) Kofi Annan has argued that the relationship between development, security and human rights, [H]as only been strengthened in our era of rapid technological advances, increasing economic interdependence, globalisation and dramatic geopolitical change. (2005: 5) Globalisation, claims the World Bank, ‘has helped reduce poverty in a large number of developing countries’ but must be harnessed to ‘better to help the world’s poorest, most marginalised countries improve the lives of their citizens’ (2002a). Although, as former Bank Chief Economist Nicholas Stern argues, some ‘anxieties’ about globalisation are well-founded, ‘reversing globalisation’ could only come at ‘an intolerably high price’ for poor people, destroying the ‘prospects of prosperity’ for many millions (Stern 2001). Such statements, of course, do not challenge the basic neoliberal assumption that integration into a global, liberal market is the key determinant of a country’s ‘development’. The ‘triumph of the market’ has already been built into the neoliberal globalisation story (Cameron and Palan 2004), so effectively in fact that it is made to seem the ‘natural’ result of efficient economic practice. Neoliberal development strategy, I argue throughout this book, is gendered in two ways, both of which are intertwined but, for the sake of analytical clarity, worth distinguishing. • Neoliberal development is gendered in terms of input, which comes from the foundational economic rationality from which neoliberal strategy is formed.

14


• Neoliberal development is gendered in terms of outcome: in the practical experiences of the poor people these strategies target, and in terms of the future continuance of the neoliberal policies in question. As Parpart argues, a (Post-Washington Consensus) concern for ‘good governance’ in international development has largely ignored both gender and power (2007: 207). Thus, although the quality of governance is certainly an issue for development institutions, and good governance increasingly proffered and imposed as a conditionality for the granting or renewal of multilateral loans, assessment of the specific ‘quality’ of good governance assumes that it is good where it is ‘clean’ and therefore value-neutral (e.g. comments made by World Bank lead economists Kazi Matin, World Bank 2007e). Based on the assumption that an efficient market society is inherently more equitable, neoliberalism’s advocates rarely comment on the profound changes in human behaviour that economic restructuring has instigated. Social concerns that might impact on market efficiency are certainly today worth the consideration of development institutions, which operate social departments much larger and broader in scope than 20 years ago. Social concerns, however, are mainstreamed into policy only as long as they can be quantified as tools for promoting market efficiency. Herein, ‘gender equity’ relates entirely to women’s empowerment as measured according to their level of market access to ‘assets’ and ‘opportunities’, a restrictive categorisation that excludes all nonwomen but also the ‘informal’ labour that women contribute to keep the ‘formal’ economy sustainable. The neglect, as Hoskyns and Rai argue, of women’s unpaid work in official statistics (such as the UN System of National Accounts) only contributes to ‘a widespread and growing depletion of the capacities and resources for social reproduction’, that is, ‘the glue that keeps households and societies together and active’ (Hoskyns and Rai 2007: 298). This is an issue that demands the urgent attention of statisticians, economists and policy makers, since, Without unpaid services and their depletion being measured and valued, predictions are likely to be faulty, models inaccurate and development policies flawed. (ibid) Many development institutions, such as the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the African Development Bank (AfDB) and

Introduction 15

the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), do operate ‘gender policies’ designed to streamline gender analysis into the lending, analytical and advisory ‘products’ that they offer. Operationally, however, ‘gender’ in official development discourse remains an analytical ‘variable’ that can be added to or removed from the fundamental of economic growth and market access at will, and which therefore exists as an externality to ‘good governance’ conditionality. It is thus easy for these institutions to overlook how the very basic elements of global governance today (the processes, practices, structures and value-laden assumptions on which global economic and development policy-making are based) might not be ‘value neutral’. Bound by the strictures of the macroeconomic frameworks of the institutions they work in to formulate ‘effective’ policy, many development staff struggle to combine advanced theoretical conceptualisations of gender with the restrictive and binary definitions that operate in institutional practice. Thus the idea that, regardless of situation, there is only one ‘normal’ way to be a woman or a man and that heterosexuality alone is ‘normal’ (despite modern science’s ‘discovery’ of numerous types of bodies, mixing together conventionally ‘male’ or ‘female’ anatomical components) proliferates.

Neoliberalism, the global political economy and gender analysis There is not, of course, one economy, as there is not one model of neoliberalism, and I certainly do not intend my use of the terms ‘economy’ and ‘global political economy’ to imply that there is any universal set of economic criteria, true in all times and in all places, to which people everywhere subscribe. I instead use the term ‘global political economy’ throughout my work to designate, to borrow Cameron and Palan’s phrase, a kind of ‘spatial imaginary’ of the relationships between complex processes, institutions, structures of understanding, meanings, behaviours and identities circulating globally (2004). GPE is particularly a term that, at least in my mind, suggests the impossibility of disconnecting social, political and economic ‘realities’. Use of the term GPE, however, as also for ‘neoliberalism’, is not intended to suggest that local and specific relations of socio-economic governance may be accurately generalised on any universal scale. I use the term simply because any reference to ‘the economy’ is not sufficient to imply the complex social dynamics that constitute economic practice, nor is the discipline of ‘Economics’ sufficiently interested in the social constitution of economic relations to be the only useful arena for this study. The

16


assumption of a political dimension to ‘economy’ enables us, then, more effectively to question the processes of intelligibility through which economic discourses define normal, necessary and beneficial human behaviour. Gender in the GPE A focus on gender in the GPE is crucial but also unsettling, since it has the potential to expose the sexism and racism of dominant disciplines, discourses and practices considered by many to be ‘value neutral’. This is a destabilising enterprise and also a highly emotive one, liable to incite bafflement, defensiveness and, sometimes, outright hostility: to posit the ‘international’ as gendered is to threaten many of the apparently stable foundations that have allowed conventional analysis to simplify, model and explain the actions of the global political economy’s key actors. Although, then, increasingly visible as a category of analysis, gender remains also rather trivialised in the minds of the mainstream, and frequently reduced to a category pertaining only to the lives of women, women’s labour rights and women’s social movements. Since individuals, in conventional (i.e., mainstream) economic and political analysis, are believed to be essentially similar and their individual ‘tastes’ exogenous to economic models, there is little room for categories of analysis that do not easily fit the economic mould, that cannot be easily measured, numbered and quantified, that refuse simplification and that cannot be instrumentalised. Ignoring gender’s role as one of the most basic, fundamental systems of identification through which we understand the world ignores, however, the complex and different understandings that people hold about their environments, their abilities to survive and capacities to continue existing, how they organise themselves, their goals in life, and how they cope with their surroundings. Absence of gender analysis in political economy and global governance is a particular shame since it further reifies the separation of macro-structural from micro-personal. Processes, practices and structures in the global political economy function only because of the human labour, bodies and energy that go into them. My work thus refuses the all too frequent equation of gender with women alone, and argues that the repeated trivialisation of gender in economic analysis/es results from a failure to see the power that gender brings to our everyday understandings, and especially to our understandings of economic common sense. My understanding of sex, gender and the reproduction of heterosexuality as they relate to neoliberalism, particularly as embodied in the

Introduction 17

World Bank, is that neoliberalism, as a discourse not overtly or explicitly ‘sexual’, depends on and reproduces ‘an extremely narrow context for living’ (Berlant and Warner 1998: 556); a context in which the processes of centring in neoliberal discourse that orient, balance and give grounding to the overall structure occur in reference to certain articulations of (heterosexual) gender identity(ies). In counterpoint, therefore, to ‘value neutral’ inquiry, the following pages ask how the Bank’s discourse constrains, according to particular gendered and ethnocentric foundations, the limits of that which is considered economically possible in the global political economy. Neoliberal discourses have, I argue, dominated contemporary social (international) relations by combining the material and ideational through heterosexualised discursive binaries, ‘natural facts’ and gender/sex categories. Neoliberalism (as highly contingent and inherently reproductive) structures and communicates appropriate types of and limits to human behaviour and acceptable social aspirations, neutralising social dislocations by veiling historical contingency in ‘truth’ and the ‘real’. I argue that neoliberalism’s inherently binary discursive structure (dependent on dualisms such as productive/reproductive, public/private, male/female, developed/undeveloped and so on) opens up some gendered possibilities while necessarily closing others. One such possibility opened might, for example, include inculcating in women a limited market rationality, so that they become better workers while still primarily defined in terms of their reproductive capacities (Bedford 2005). One possibility closed would be that of an economic model based on subsistence and intuition rather than market rationality and efficiency.

The West and the rest The contemporary condition of ‘postmodernity’ has been symptomatically defined as ‘decentred’, ‘allegorical’, ‘schizophrenic’ and is often particularly identified as a crisis of cultural authority, ‘specifically of the authority vested in Western European culture and its institutions’ (Owens 1983: 58). Much Western economic discourse is hugely ethnocentric, defining civilisation as, in essence, Western civilisation. Cultural production is, however, a diverse and ethnically dispersed affair and ‘the West’ has no claim to mastery. As a rather loose and ideological term, ‘the West’ embodies huge cultural variances, such that the political contexts of such ‘Western’ entities as the United Kingdom, Australia, the United States, Germany, France and so on make generalisation difficult. Indeed, the huge varieties of culture within the supposedly stable

18


identity of the nation state suggest that singular national ‘identities’ and political cultures are unsustainable. Such differences within and between also appear in specific cultural configurations of economic discourse. The realisation that Western culture, based predominantly on the centrality of advanced consumer capitalism, is only one among others would seem not, however, to have infected economic discourse. Neoliberalism, particularly dominant in the United Kingdom and the United States (but also New Zealand, Australia and parts of Latin America), exerts a great deal of authority over economic behaviour, achieving that authority through the ‘enunciative apparatus’ of representation. As Owens argues, however, the representational systems of the West admit only one vision, that of the constitutive male subject, ‘or, rather, they posit the subject of representation as absolutely centred, unitary, masculine’ (Owens 1983: 58). Neoliberalism, I contend, monopolises contemporary discourses of global economic and development. Intrinsically reproductive (of appropriately ‘economic’ assumptions, identities and meaning but also of themselves and their authority to govern), historically conditioned, institutionalised and power-laden, neoliberal discourses regulate the identities of the objects they govern according to a representational system predicated on certain gendered standards of normalisation. As Robison argues, neoliberalism, ‘no less than any other agenda, is a specific blueprint for the re-organisation of social and economic power’ (2004: 410). Imbued with unquestioned presuppositions regarding ‘freedom’, ‘democracy’, and ‘self-determination’, ‘as well as the identities of the subjects who are entitled to enjoy these things’ (Doty 1996: 3), neoliberal discourses (as embodied in a variety of organisations) construct realities that necessarily restrict the options, suitable behaviours and life identities of those they act upon. My task here is to examine ‘how certain representations underlie the production of knowledge and identities’ in the GPE, and ‘how these representations make various courses of action possible’ (ibid: 5). Western approaches to economics, most commonly found and practised in the organisations and faculties of the United States, the United Kingdom, northern Europe and Australasia, deploy very particular assumptions and modelling techniques, derived in large part from mainstream economic theory. These models and assumptions are designed and deployed to simplify the world in order to make it more generalisable and predictable: this is both an understandable and a reasonable endeavour insofar as we recognise that the models approximate (i.e., are symbolic of) the real world, but are not the real world itself nor should

Introduction 19

they be made to substitute reality. Mainstream political economy has tended, however, to take little note of this distinction, focusing instead on producing and deploying the analytical tools for and models of the various production possibilities, opportunity costs and efficiencies in pre-given and well-defined economic systems. Although IPE refers far more widely than does Economics to sociological considerations and the international sphere, and draws on and from a variety of academic schools (most notably economics and also political science, but crucially also sociology, history and cultural studies), the dominance of abstractivist and confusing scientism in contemporary political economy remains nonetheless significant. Forms of sexuality and sexual oppression vary across social sites, and sexual inequality, argues Owens, cannot be reduced to economic exploitation, or the ‘exchange of women among men’ (ibid: 63). Occurring nearly everywhere, economic oppression is very much a part of the matrix of intelligibility through which many economic discourses operate, but attention should not be focused on the economic and nothing else: class, culture, ethnicity, nationality are all lines along which discursive repression is drawn. Crucially for this analysis, neoliberalism presents the definitively, universally and objectively ‘human’ activity of economic production as a characteristically masculine activity, thus consigning both non-men and non-masculine persons to the spheres of non-productive or reproductive labour, where they are situated outside the society of male producers. In this sense, neoliberalism can certainly be read as an oppressive discourse, but what is perhaps more important is its ‘totalising ambitions’ and, through these, the ways in which neoliberal discourses reduce every form of social experience to their relationship with the Western market.

The question of ‘Policy Relevance’ It is so often the case that criticism of a discourse and its embodiments is taken to be synonymous with opposition to an ideology. Many have assumed that, in focusing my research on critiquing neoliberal globalisation and those who advocate it, I must therefore be opposed to the mechanisms and structures through which it is perpetuated. Similarly, if my work is reluctant to offer recommendations for improving policy, then there is no way in which its critique can hope to improve the advice of the policy-making community, thus it has little relevance. Criticism of a discourse does not, however, make one either pro or an organisation. The task for those engaged in the politics of development

20


is to improve people lives through careful and committed consideration of the ways in which ‘development’ operates, the assumptions on which it depends and the uneven and sometimes contrary effects that it reproduces. The issue of policy relevance is invariably confused with whether a research agenda offers not more relevant solutions, but more immediately effective ones. Westerners, embedded in and socialised into neoliberal market society, will likely produce responses to poverty and development within the limits of the neoliberal horizon that structures the questions deemed relevant to ask. Hence, increasing economic growth is almost always approached in terms of removing obstacles (such as ‘gender inequalities’) to market access and efficiency. This need not be the only way forward (self-reflective and reflexive scholarly practice suggests that the options are endless), but it has tended to be articulated as such. I do not situate myself in opposition to the World Bank, nor do I dismiss the entirety of its work as flawed. Regardless of origins, there is something to be said for making do with the institutions we have, which are after all mechanisms of social interaction deriving specifically from social relationships and, therefore, potentially open to reconfiguration. Inter-governmental organisations (IGOs), like the Bank, change and we must be aware of the contingency and potential changeability of their programmes and actions when we analyse them. It is infinitely possible for the Bank to formulate a gender strategy that systematically considers the implications of culturally specific gendered relations on development, and it is conceivable that should the Bank devote more time, energy and resources to this they could develop a strategy that depends less on the whim and tenacity of individual staff members than currently. There is indeed a business case to be made for including a more thorough analysis of gender in Bank work, which would entail a far greater commitment to understanding the very different patterns of social relationship across countries. The point is that improving and/or reconfiguring the Bank and its work are only one or two parts of a wider, and more fundamentally destabilising, project that needs first to understand how the Bank, as a key instrument of global governance, reproduces certain articulations of economic viability.

Structure of the book This book is organised in two parts. Part I (Chapters 1, 2 and 3) offers an introduction to both discourse and gender as approaches to research, examining the GPE broadly while also beginning to examine the role of

Introduction 21

the World Bank. Here, I outline my approach to neoliberalism, global governance and the World Bank through consideration of discourse beyond language. Language is, I argue, far from a transparent medium for transmitting knowledge, and is instead both produced by and producer of social, political and cultural formations, such as the World Bank. Chapter 1 thus begins an analysis of the gendered configuration of neoliberal global governance by outlining discourse as a theoretical approach, or analytical strategy, to research. This involves analysing all objects in the world (people, ideas, mechanisms, processes, practices, artefacts, data) as objects of discourse, dependent for their meaning and articulation on the discursive structures in which they are located. An introduction to the concept of heteronormativity is then provided, and will guide the research that will follow on the ways in which the Bank’s discourse of governance and global development reproduces culturally embedded and gendered meaning, knowledge and power. Chapter 2 introduces my understanding of and approach to ‘the economy’. Here, I examine the historical conditions, discursive means and central assumptions (of, e.g., value neutrality, efficiency, competition and individualism) through which neoliberalism has come to appear both intrinsically normal and entirely necessary to the functioning of contemporary economic discourses and relations. Chapter 3 applies an historical and gendered analysis to the particular character, formulation and contemporary practices of the World Bank. An historicised account of the changing nature of the Bank and its governance/development discourse is crucial to understanding not only what the Bank is, what it does and what sort of impact it might wield, but enables us also to begin to understand where and in what ways the Bank’s discourse creates and locates (gendered) meanings about, for example, efficient development and trade practice, suitable economic behaviour and economic ‘common sense’. This chapter considers, then, the Bank’s role, mandate, funding mechanisms, processes of decisionmaking and so on, but also reflects on any transformations that have shaped the Bank’s institutional form and discourse over the past 60 years (including, e.g., how the Bank’s discourse has shifted, particularly since the 1990s, towards one of the so-called ‘good governance’). Part II examines in close detail how, in World Bank discourse, certain kinds of knowledge about successful human endeavour have developed and what form they might take. To do this, Chapter 4 looks closely at the history and origins of ‘gender’ at the World Bank, including gender’s acknowledged position in Bank discourse, but also the ways in which it is more tacitly situated. I focus here, in part, on the ways in

22


which gender has been conceived of as both an ‘advocacy’ issue (as a matter of social justice, dependent on women’s movements and individuals to advocate its inclusion in development policy-making) and a matter of ‘efficiency’ and good ‘business’ sense (and therefore intrinsic to economic policy-making). Chapter 5 continues this examination by analysing how the Bank’s neoliberalism predicates, prescribes and reproduces particular meanings, behaviours and identities as suitable and appropriate for and in the neoliberal ‘free’ market. In so doing, the Bank, I argue, straightens development policy-making and practice, reconfiguring gender and sex in development by mainstreaming a particular vision of economic action and social meaning in the hearts of the communities with which it engages. Chapter 6, as the final chapter before I offer my conclusions, looks at the ways in which Bank discourse relies on and reproduces gendered and sexually foundations in specific instances of HIV/AIDS policy-making in Sub-Saharan Africa. This chapter is then followed by a brief concluding chapter.

1 Discourse, Sex and Gender in Global Governance

I approach the gendered configuration of global governance through what can be called a ‘discourse theoretic’ methodology. This chapter outlines what I mean by this and what role therein resides for the categories of ‘sex’ and ‘gender’. My research uses genealogical political inquiry to probe and decentre discursive ‘common sense’ in global politics. Thus, I analyse all objects in the world (people, ideas, institutions, processes, practices, artefacts, data) as objects of discourse, dependent for their meaning and articulation on the discursive structures in which they are located. This research is particularly guided by the concept of heteronormativity, which is, I argue, critical in understanding the ways in which the World Bank’s discourse of global governance and development reproduces culturally embedded and gendered meaning, knowledge and power. If ‘discourse theory’ can be said to exist as a distinct school of thought, perhaps its most recognisably distinct feature is that it analyses political (i.e., all aspects of human) life in terms of discourse. My use of ‘discourse’ in this research rests on three analytical assumptions, which can also be argued to hold true for some other (but not all) types of discourse analyses. These are that • Every object is constituted as an object of discourse; • All objects and actions convey meaning and are themselves meaningful; • Social practices articulate and contest the discourses that constitute social reality. There are three reasons for using a discourse analysis (DA) in this research. First, certain types of DA, filtered from a body of ‘discourse’ 23

24


scholarship that is highly varied in method and application, evince a ‘set’ of key concerns. These are (a) that discourse can be used as a means of enquiring into society and human responses to it, (b) that the key concern should lie with the formation and application of human knowledge, such that language ceases to be a transparent medium for transmitting meaning and understanding, and (c) that we commit to understanding discourse beyond language, as both product and producer of social, political and cultural formations. The second reason for deploying a discourse analytic research methodology here is that (a poststructural) DA allows for a particularly broad perspective on social, economic and political relations. Poststructural DA understands reality, knowledge and language as constructed, contingent and constituted by discourse. Thirdly, examining dominant discourses, such as neoliberal discourses, through the kinds of power relations they reproduce allows the analyst to look quite specifically at where discourses master reality. In other words, we have better purchase on the ways in which neoliberal discourses produce and are product of certain gendered and sexual relations of power, meanings and knowledges. Discourses are ‘the totality of signs that carry meaning’ (Wodak 1997: 4). They are social configurations of political space, including at their core not only languages but material conditions and effects, institutions (and the practices, behaviours and representations they reproduce and initiate), written texts, imparted wisdoms, ideologies, processes of social production and reproduction, the contexts of languages used to identify, describe and explain various political configurations, interactions and relationships between structures and agents, ideas and material effect. As systems of signification (and therefore meaning), discourses are infused by power as both productive and repressive: creating and circulating but also marginalising and repressing certain meanings, behaviours and identities. Discursive structures exist largely in ‘organic’ form; multiplying, formulating, recording, constraining, redistributing, constantly transforming (be it by growing or shrinking), diversifying, producing and being produced. In this case, discourses of gender and neoliberalism are transformed by and transform cultural and economic meanings, knowledges and practices. It is through discursive practice that the objects of discourse are inscribed with meaning, constrained by rules and orders, and produced to perform according to the conditions of the discursive structure(s) in question. The analytical strategy of this research proceeds twofold: in the first instance, I examine how the roles and meanings of sex, gender and sexuality are ordered, correlated and transmitted in neoliberal discourse

Discourse, Sex and Gender in Global Governance

25

to reproduce certain identity ‘truths’ about and for people. Secondly, I examine how neoliberalism is broadly constituted, but also how it is more ‘locally’ embedded, through analysis of the World Bank as an important source of global economic governance. This I do through both primary and secondary sources, garnered in large part from documents (Bank-produced and otherwise) and interviews. I seek to examine the types of identity relations predicated, pre/proscribed and reproduced according to neoliberalism’s discursive limits of intelligibility. I am particularly concerned throughout this research with the ways in which the neoliberal discourse is structured in relation to a heteronormative discourse that privileges and perpetuates compulsory heterosexuality as normal and natural.

The role of interviewing Important parts of this thesis refer to and employ data garnered from interviews with Bank staff members in Washington, D.C., which were conducted from August through September 2005. Interviewees are anonymised and referred to by codes, appendices for which can be found at the end of this book. With regards to my research on the World Bank, specifically, I have tried throughout to keep as even a balance as possible between interviews with and publications by the Bank’s own staff, those produced through consultation and/or by external consultation and those by scholars working outside the Bank. Although the majority of data sources that I use throughout this study are text-based, material garnered from personal interviews constitutes an important part of this research. I treat the interviews very much as I treat written and Web-based texts, that is, as things that are said about certain issues and subjects, but certainly not vehicles of any absolute truth or discursive certainty. Spoken sources do, however, provide a slightly different type of data set, since they are, as available only to myself, perhaps more open to my own interpretation. Only I, of course, have access to the confidence, the tonal nuances, pauses and hesitations with which verbal statements were communicated to me. As such, I use statements garnered in interviews only where I consider them fairly unambiguous and only with the permission of those interviewed. The anonymity of my interviewees is not intended to imply that anything controversial or seditious may either have been stated directly or more tacitly implied, and is used throughout merely to preserve the privacy of those interviewed and to maintain some uniformity in my methodology. Interviewees have full access to any documents I have produced from their statements.

26


Ten interviews in total were carried out, seven with World Bank staff (of which four were with staff who worked explicitly on gender, three with staff who did not), two with staff at the Inter-American Development Bank and one with a member of staff at the International Monetary Fund. I employ interviews to elaborate on and enrich textbased sources in ways that draw attention not only to the stability and sedimentation but also to the potential mutability of institutionalised discourse. Interviews, although rarely self-contradictory, did often reveal the Bank to be, in places, at odds with itself and its discourse to be riddled with ambiguities and internal conflicts. They were an invaluable resource in understanding how the Bank and its staff work, but I did not and do not treat anything that was said to me in interview as somehow set in stone. Those staff that responded positively to requests for interviews were mostly individuals based in the social development sectors of the Bank’s work. In seniority and time at the Bank, interviewees varied, with many having worked previously in other sectors of the Bank. Interviewees, in general, showed a great willingness to speak about their work, were unafraid to clarify their own personal values and were certainly never an easily generalisable or homogenous group. My approach was to ask interviewees a similar set of quite open and general questions regarding, for example (if they were Bank staff), whether they would describe the Bank as a ‘neoliberal’ institution, what they perceived to be the biggest challenges and internal conflicts the Bank faces, how they would describe the relationship between market efficiency and social equality, the role and significance of the Bank’s Gender Board and so on. The particular advantages here of interviewing lie in the more dynamic conceptualisations and descriptions of the Bank and its work that they enable. Given the discursive shifts that have occurred within and outside the organisation, particularly since the early 1990s, interviews provide a particularly salient exposure of the varieties of subjectivities and varied articulations that function within the Bank, and, I hope, mean that I have not presented a picture of the Bank as any kind of preternaturally unified neoliberal monolith.

‘Discourse’ as an approach to research Discourse Analysis does not look for truth but rather at who claims to have truth, and at how these claims are justified in terms of expressed and implicit narratives of authority. (Carver 2002: 52. Emphasis in original)


27

Many styles of DA exist, embodying varying ontological and epistemological assumptions. I will not here go into too much detail, except to outline generally where my approach comes from and from what interpretative and critical traditions of analysis it draws. DA has tended, as Howarth articulates, to borrow from such traditions as ethnography, psychoanalysis, deconstruction, poststructuralism, Western Marxism and post-analytical philosophy (2000: 127). Possibly the only ‘methodological’ similarity between schools of contemporary DA is the primacy they give to analysing society in terms of sign systems, codes and their discourses, although there is considerable divergence in the detail of analytic and research strategy.

Types of discourse analysis Without going into too much detail, it can be argued that three distinct strands to DA exist, distinguished ultimately by their differing definitions of discourse. First, some types of DA view discourse as language communication alone. These explicitly linguistically centred types of DA (including speech act theory and conversation analysis) are relatively easy to categorise since discourse relates far more to the French notion of ‘discours’ and its close association with speech, or talk. Here, discourse is deployed as the linguistic (spoken or textual) communication between speaker and hearer, and as linguistic practices reflective of social meaning. In this sense, a statement represents a transmission of elements distributed in a corresponding space; it obeys rules and logics that may be isolated and analysed, recorded and disseminated. Discourse can then be dissolved into units of communication. A second, different, strand of DA views discourse as ideologically generated and is often referred to as Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). Here, discourse, more than just existing communicatively, is structurally conditioned and generative of meanings that may be systematically analysed, interpreted and explained in terms of their relation to contextspecific social conditions. The key point is the shift in emphasis from language per se, even as socially produced, to language as ideologically produced. Not only this, but most CDA would also argue an emancipatory commitment to making better social science research, with the possibility ‘that we might profitably conceive of the world in some alternative way’ (Fowler 1981: 25). This kind of DA explicitly concerns itself with ‘social problems’, with the practical application of DA a means to laying bare the power relations intrinsic to those social problems (e.g. Fairclough 1999).

28


The third and last strand is poststructural discourse analysis, which examines discourses as structured, relational totalities. Maintaining, like CDA, the importance of language as reflective to social meaning, poststructural DA does not, however, view meaning (and the rules and logics through which meaning is transmitted) as empirically quantifiable and assessable. It also does not assume that discourse, meaning and communication can be understood by virtue of models of so-called rational action embodied in clearly intelligible structures. Ontologically (in terms of what people in different circumstances might feasibly be said to ‘know’ in and about the world), this equates to an understanding of reality that is highly constitutive and constructivist. That is, what exists ‘in the world’ is only made real to us by virtue of discourse and the structures that discourses impose on our thinking. The world is more than simply as we find it and there are no ‘facts’ that speak for themselves, nor ‘material objects’ that exist independently of discourse. Nothing ‘exists’ apart from (i.e., separate to) our knowledge of it: ‘material objects’ constitute reality only through our knowledge of them, which is necessarily partial, contingent and fluctuating. All this means also that our knowledge of the world organises us, and not that we are necessarily in control of it. Thus, all ‘bodies’ (organic, inorganic and otherwise) exist as ‘objects’ of discourse: as surfaces and scenes of discursive inscription that are sometimes inert, sometimes active, performers of discursive signification.

Poststructuralism, truth and knowledge Discourses are historically conditioned, limited and institutionalised structures of meaning and understanding. They are also imbued with order, regularities and discipline (Foucault 2003: 41). As such, they produce identities, meanings, desires, and thus power and are embodied in a multitude of practices, institutions, identities, norms, rules and disciplinary procedures. Since they are constructed and contingent, the creation and perpetuation of articulation, knowledge and identity are never neutral nor are they an expression of any objective ‘truth’. As Bakhtin argued, we do not just learn to speak, ‘we learn to construct utterances’: thus we learn more than language, we learn the system, which speaks through our utterances (2004: 127). Humans tend to understand themselves and others relationally: in relation, for example, to the social understandings we share with others, in relation to our forebears, environments and the knowledges


29

passed down through those environments. It is one thing, though, to argue that participants’ personal backgrounds, attitudes towards each other, social values and sociocultural assumptions regarding role and status relationships play an important role in the interpretation process. It is altogether different to suggest that the analyst might discover, perfectly know or correctly identify what these might be in order to attempt ‘systematically’ to show how social knowledge is used in situated interpretation (e.g. Gumperz 2004). To frame analysis in objectivity is problematic because it is to assume that humans have perfect knowledge of, access to and control over their environment, history and future. To know and name the nature of social experience is, however, already to have inflicted a problematic interpretation upon that experience. It is also to ignore that ‘reality’ is highly constructed, contingent and intersubjectively held and created. Discourses develop historically and socially according to interrelated economic, social, geographical and linguistic trajectories. Since they are shared, they cannot be concrete but are contingent on their participants. We might know and name social experience, but this is an arbitrary and partial process that is less objectively achievable than imperfectly reproduced. Neoliberal discourses have become dominant in global governance by combining the material and ideational in structures which ‘sediment’ certain subject positions (combining, e.g., increased industrialisation with the accumulation and expansion of capital wealth, such that ‘rational’ behaviour depends on ‘free market’ proficiency). Neoliberalism’s subject positions need not be analysed as gendered: it is my argument, however, that gender cannot feasibly or accurately be detached from the myriad of practices that constitute our relationships. Although hegemonic discourses, such as neoliberalism, may seem solid, established and even concrete, discourses are in fact ‘always vulnerable to those political forces excluded in their production, as well as the dislocatory effects of events beyond their control’ (Howarth et al. 2000: 4). Hegemonic discourses structure meaning, identity and behaviour through the articulation and re-articulation of certain knowledges (the neoliberal globalisation thesis, for example, continually re-articulates the market as the only and natural mechanism for the distribution of scarce resources). Thus they create a specific and limited social ‘space’ for behaviour and study, while concealing the fact that their authority is not stable, but contingent (on history, society, contestation).

30


A DA methodology is invariably specific to the subject under consideration. The World Bank, as a particular institutionalised form of neoliberalism, conceals the ethnocentricity and sexism of its assumptions through a governance discourse that appears to utter objective realities (development as economic growth, profit maximisation as ‘rational’ behaviour and so on). The Bank, I argue, reproduces a particular neoliberal developmental discourse through specific discursive practices, practices that predicate, prescribe and reproduce the identities, meanings and behaviours that best correspond with the Bank’s view of the world. In so doing, the Bank creates a ‘reality’ to match the limits of that which it can perceive as possible. This reality makes sense of human relations by structuring the meanings that are applied to those relations.

‘Gender’ analysis as an approach to research [I]n order for gender relations to be useful as a category of social analysis we must be as socially [aware] and self-critical as possible about the meanings usually attributed to those relations and the ways we think about them. Otherwise, we run the risk of replicating the very social relations we are attempting to understand. (Flax 1997: 175) Together with discourse, sex and gender are the pivotal concepts to this study, crucial to (but not necessarily overtly evident in) neoliberal discourses such as that of the World Bank. Neoliberalism, officially ‘ungendered’, commonly constructs a view of the world based on a system of capital interaction wherein the human agent is rational and rent seeking. Poststructural theories, however, analyse the self and human identity as ‘a theoretical manoeuvre, not as a unifying principle’ (Carver et al. 1998: 286). Those (poststructural) scholars that deploy gender as an analytical tool argue that ‘gender’ corresponds to the simplest idea that performative behaviour attached to ‘sex’ somehow prescribes human identity. My work takes ‘concrete’ concepts such as feminine, masculine, success, profit and competition as the mythic, performative articulations of a rigorously centred and disciplined neoliberal discourse. I seek to expose the plural operations of power in neoliberalism, emphasising throughout a commitment to gender as a powerful structure of regulatory practices. In this sense, gender constitutes a grid of intelligibility, delineating meaning, identity and behaviour in the global ‘marketplace’.


31

A gender–discourse analysis is a research agenda that does not simply accept or seek to explain the status quo of power relations in contemporary global governance, but instead challenges the gendered foundations on which hierarchies, centres and discursive structures are built. Gender relations are analysed historically as contingent, not natural, artefacts of certain processes, sequences of events or interest articulations. Neoliberalism is gendered because it depends on gender hierarchies of successful human behaviour, fictively constructed out of heteronormative signifying practices (i.e., those practices that privilege heterosexuality as the only normal and natural form of sexual behaviour). Power relations resulting from gender hierarchy tend, in Western society, to be unequal. Dominant forms of masculinity are the products of their specific societies and social mechanisms, but appear natural and/or hegemonic only because they have been successfully sedimented in and reproduced over time by society. Those who claim that no such hierarchy exists or that unequal power relations are somehow natural and/or inevitable are very likely to be ‘uncomfortably jolted by any tremors that jeopardise those unequal power relations’ (Kimmel 2001: 189). Gender and sex [T]here is no recourse to a ‘person,’ a ‘sex,’ or a ‘sexuality’ that escapes the matrix of power and discursive relations that effectively produce and regulate the intelligibility of those concepts for us. (Butler 1990: 42) ‘Sex’, ‘gender’, ‘sexuality’ and ‘sexual practice’ are intrinsically constitutive, contingent, but sometimes incoherent and discontinuous, categories of identity; their apparent coherence predicated, prescribed and reproduced by prohibitive and disciplinary discursive practices. In neoliberal discourses, gender, as a norm governing reality, is regulated and reproduced through heteronormativity. Heteronormativity, as Berlant and Warner articulate, consists of those ‘institutions, structures of understanding, and practical orientations that make heterosexuality seem not only coherent’, but also ‘privileged’ (1998: 548). Herein, the ‘reality’ of heterosexual reproduction is produced and maintained through a restrictive discourse of gender that insists on the duality of man and woman, reproducing sex as ‘prediscursive’, ‘natural’ and binary. Apparently coherent gender norms (such as ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’) are then only intelligible as the expressive attributes of ‘male’ and ‘female’.

32


The World Bank’s neoliberal discourse is gendered, and therefore sexed, because it is predicated on, prescribes and reproduces human identity, behaviour and meaning as intelligible according to heteronormative discursive norms. These reproduce the (gendered and sexed) identities most suitable to perform in the global political economy. Distinctions between sex and gender have tended to posit a biological intractability to ‘sex’, while assuming ‘gender’ to be socially configured and culturally constructed. Such distinctions reify binary sex identities, while sedimenting the differentiation between two sexes as natural ‘fact’, represented by and in the duality of the human body. In the West, in particular, this duality has become such widely accepted ‘common sense’ that those who challenge it are rarely taken seriously. My point is not to dispute that men and women exist. Rather, I am more concerned with drawing attention to what we miss when we accept as normal a strictly limited idea of nature that has already been established for us. Heteronormative structures, institutions and policies (particularly common in, but no longer limited to, Western, liberal democratic societies) understand bodies as ‘naturally’ distinct according to the arrangement of their sexual organs. In official, political, socio-economic and medical discourse, there are only two ‘types’ of sexed person, man and woman, with ‘genders’ ultimately produced by and dependent on the ‘natural’ distinction of male/female (‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ are rarely understood as entirely distinct from male and female bodies). ‘Sexuality’ is assumed to be an ‘identity category’, which is assigned according to one’s ‘gender’ and the ‘gender’ of those one is sexually attracted to. Since gender is seen to result from sex, so sexuality can be defined according to ‘same’ or ‘opposite’ sex attraction. Each of us is surrounded by overt and tacit sexual norms, which impact on our lives in numerous and diverse ways. These norms are produced and reproduced through prevailingly heteronormative relations of power, hierarchy and privilege embodied in mechanisms of governance (institutions such as the education system, modern medicine, mental healthcare, the military, the penal system and corporate industry, which institutionalise, regulate and reproduce heterosexuality as natural and unmarked). As physical and psychological standards against which the human body and its behaviours are measured, social norms constitute what is considered normal and natural about a person. Productive and reproductive (of themselves, social identities, regulatory apparatuses, mechanisms of control and life opportunities) these norms are also repressive: the bounds of what may be considered normal, acceptable and decent in Western liberal society are continually policed


33

(such that we police ourselves) through a variety of mechanisms of regulation, control and (if needs be) exclusion. Despite modern science’s ‘discovery’ of numerous types of bodies, mixing together conventionally ‘male’ or ‘female’ anatomical components, the notion that there is only one ‘normal’ way to be a woman or a man persists in Western medicine and society, which continue to advocate that there are only two sexes and that heterosexuality alone is ‘normal’. The effects on all people (gay, straight, transsexual, transgender, hermaphrodite, undecided and so on) of binary, oppositional and restrictive discourses are many and varied. The policing of human bodies and identities is serious and deleterious, effecting anything from tacit discrimination to overt, violent and/or lethal forms of social (and also physical, psychiatric and medical) stigmatisation, mistreatment and exclusion. It is common practice, for example, in the United States, and elsewhere, to have operated to assign a ‘sex’ to an intersex baby within 24 hours of its birth. The prevalence, however, of sex-based birth ‘defects’ (estimates suggest that the frequency of various categories of intersexuality are as much as 17 intersex children for every 1000 born) suggests that conventional standards of bodily ‘normality’ may be some way off the mark. Those whose sexual or gender identities are less easily read as of fixed and binary essence have long been characterised as of questionable nature or character and discriminated against accordingly. Reading overtly ‘queer’ and non-heterosexual behaviours, practices and bodies as unnatural, abnormal, deviant and/or abhorrent, Western society has attempted in many and various ways to remedy the deviancy, intervening to correct physically (through, e.g., medical and/or psychiatric procedures), to socially exclude or to shame into secrecy. International policy-making that is based on heteronormative readings and assumptions is likely to ignore the multiple, unstable ways in which people may be like or different from each other and, as such, can only harm those that do not fit the standard. To assume that differences in ‘sex’ are naturally ‘given’ is as problematic as assuming that culturally conditioned traits can be explained, through reference to biological determinism, as ‘gender-typical qualities’. The discursive separation of ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ is a power-laden, binary discursive practice designed to bring coherence, unity and intelligibility to the figure of the ‘person’. This separation is, as Butler argues, an artificial and intentionally disciplinary one. Rather than as any expression of sex as fixed and binary, I read gender, as Butler does, as a mechanism through which bodies are made intelligible. For Butler,

34


gender is not merely the cultural inscription of meaning onto a pregiven sex, but instead designates ‘the very apparatus of production whereby the sexes themselves are established’ (1990: 10). Gender, as a regulatory discursive mechanism, thus (re)produces and naturalises particular notions of masculine and feminine: it is a ‘norm’, or ‘standard of normalisation’, that ‘may or may not be explicit’, and when it operates as a normalising principle in social practice, it is more likely to be ‘implicit, difficult to read’, and ‘discernible most clearly and dramatically’ in the effects that it produces (Butler 2004: 41–43). The World Bank, for example, in a 2005 release on the Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) epidemic in Brazil, states that although initially ‘restricted to large urban centers’ and ‘markedly masculine’, the epidemic ‘has changed its pattern toward “heterosexualisation” ’ (i.e., heterosexually acquired infections predominate in recent years) and ‘feminisation’ (Beyrer et al. 2005: 74). Here, the Bank is clearly using gender as a replacement of physicality: where once cases of male infection predominated, ‘new cases have been preferentially registered in women’; thus the epidemic has been feminised. For this to be true, one would have to believe, first, that masculine stands in for male, feminine for female and, second, that epidemics not only have genders but sexual preferences too.1 Similarly, in an October 2006 news release announcing the publication of a new Bank book entitled The Other Half of Gender, the Bank cites ‘a growing, but still timid, interest in understanding the male side of gender in development’ (World Bank 2006a. Emphasis added), as if gender might reasonably effect a ‘true’ expression of ‘sex’. In contrast, I argue that gender is not something that people possess, nor is it the reflection of any pre-given inner identity. Rarely explicit in neoliberal discourses, gender is often tacitly located, difficult to read and most clearly discernible only in the effects that it produces, constituting the social norms on which depends, as Butler articulates, the viability of our individual personhood (Butler 2004: 2). The discourses that create the ‘natural group’ that possesses ‘women’ and ‘men’ are a powerful source of compulsion and prohibition, forcing bodies and minds ‘to correspond, feature by feature, with the idea of nature that has been established for us’ (Wittig 1997: 220. Emphasis in the original). While gender is certainly a substantial part of what it means to be ‘human’, it is not my intention to suggest that people everywhere labour under the same signifying codes, cultural articulations or life experiences to make a universal ‘gender discourse’ desirable, or even possible. The point is, rather, that in culturally dominating discourses (such


35

as the World Bank’s neoliberalism) that privilege heterosexuality, sex, although an effect of the apparatus of cultural construction known as gender, maintains a prediscursive, immutable and ‘natural’ face. The cultural variability of discourse is obscured according to ‘the presumption that sexual difference is a condition of every and all culture’ (Soenser Breen and Blumenfeld 2001: 10). This produces the effect of constituting sexual difference as ‘fundamental to culture’, assumed by the body, and not assigned to it according to a variety of cultural practices: the fundamental ‘natural’ that ‘has a way of making sure we consider as unintelligible forms of sexual differentiation that do not conform to the “sexual difference” at hand’ (ibid). Neoliberal discourses thus constitute specific and dominating constellations of discursive practices and normative articulations, rendering the individual intelligible, in particular, culturally specific ways. When embedded in discourses dependent on socio-biological explanations of gender, it is indeed difficult to consider that man and masculine might signify a female body just as easily as a male one, or woman and feminine a male body just as easily as a female one. Instead, we might choose to believe that we have some clarity about ‘sex’, that it marks something about the human body, expresses an identity or constitutes some kind of ‘act’. The result, in Western discourse at least, of such discursive choices has been an overwhelming binarity that unifies the characterisations of each ‘sex’ or ‘gender’ group, such that we might assume that there exists one set of traits to characterise men and one for women and so on. As Berlant and Warner elucidate, rarely do we attempt to unsettle the ‘garbled but powerful norms’ that support ‘sex’ as ‘heterosexual privilege’ (1998: 548). Gender as performative and the importance of ‘queering’ power Our sexed bodies, our gender identities, and our inner sense of self are all material effects of repeated actions within the power/knowledge nexus of discourse. (Hooper 2001: 30) Gender, as an active process creating divisions of labour, power and emotions, is not something we have nor is it something we are (‘what gender are you?’). Rather, gender (as it is conventionally understood in Western societies at least) constitutes a fictive mark of biology we rarely question. In the West, this mark of biology structures our social identities and relations according to powerful and often violent regulatory

36


practices of compulsory heterosexuality. Gender identities are thus the result of the heteronormative systems of meaningful practices that produce them. As a regulatory norm embodied in heteronormative discourses themselves, gender is also constructing in its governance of social relations. Gender, in my work, is performative in the sense that the ‘reality’ of gender in the global political economy is itself produced ‘as an effect of the performance’ of gender (Butler 2004: 218). Our ‘gender identities’ are produced as effects of regulatory discourses that seek to regulate sexuality, fantasy and desire through the surface politics of the body (ibid: 174). There is no ‘gender’ to pre-exist its regulation, as Butler articulates, but there is, following Foucault, a pre-existing subject on which regulatory power not only acts, but which also shapes and forms the subject. Gender may be read as both constituting and constitutive, with ‘the regulatory discourses which form the subject of gender’ precisely those ‘that require and induce the subject in question’ (ibid: 41). Gender is so embedded in contemporary regulatory power that the regulatory apparatuses that reproduce our human identities have long themselves been gender-specific. Genders are neither true nor false (although Western society’s tick-box approach to gender would suggest the opposite), but are produced as the truth effects of a discourse of primary and stable identity. Embodying the privileging of normative heterosexuality, institutions, structures of understanding and practical orientations that are heteronormative regulate the production of human identity according to a standard of reproductive heterosexuality (see Berlant and Warner’s excellent 1998 essay). This is considered the only normal, natural and/or appropriate standard for human relations. The human body, its behaviours and sexual practices are thus only understood as ‘natural’ when measured against a socially reproduced norm of reproductive heterosexuality. All non-heterosexual behaviours and practices are thus considered unnatural, abnormal, deviant and/or abhorrent. Particularly common to politically liberal cultures and societies, heteronormative relations of power depend on the assumption of a foundational distinction between private and public, moral and amoral (regulating identity according to, e.g., taboos on incest and homosexuality). Analysing the World Bank as a heteronormative structure, I seek to examine the ways in which a heteronormative development discourse is produced and reproduced. In this sense, my research aims to ‘queer’ the power relations that the Bank institutes to dictate the form and function of human relations.


37

To queer power is to seek to expose the limitations, unstable foundations and power-laden assumptions of the ‘straight’ political, psychological, cultural and economic discourses that govern us. For queer approaches, heterosexuality is a social, political and economic construct, not the pre-given basis for human interaction that it is made to seem. Queer theories assume that ‘truth’, ‘nature’ and ‘fact’ are not, contrary to conventional wisdom, pre-given and universally valid but are discursive constructions. As such, queer approaches to power seek to subvert the apparent naturalness of the authorities, hierarchies and discourses residing in the socio-economic systems that govern us. Here, studies in heterosexist bias and the reproduction of heteronormativity have a significant intellectual heritage in historical analyses of the means and functions of mechanisms of social control over the body. Foucault’s work is especially important in understanding the social production and reproduction of discursive power, not least for his examination of the effects of social discourses of sex (embodied in historically contingent discourses of science, medicine and technology) to reveal the extent to which bodies are constrained and controlled by repressive moral discourses emanating from political, economic and judicial institutions of social authority (e.g. Foucault 2004). Foucault focused in particular on how, in societies based on the market economy, it was and is essential that people keep producing (economically) and reproducing (similarly productive offspring but also the rules of society itself). One of the most expedient ways by which people can be distinguished and assigned different but mutually complementary roles is through the imposition of a rigid, but apparently ‘biologically true’, female–male distinction. This is how the category ‘sex’ is conventionally understood. For Foucault, at a time when the industrialisation of Europe demanded a vast, willing and malleable workforce, sexuality became monitored and regulated by powerful, historically specific, apparatuses of state control. Accordingly, mechanisms have, in Western society, been established and maintained to control, for example, conjugal relations, to monitor women’s sexual physiology, to regulate birth rates and to supervise children’s sexuality. The state oversees, regulates and disciplines through social institutions such as medicine and medical advice, psychiatry, schools and teaching curricula, labour regulations and legal, judicial and penal requirements. These institutions scrutinise and compel socio-economic order through fixed hierarchies of individual behaviour imposed according to, and symbolised by, strict (and restrictive) man/woman, normal/deviant binaries.

38


A gender(ed) discourse analysis of neoliberalism, the World Bank and global governance Gender relations enter into and are constituent elements in every aspect of human experience. In turn, the experience of gender relations for any person and the structure of gender as a social category are shaped by the interactions of gender relations and other social relations such as class and race. Gender relations thus have no fixed essence; they vary both within and over time. (Flax 1997: 171) Since every object exists as an object of discourse, it is then only through discourse that we understand anything at all about the world. Through discourse we make sense of and fit ourselves to political configurations of society, economy and government, and it is in reference to these that we are identified and identifiable. To assert that all objects and actions are meaningful solely by virtue of discourse means simply that ‘language’ may never be a mirror of ‘nature’, just as ‘nature’ may never be extra-discursive. Language, and therefore discourse, [I]s the one and only way through which our ‘forms of life’ can happen in the world, through which subjectivities can be created and expressed, social activities developed and pursued, and power relations tried out and consolidated. (Carver 2002: 50–51) Nominally ‘economic’ discourses are systemic sites across and through which power, in the shape of gendered and sexualised meanings, operates. Neoliberal discourses produce and repress certain meanings, identities and (in)appropriate behaviours through particular discursive practices, for example, by predicating and prescribing suitable subject positions (and the proscription of unsuitable ones). It is through the analysis of these discursive practices that we find the tools by which we might examine the discourse as a whole. As Peterson suggests, our attempts to understand, criticise and recast economic theory, economic development and structural adjustment are compromised insofar as they rely on conventional categories and inherited frameworks reliant, for example, upon mono-disciplinary, modernist, productivist and masculinist biases. Such categories and frameworks serve us poorly today and, in short, generate constrained and partial analyses (Peterson 2002: 1).


39

Sex, gender and neoliberalism’s discursive practices The question of the constitution of neoliberal discourse as fundamentally gendered requires inquiry into how this discourse locates and bestows value. Western systems of economic relations depend upon dominant, hierarchical and heterosexual formations of gender. The current climate of global capitalism, supervised by a particularly virulent brand of neoliberal logic, is inherently gendered, with the effect of associating successful human behaviour almost exclusively with a gender identity embodied in dominant forms of White, European masculinity. An important part of neoliberalism’s reproduction of heteronormative gender and sex identity resides in its discursive practices. The very production of categories of identity and the society of which they are a part depend, as Doty argues, upon discursive practices ‘to create the fixedness of meaning’ (1996: 8). Practices of predication, pre/proscription and reproduction are, I argue, the means by which the Bank’s neoliberal discourse names, classifies, analyses and explains. It is also through these discursive practices that neoliberalism is most clearly heteronormative in its dependence upon the tacit but crucial privileging of heterosexuality, naturalising otherwise contingent foundations as ‘truth’. The Bank’s discursive practices thus simultaneously construct the appropriate ‘self’ (productive, market-able, malleable) and inappropriate ‘other’ (backward, uncivilised, market-shy) by prescribing a pre-suppositional truth (that development equals economic growth, produced in reference to and by the neoliberal market). This truth is naturalised and sedimented as background knowledge of how the world works, and what the nature of that world’s inhabitants is. The production of this prescribed ‘truth’ occurs in tandem with ‘classificatory schemes’, to borrow Doty’s words, which place human beings in the categories to which they most ‘naturally’ belong, and which in turn produce the hierarchies of identity corresponding to the presumed essential character of various kinds of human beings. As Doty argues, underlying this production of subject positions operates a ‘logic of difference’ (the contingency of which is concealed by the power of discursive practices) which ‘attempts to fix the positions of social agents as stable, positive differences. Identities are presumed to be based upon foundational essences and are portrayed as being merely different from other identities’ (1996: 11). It is not the case, of course, that ‘gender’ and ‘sex’ are always invisible categories in neoliberal analyses. What is rarely explored, however, is the extent to which such analyses are predicated on the duality of sex, or construct from their regulatory discursive practices gender differences

40


along universal axes of sexual difference. To conceive of gender as constitutive of the very processes that drive the selective beneficiaries of international economic interaction is to ask how and where the construction of gender takes place. As Butler argues, the compulsion to become ‘man’ or ‘woman’ does not come from ‘sex’ (Butler 1990: 12). Discourses necessarily seek to ‘set certain limits to analysis’ or try to ‘safeguard certain tenets of humanism as presuppositional’, particularly concerning analysis of gender. Through the enactment of such limits, heteronormative discourses (such as the Bank’s neoliberalism) are able to ‘presuppose and pre-empt the possibilities of imaginable and realisable gender configurations within culture’ (ibid: 13). An ‘imaginable domain of gender’ is thus bounded by the discursive limits of hegemonic cultural discourses predicated on the language of universal rationality. We cannot, as Butler suggest, ‘refer to a “given” sex or a “given” gender without first inquiring into how sex and/or gender are given’ (1990: 10). To argue that neoliberal discourses predicate, pre/proscribe and (re)produce ‘sexually configured’ discursive categories of identity is meaningful only in relation to specific inquiry into that discursive structure’s construction of both ‘sex’ and ‘gender’. I am, therefore, largely concerned in this book with the ways in which it is possible for positivist, universalist, rationalist discourses (such as neoliberalism) to predicate, pre/proscribe and reproduce meanings, identities and behaviours through certain discursive binaries, ‘natural facts’ and gender/sex categories. Neoliberal discourses make sense of social relations by structuring the meanings we apply to types of endeavour, activity, modes of production and constitute a powerful matrix of intelligibility that is composed specifically of a heterosexual gender intelligibility. As such, the discursive limits have been predicated on and bounded by the experience of (White, European, middle-class) men’s actions as the prediscursive norm, limiting all ‘imaginable domains of gender’ to a mimetic relationship with the natural fact of man, representative of human history in general. Man, as the universal construct of neoliberal discourse, bears the ‘masculine’ as a mark of biological, linguistic or cultural difference. This is in relation and in opposition to the signification ‘feminine’ in a metaphysics of substance that structures, in Butler’s words, the very notion of the subject. Neoliberal discourses embody this metaphysics of substance by assuming a substantive person (homo economicus, or Economic Man), who carries norms of human economic behaviour, essential characteristics and attributes. Long predicated on a signifying economy of manliness, this abstractly masculine person is deployed so


41

widely in economic discourse as to be considered a natural fact in and of itself. In this sense, Economic Man constitutes an ‘intelligible gender’; a category that maintains relations of coherence, logic and continuity among the prerequisite sex, gender and sexual practice of international economics. The creation of this ‘intelligible gender’ and the gendered meanings that are pre/proscribed therein depend upon regimes of power in which the masculinities and femininities that drive economics, trade, profit and production appear to follow ‘naturally’ from ‘the state of things’, the pre-ordained economic ‘reality’ prescribed by the discourse’s own parameters of intelligibility. An economic system may only ever be partially able to fix human identity, but, through a ‘hegemonic signifying economy of the masculine’ (Butler 1990: 34), it has the power to manipulate the human body through the masculinities and femininities that oversee our functioning as humans, to transform the body through the ‘social structure of gender’ into a profit-producing global resource. The practical transformation of the body through a social structure that is dominated by a specific capitalist doctrine creates human beings gendered by neoliberalism; a specific discourse that lays down exactly what femininity’s and masculinity’s roles are in the successful growth of the capitalist empire. Neoliberal discourse becomes the centre of power that creates and perpetuates the (hetero)sexual configuration of gender meaning, and thus the human body learns how to function correctly in the global marketplace. Neoliberalism’s predication of gender identity Processes of predication consist of that which a discourse affirms and asserts as true and/or existent. Since discourses are highly contingent, and potentially unstable, predicatory practices are always themselves subject to transformation. As power-laden and authoritative, discourses constitute ‘restrictive economies’ of language: of control over enunciations, strict definition, of authorised vocabulary. Neoliberalism, although superficially gender ‘neutral’, derives the authority to predicate meaning, and therefore human identity, by constructing as its discursive foundations particular gendered hierarchies, such as those of rational, autonomous subjectivity or reproductive heterosexuality. ‘Sex’ is thus true where it is asserted as reproductive, ‘gender’ where it is affirmed as heterosexual. The rational human (male) subject has long assumed a position of centrality in Western metaphysical discourses (specifically humanist, rationalist, empiricist, scientific discourses). This subject, the apparent

42


‘bearer of humanity without distinctions’, is a discursively constructed, predicated subject position, appearing in religious, juridical, scientific discourses as the abstract concept ‘Man’. Mainstream economic discourse defines this abstracted subject in terms of transcendence and pure rationality, which is centred upon the ‘master signifier’ of the human ‘self’ as fundamentally autonomous, that is, transcendental, impersonal and totally independent. Crucially, such discourse is normative, in that it depends on implicit standards of normalisation (norms, as Butler describes them) that ‘may or may not be explicit’, but frequently remain ‘implicit, difficult to read, discernible most clearly and dramatically in the effects that they produce’ (Butler 2004: 41). Not only this, but economic discourses (specifically neoliberal discourses) are heteronormative, embodying standards of normalisation predicated on the regulatory ideal and discursive privileging of heterosexuality. Such discursive manoeuvring is both theoretical and pragmatic, constituted by specific practices legitimated by the authority of (in this case, neoliberal) discursive structure. This allows for the construction of an appropriate human subject, rational Economic Man, as a powerful normalising principle throughout the social practices instituted by neoliberalism. Attributing the human ‘subject’ as an agent ‘both rational and transparent to itself’, modernist discourse (science, rationalism, empiricism, from which neoliberal economics takes its cue) assumes ‘the supposed unity and homogeneity of the ensemble of its positions’, with the subject ‘as origin and basis of social relations’ (Laclau and Mouffe 2001: 115). This unifying essence, the ‘fundamental ground’ upon which centred, ‘metaphysical’ structures depend, must remain intact, beyond, and limiting, the ‘play’ of the structure. As Derrida argued, the history of metaphysics, like the history of the West, has been to locate ‘Being’, the act of being of the human subject, as ‘presence’, with the subject existing in metaphysical structures as present within them, as their unifying core and ‘reassuring certitude’ (Derrida 2001: 353). The rejection of the human subject as an originative and founding totality would deprive such discourses of their unity or unifying essence. Centred discursive structures cannot properly function without the predication, (re)production and organisation of an appropriate ‘human subject’, the construction of which cannot be removed from the relations of power immanent and pervasive in social life: depriving neoliberal discourse of the centred, rational and autonomous human subject deprives it of all sense, logic and ability to function as before.


43

Thus, the conditions of possibility of the ‘social order’, as prescribed by neoliberal discourses, have been constructed around the ‘central point’ of the primary existence of the abstract subject position of Man. The human (male) subject, as the ‘unique source of sovereignty from which secondary and descendent forms would emanate’, becomes the ‘moving substrate of force relations which, by virtue of their inequality, constantly engender states of power’ (Foucault 1998: 92–93). ‘Woman’, as a non-human-essence category, is a very different, but equally abstracted, kind of discursive construct, restricted to differently constructed social practices, institutions and categories of the population. To analyse the ways in which the Bank predicates identity, meaning and behaviour, I have chosen to look at the most basic assumptions implicit in its institutional discourse. The ways in which the Bank conveys its meanings will be assessed through analysis of the kinds of languages, meanings and identity categories it deploys and the assumptions that its discourse reproduces. This involves, for example, examining the kind of language that the Bank reserves for ‘women’ and ‘gender’ but not, perhaps, for men, or the ways in which the Bank’s discourse employs concepts such as the ‘market’, ‘growth’, ‘progress’, ‘participation’ and the ‘private sector’ to script the boundaries of ‘human’ achievement. Neoliberalism’s pre/proscription of gender identity Discursive processes of predication affirm that if a discourse’s basic ‘facts’ are true then so are also the conclusions it derives from them; they assert causality and, through causality, they prescribe ‘truth’. The ‘talk’ of (neoliberal) discourse, although often treated only as a communicative surface of human expression, is logocentrically pre/proscriptive, with language an important bearer of power therein. Discourses draw very clear boundaries around the appropriate human subject, prescribing and reproducing the limits of what exactly may, or may not, be signified. In so doing, they construct versions of ‘truth’ that fix (only partially, since fixity depends on history and circumstance) the limits of human subjectivity, behaviour and response according to certain parameters of acceptability. It is this partial ‘fixity’ that enables the subject to make sense of, and act upon, the world in reference to ‘knowledge’ discursively produced as ‘truth’, and language, meanings and identities projected as commonsensical and correspondent with a pre-ordained, discursively constituted, economic reality. The prerequisite of intelligibility means that, discursively, limits have always already

44


been set to meaning, identity and ‘knowledge’: ‘centred’ structures are, by their very nature, pre/proscriptive in their selection and delimitation of ‘fact’, ‘truth’ and ‘knowledge’. The predication and the prescription of human (gendered) identity are particularly closely linked, since the assertion of ‘truth’ and the prescription of appropriate response are mutually constitutive. Discourses revolve around the ‘master signifier’ (reproductive ‘sex’, homo economicus, ‘nature’). This is what gives them their security; the presence of the master signifier assures the safety of the discourse, which necessarily must conceal the exclusivity of its foundations. By prescribing certain desirable characteristics (e.g. competitiveness, efficiency, individualism), and thereby proscribing other less desirable ones (effeminacy, weakness, cowardice) through reference to wider organising principles (such as marketisation, flexibilisation, privatisation, deregulation), discourses such as neoliberalism are able to conceal the contingency and masculinity of their core assumptions through apparently abstract, value-neutral economic ‘markers’. My analysis of the pre/proscription of identity, meaning and behaviour in relation to Bank discourse proceeds through an examination of the ways in which the Bank claims gender ‘blindness’ through a discourse entirely predicated on assumptions of economic growth and prosperity embodied in a naturalised masculine gender identity. At once impartial and highly gendered, the language the Bank uses to convey meanings is crucial for understanding the types of identities pre/proscribed as suitably economic. Neoliberalism’s reproduction of gender identity Discourses, and the practices they institute, are highly productive of meanings, identities, representations, narratives, myths and the contexts within which these are constructed and reconstructed. The very processes of discourse (which attempt to formulate policy, resolve ‘problems’, and come to terms with various issues) produce and construct the subjects and objects of which they speak. In this sense, discursive reproduction (of certain categories, e.g., or appropriate vocabulary, behaviours, identities, circumstances, definitions, relationships) is highly performative, in the sense that discourses produce language through which the appropriate response is immediately prescribed. ‘The things that are said’ exist, of course, denotatively, as pronouncements of authority, and pre(pro)scriptively, as commands and prohibitions, but they exist, above all, as performative utterances, transforming identity through the words that are rendered. This performative


45

function is both productive and reproductive, producing the identities required to initiate successful outcomes, and then reproducing these identities while perpetuating the authority to govern. Discourses thus actively and continually predicate, pre/proscribe and reproduce preordained ‘realities’ to which individuals must fit by redefining their behaviour. Fundamentally, then, that which is being discursively produced is power and the meanings that complement relations of power. Within discourse, power works ‘to constitute particular modes of subjectivity and interpretive dispositions’ (Doty 1996: 2). As Doty suggests, this ‘is not the kind of power that pre-existing social actors possess and use’. Rather, ‘it is a kind of power that produces meanings, subject identities, their interrelationships, and a range of imaginable conduct’ (ibid). The productive capacity of discourse not only constructs social identities, but also produces the appropriate conditions of possibility for the practices and policies most akin to particular discursive foundations. In the case of economic discourse, this production is a kind of discursive violence done to bodies in order to regiment them within the confines of appropriate economic behaviour. The individual human subject, and therefore its identity and sense of self, is rendered coherent through specific discursive categories. The source of personal and political agency, in this context, comes, as Butler argues, not from within the individual, but from complex cultural exchanges where identity is constructed, disintegrates and recirculates according to a ‘dynamic field of cultural relations’ (Butler 1990: 161–162). The power, and persuasiveness, of hegemonic discourses is to make certain cultural exchanges seem so natural as to be beyond refute, naturalising contingency through meanings that are projected as commonsensical, coherent and correspondent to the exterior ‘reality’ they are said to equate with. As discourse, neoliberalism predicates, pre/proscribes and reproduces the most suitably ‘neoliberal’ human subject. This subject is individualistic, devoid of sentiment or emotion, and economically productive, a contingent artefact of discursive practice made to appear ‘real’.

Analysing the gendered configuration of the World Bank’s discourse I examine the Bank’s discourse specifically for its reproduction of certain categories of, for example, appropriate vocabulary, behaviours, identities, circumstances, definitions and assumptions. The Bank deals

46


in highly abstracted categories of identity (loan recipients, producers, consumers, capital, technology and so on). The vocabulary it employs is economistic but also highly normative: in Bank writing the urge is to persuade, that the Bank is, in its own words, a centre of development ‘expertise’ and a major institution of global governance, that it plays a unique and central role in politics and practices of development and that the result of its involvement is entirely progressive. The Bank’s discourse is, I argue, performative, producing a type of economic rationality through which the appropriate response, the sort of behaviour whereby trade liberalisation is intensified, is immediately given. This performativity takes place within a discursive environment laden with processes of authorisation and self-legitimation. As a powerful source of contemporary economic, and development, common sense, the World Bank reproduces a discourse that, although apparently ungendered, depends for its coherence on the discursive constitution of ‘sex’, ‘gender’ and ‘sexual practice’. Examination of the Bank’s construction of the economic sphere and the identities of subjects therein involves close examination of those economic discursive practices that create and circulate particular representations that are taken as ‘truth’ (Doty 1996: 5). My research is less concerned with how true these representations might be than with how these representations produce and sustain knowledge and identity, making specific courses of action possible and legitimate. The institutions embodying certain discourses, as structures of understanding but also as practical orientations, play an active and changing role in the reception and transmittance of conventional wisdoms. Institutions and organisations, such as the Bank, are less passive reflectors of social mores (although they can be) than they are actively engaged in making heterosexuality appear coherent, normal and privileged. The Bank thus contributes to the promulgation of heterosexuality as a human norm or an apparently ‘natural’ state, circumscribing appropriate life narratives or social identities. As Berlant and Warner claim, the coherence ascribed to heterosexuality is ‘always provisional’ (1998: 548), and is thus inherently subject to change. The (heterosexual) norms (or standards of normalisation) that the Bank, and neoliberal discourse in general, privilege are certainly not set in stone, nor should analysis remove them from their historical conditions of possibility. What interests me most here are the ways in which neoliberal discourse constitutes part of the powerful nexus that supports heterosexual privilege, and where neoliberal discourse itself predicates, pre/proscribes and reproduces the meanings, behaviours and effects that


47

normalise heterosexuality as essential to appropriate and productive economic behaviour. Efforts, for example, by the World Bank to ‘incorporate gender’ into its economic narratives have been designed to fit largely with pre-existing conceptions of the rational, autonomous and masculine individual. ‘Women’, where they appear in the Bank’s discourse, are frequently categorised as less educated and intrinsically more nurturing, vulnerable and domestically situated, their empowerment a matter of improving ‘human capital’, not corporate accountability or business strategy.

Summary For a poststructuralist analysis of gender, sex and discourse to gain better insight into how such articulations are possible, we need first enquire into the relationships between the elements that constitute the discursive whole, including examination of how power relations predicate, prescribe and reproduce certain assumptions, categories and discursive binaries. Discourses of cultural identity (gender, race, ethnic, class, physical ability) embody the power to communicate appropriate types of and limits to human behaviour, acceptable social aspirations and ways of being in the world. These may take the form of oral speech, modes of writing or of representations, photography, cinema, reporting, sport, shows, publicity; a particular image, given for a particular signification. The point more generally is that discursive constructions of reality transform, as Barthes articulated, history into nature (2000: 109–111). The Christian Millennium, the Enlightenment, positivism’s conception of progress, (neo)liberalism’s rational Economic Man: each exemplify how contingent historical moment is transformed into ‘nature’, inevitability and ‘reality’. This chapter has begun to articulate an understanding of neoliberal discourse as actively (not incidentally) dependent on ‘gender’. Gender is not, as Butler argues, an attribute grafted onto to the pregendered substance or ‘core’ called the person, rather it is ‘a relation among socially constituted subjects in specifiable contexts’ (Butler 1990: 14–15). Neoliberalism, as a hegemonic constellation of articulations and practices not explicitly ‘sexual’ in nature, depends on and reproduces a particularly narrow context for living, a context predicated on the privileging of those (heterosexual) gender identities most able to sustain, absorb and function productively through prolonged (often brutal) periods of economic restructuring. The World Bank’s neoliberal discourse provides a

48


certain context in which what a person ‘is’ (and what, therefore, they can be), is relative to the assumptions, meanings and behaviours reproduced by the discourse itself. The next chapter, Chapter 2, thus looks a little more closely at neoliberalism’s specific assumptions, meanings and the kinds of behaviours predicated, prescribed and reproduced in contemporary global governance.

2 Analysing ‘The Economy’

Neoliberalism dominates contemporary social relations in, I suggest, particularly gendered ways, combining the material and ideational in structures which sediment certain gendered subject positions while proscribing others. As I argued in Chapter 1, discourses that are not overtly ‘sexual’ in nature can maintain nonetheless ‘an extremely narrow context for living’ (Berlant and Warner 1998: 556). In the case of neoliberal discourses, this is a context in which the processes of centring that orient, balance and give grounding to the overall structure occur in reference to certain articulations of heterosexual gender identity(ies). Discourses are highly contingent and inherently reproductive, structuring and communicating appropriate types of and limits to human behaviour, acceptable social aspirations, and neutralising social dislocations by veiling historical contingency in ‘truth’ and the ‘real’. This chapter looks, in the first instance, at certain conventions in economic analysis in order to understand from where the Bank’s neoliberal discourse, in particular, might have developed its view of the world and its actors. This is, I argue, embedded in a history of economists searching for ‘economic’ answers to problems of social organisation. The importance of classical and neoclassical liberalisms to the shaping of contemporary neoliberal discourses should not be underestimated. In the latter half of the chapter, I examine the discursive constitution of the core assumptions on which neoliberal discourses are based and how these shape the configuration of the functionally ‘economic’ subject.

Conventions in economic analysis Economics,1 and those who theorise and practice it, have achieved no small success in creating a world of economic modelling and objective 49

50


reasoning entirely abstract in formulation and execution. The ‘facts’ of economics (functionally similar individuals, objective models, goods in a state of exchange and so on) speak for themselves, or so it seems. Such abstraction, however, belies the constructed realities on which the ‘science’ of economics depends. I use ‘construction’ to imply, as Butler argues, that ‘facts’ and the necessities that accompany humans’ primary and irrefutable experiences, of course exist, and they may indeed be irrefutable (we live, we die, we eat, we sleep . . . ), but that ‘their irrefutability in no way implies what it might mean to affirm them and through what discursive means’ (Butler 1993: xi). That is, just because we think we know what the ‘facts’ are does not mean we know what they do. The idea of a ‘fact’, piece of data or object of analysis as constructed need not imply artificiality and dispensability, though often it does: it is when we begin to think of those constructions ‘without which we would not be able to think, to live, to make sense at all, those which have acquired for us a kind of necessity’, that we begin to think of the constitutive nature of the constructions in question (ibid). The constructions without which we could not think at all are no less significant to the study and practices of Economics than elsewhere. To view the ‘facts’ of Economics as constructed is not to argue that they are easily dismissible, far from it, but that they exist only within the constraints of their wider discourse. As constitutive of neoliberal discourses (as those things without which neoliberalism would make no sense), these facts produce meaning, I argue, according to a highly gendered regulatory schema. This chapter is about examining what the ‘facts’ of Economics are so as to better understand what those facts might do. Economics is abstract for the sake of simplicity: the single model of individual behaviour (the rational economic choice model, to which I shall return) preferred by most economic analyses makes life for economists easier because it makes the world easier to read and replicate. This, of course, gives the single model ‘real disciplinary advantages’ (see Blank 1993: 133–143). Use of this model also, however, means that ‘reality’ is made intelligible according to a strictly constrained, and highly limited, set of assumptions. My task here is to assess what those assumptions are in order to understand the processes of intelligibility through which economic discourse defines normal, necessary and beneficial human behaviour. Just because economics does not talk about bodies (liveable, thinkable, real bodies) does not mean that they are not implicitly present in this discourse that constructs the ‘real’: the human body, or at least certain constructions of it, are constitutive of economics, in the sense that

Analysing ‘The Economy’ 51

economic discourse could not operate without the ‘I’ and the ‘we’ of human existence (even the determinedly abstract rational actor implies the presence of some form of human body). Conventions in economic analysis (1): economic orthodoxy Those disciplines orientated towards explaining empirical phenomena (such as the physical and biological sciences) tend to define themselves in terms of the domain to be explained. Economics enjoys the peculiar privilege of identifying itself by its (explanatory) approach, rather than the domain of facts to be explained (Strassmann 1993: 54). Neoliberal discourses have risen through the ranks of contemporary (Western) economic science to dominate economic practice, their core ideas of self-interested individualism and contractual exchange the techniques and practices of modern economics. If the question once might have been ‘to what extent formal economic analysis conveys any knowledge about what happens in the real world’ (Von Hayek 1937), neoliberalism has rewritten the terms of debate to ask of the real world that it fit with its own a priori economic propositions. Few other speculations on human activity have so successfully combined the sedimentation of otherwise abstract human knowledge, or have so staunchly sought to reconstitute that which we consider to be ‘real’ through the cooptation and remodelling of a diversity of social, cultural and political knowledges. Contemporary neoliberalism operates through and according to economic norms and ideals that have developed from politically liberal, Western (Northern European, North American and Australasian) models of economic action. The discipline of Economics is one of the clearest embodiments of such a tradition. Orthodox, mainstream2 economic inquiry revolves around several key assumptions. • Methodology is quantitative, not qualitative; • Economics is composed of two essential elements: the micro and the macro. Where macroeconomics focuses on movements and trends in the aggregate economy, microeconomics focuses on those factors that affect the decisions made by firms and individuals, so that essentially these two elements of the ‘economic’ occupy separate, albeit sometimes interacting, spheres. • Measurement and analysis are entirely the domain of econometrics, or the so-called ‘scientific’ application of mathematical and statistical techniques to the study of problems, the analysis of data

52


and the development and testing of models. Herein, empiricism and regression analysis allow the analyst to empirically verify economic theory by constructing mathematical equations to model the relationship between so-called ‘random variables’. While some debate exists concerning, for example, the nature of explanation and idealisation in economics, or the nature of rationality or the notion of equality, to label a sector of Economics, ‘Critical Economics’, would be something of a stretch. Instead, where critical, non-mainstream economic approaches find purchase, and arguably their own ‘school’, is within International Political Economy (IPE). Mainstream approaches remain, however, very well represented in IPE, frequently deploying the use of most of the common tenets of mainstream Economics. To talk about one is often to summon the precepts of the other. Mainstream Economics (as practised in most Northern universities, institutions and other organisations) is based on the assumption that the relationship between observer and observed can be an objective one: a case of the observer (economist) seeing the observed (data, for example), as they are and without bias. This forms the basis from which microeconomic methods for measuring and calculating economic ‘truths’ are derived. Herein, homo economicus (Economic Man) is generally considered the de facto model for all society’s individuals. Although in name not always used, the normative assumptions on which Economic Man is based, particularly those of inherent rationality and objectivity, remain so much a common sense among economists, that they rarely warrant mention.3 They include (in no particular order): • The assumption that no matter the situation humans only act rationally, and, when making a rational choice, behave as autonomous, unemotional and unconnected agents in the economy; • That humans are essentially self-interested, maximising their own utility wherever/whenever possible; • That they also have certain preferences, but these are confined to the ‘private’ sphere and unavailable in terms of measurement and/or assessment to economic models; • That, as rational individuals, individual actors respond to incentives; • That ‘data’ (and therefore economists) are inherently objective and data may, therefore, also be deciphered objectively.


To these assumptions, economist Elias Helpman (2004) also adds the following: • ‘Productivity’, which exists in asocial terms as the basis of the models from which one calculates a country’s economic growth. Helpman’s recent book, The Mystery of Economic Growth, is a good example of contemporary mainstream Economics. The author’s central thesis concerns analysis of ‘what makes some countries rich and others poor’: this can be explained through a ‘nontechnical description of growth economics’. Economic growth, Helpman argues, can be explained through a combined, statistically based, analysis of a country’s (a) accumulation of physical and human capital, (b) total factor productivity,4 (c) foreign trade and investment, and (d) the incentives to accumulate and innovate offered by economic and political institutions (specifically, the ways in which these affect a country’s ability to ‘accommodate change’). Deploying a conventional macroeconomic form of analysis (the use of gross national product (GNP) as a gauge of human well-being), the author argues that ‘economic growth’ is essentially ‘the rate of change of real income per capita’ (Helpman 2004: 3). Although aware that income per capita as a measurement of ‘how well off people are’ is flawed, Helpman finds alternative measurements much less useful (the Human Development Index (HDI) the author dismisses as inaccurate).5 Thus, Helpman offers the reader a catalogue of fluctuating GNP measurements to confirm that the gap between ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ countries is currently widening. Although perhaps a conclusion that would not surprise many critical scholars and students, this finding is certainly disputed, not least by international organisations (IOs). One neoliberal globalist claim in recent years has been that the distribution of income between the world’s people has become more equal over the past two decades and that the number of people living in extreme poverty has continued to fall. The IMF, for example, claims that, in the last five years, ‘the world has experienced a strong and stable average real per capita growth’, in the range of between 4 and 5 per cent annually, accompanied by generally low inflation (Nsouli 2007). Such progressive trends, neoliberal globalism suggests, are due in large part to the rising density of economic integration between countries (Wade 2004: 567). The World Bank and the IMF overwhelmingly employ economists trained in the techniques and methodologies of Northern institutions. To reach multiple conclusions in an environment largely dictated by

54


limited methodologies is explainable only in reference to the statistics various economists are using. As Wade points out, the neoliberal ‘truth’ of rising global equality conceals the enormously subjective quality of the statistics used by those measuring global poverty, particularly the World Bank (the Bank has in recent years become the principal decider of international poverty levels). Evidence does suggest, as Wade describes, that world inequality is probably rising, not least if China and India’s preternaturally fast economic growth rates are removed from the statistics included. The point is that ‘there is no single best measure of world income inequality’ (Wade 2004: 8). Economists, however, continue to argue the point, in spite of the paucity of reliable statistical information. We should, however, remain wary of disregarding the insights and methods offered by mainstream Economics. Such is the apparent ‘common sense’ of contemporary market philosophy (very few people today, for example, do not operate a daily life in some way conditioned by the task of producing a capital ‘income’) that we might easily ignore that such a term has no meaning (in the Western world) beyond a limited and particular understanding of economic rationality. Similarly, terms such as ‘productive’ and ‘efficient’ make little sense beyond their liberal, free-market foundations.

Conventions in economic analysis (2): IPE IPE, sometimes considered an independent field of social science enquiry (e.g. Overbeek 2000; Underhill 2003) and sometimes a subdiscipline of International Relations (IR) (e.g. Kubálková 2000; Jacobsen 2003), has often been praised for being an ‘open and unenclosed corner’ of academic inquiry, and one that has been consistently gaining in appeal and popularity over the last 20 or so years (O’Brien 2000: 89). Somewhat ‘schizoid’ in nature, the discipline of IPE incorporates a ‘wide variety of backgrounds’, with IPE scholars hailing from careers as IR ‘dissenters’, political and social scientists, development scholars, economists and so on (Underhill 2003: 805–806). Given such diversity, it has never been very clear where exactly the emphasis in IPE lies: that is, whether IPE is the politics of economics, the economics of politics or something else entirely. Despite the intellectual diversity of IPE’s scholars, mainstream IPE (as predominantly practised in North America, Europe and Australasia) remains wedded to the basic assumptions of orthodox Economics. Although, as Bergeron articulates, different perspectives and foci may be


proliferating, IPE remains resoundingly conventional in its inexorable ‘economic logic’ and focus on the power of international capital (2001: 985). Thus, although IPE as a whole continues to expand and reshape, conventional IPE ‘retains a serious blind spot’ by continuing to focus on abstract entities such as states and firms, while ignoring the activities and fates of social groups, non-elite actors and workers (O’Brien 2000: 89). The IPE mainstream is, as Elias discusses, probably best characterised by adherence to a ‘liberal’ theoretical perspective, drawing heavily from classical liberal political economy (2004: 8). Underhill, for example, talks about IPE as ‘rooted in the broad tradition of political economy which emerged in the European enlightenment’ (2003: 807). Mainstream IPE depends on the models and theoretical underpinnings of mainstream Economics, which are drawn according to measurable and knowable quantifiers, such as income, time, calculating capacities, resources and opportunities. For mainstream IPE, as in conventional Economics, actors are both rational and individualistic, and social life (if it is indeed talked about as ‘social’) is organised entirely around the distributive mechanism of the free market. To the extent that it is informed by politics, mainstream IPE tends to choose rational choice theories of political action and individual behaviour (e.g. Becker 1993; Cerny 2000). Debates thus form around, for example, extending analysis of individual motivations beyond so-called narrow assumptions of self-interest, while maintaining an overarching commitment to the rationality, consistency and forward-looking and utility-maximising behaviour of individuals (e.g. Becker 1993). Mainstream IPE is also predominantly state-centric, with the de facto separation of micro- and macro-structural levels centring the state in both (Griffin 2007a: 722–723). At the micro-level, the state acts as the repository of the governing codes by which firms and individuals act (that government exists in national form, spending, transferring and raising funds is a given in most contemporary economic analysis). At the macro-level, the state is the primary organising principle through which the international system makes sense (the ‘global’ or ‘world’ economy invariably means the interaction of various national economies). Where the relevance of non-state actors is discussed, the ‘ontological primacy’ of the state is not in question, with the debate instead fashioned around neorealist (neomercantilist) and pluralist (neoliberal) approaches (Overbeek 2000: 168–169). Liberal principles, concerning the extent of state intervention, and the prerequisite of marketisation for economic growth (where ‘progress’ tends to be read as the acquired technological and social skills for

56


increasing GDP) dominate mainstream IPE. A glance through political economy journals (e.g. the Review of International Political Economy, the European Journal of Political Economy and the Journal of Political Economy) and core texts (e.g. Ravenhill 2004) suggests that many of the core concerns of IPE continue to rest with liberal, mainstream accounts of the politics of economic growth, trade liberalisation, foreign direct investment, the size of the public sector, debt crises, monetary policy and economic freedom. Where these accounts diverge from a mainstream, liberal approach, they invariably avoid discussing the social constitution of political economy in gender terms. By implicitly propagating the hegemony of neoliberal discourse through an intrinsic reliance on abstract, neoliberal categories of analysis, there is no room in conventional IPE to ask, for example, how we might understand basic questions of human development, nor enable the poor to find their own solutions (Benería 2003a: xiii), since humanity’s social existence has no meaning beyond abstract organising concepts such as the state, the market and the rational consumer-agent. Non-mainstream modes of inquiry tend only to ‘gain admittance to centre stage debates only if they are presented in compatible terms and can be absorbed into reigning research agendas with minimal disturbance’ (Overbeek 2000: 39–40). ‘Fringe frameworks’ are thus of interest to the mainstream ‘to the degree that one converts these analytical modes into positivist and measurable terms’ and thus deems them ‘scientific’ (Jacobsen 2003: 39).

Conventions in economic analysis (3): reconfigurations of political economy Central goals of non-mainstream scholarship are to historicise IPE and thereby ‘promulgate transdisciplinary, non-state-centred and reflexive frames of thinking’ (ibid: 40). Drawing from a variety of backgrounds (Marxism, post-Marxism, Gramscianism, neogramscianism, post-Keynesianism, Sraffianism, feminism, radical institutional economics, and so on), ‘critical IPE’ encompasses a broad array of perspectives, not all of which are compatible. Both orthodox Economics and mainstream IPE attest that the ‘facts’ of economics are able to speak for themselves. Critical IPE, on the other hand, is much less conventional in its accounts of the global political economy (GPE), tending to view economic processes as intrinsically social processes. A particularly strong critique shared both by gender and critical IPE scholarship is that of the mainstream’s depoliticisation of the


discourses surrounding the free market and foreign direct investment (see, e.g., Elias 2004). Mainstream IPE frequently assumes that certain descriptions or sets of hypotheses are either true or false, supported or rejected according to observations, and thus falsifiable (Sindzingre 2004: 233). As deployed by the mainstream, ‘efficiency’, for example, would be discussed as a matter of an actor’s capacity to transform the state of things, not a ‘modality of power’, implicitly intertwined with the discursive construction of ‘technical’ superiority. The rejection of neoclassical models of abstract rationality is rooted, as Elias articulates, in an ‘economic sociology’ tradition stretching back to Karl Polanyi’s work. This tradition refuses the analytical separation of state and market and considers markets always to be ‘embedded within a social context’ (Elias 2004: 10). As Rupert shows, mainstream IR scholarship impoverishes itself through a ‘wilful and continuing conceptual blindness’ to ‘mutually constitutive’ relations of governance and resistance in the production of global politics (2003: 181). The economic spaces generated by capitalism as ‘seemingly apolitical’ are in fact permeated ‘by structured relations of social power deeply consequential for political life and, indeed, for the (re)production of social life as a whole’ (ibid: 182). As such, ‘economics’ as it is widely conceived of and practised is too narrow to encompass diverse and multifaceted cultural and socioeconomic concerns, such as gender, ethnicity, unemployment, poverty and the erosion of real income across societies. In ontological terms, gender and critical IPE share many similar features, both arguing that knowledge of the economic world requires the kind of holistic and historical analysis that embeds institutions and actors within their social context. The place of gender analysis, however, in critical IPE remains as yet unguaranteed. Although some feminist concerns can be and have been taken on board (provided that they fit with existing modelling techniques and assumptions), gender scholarship within IPE enjoys a rather vague position. This has less to do with ‘forgetting’ gender (IR and IPE scholars in Western universities are surrounded by, as Enloe discusses in 2007, ‘smart gender analysts’, and have been for decades) than with the academic culture of IR/IPE scholarship in which they write. In this sense, the so-called ‘liberal’ and ‘critical’ sectors of IPE/IR are very often more similar than dissimilar, since both exclude overt gender analysis (Griffin 2007a: 720). The reluctance shown by critical IPE to speak more often in explicitly gendered terms doubtless stems from the, often very strongly felt, sense of marginalisation in the face of the mainstream’s dominance of the field and frequent dismissal of critical concerns. Critical theory

58


has made some limited inroads into conventional IPE, especially, as Jacobsen notes, the begrudging concession from the mainstream, at the brink of the 1990s, that ‘ideas, under certain circumstances, do matter’ (2003: 42). It may be for some critical IPE scholars that gender suffers something of a credibility deficit; its inclusion too much of a threat to whatever small advances critical IPE has made into the mainstream. Although Marxist analyses occasionally prove able to include ‘women’, to address sufficiently gender-based power a reformulation of class-based power is needed that many critical scholars are unwilling to undertake. Thus, while critical IPE continues to acknowledge only occasionally a (limited) role for gender in IPE (e.g. Murphy and Tooze 1991; Cameron and Palan 2004), it opens up a very particular and limited space for apparently ‘transformative’ IPE. Struggling against this form of marginalisation, gender analysis thus has every incentive to study and speak to a (more) dominant discourse (such as Marxism), while the reverse, that is, critical IPE talking explicitly to gender concerns, is rarely the case. The effect, as with mainstream IPE, is to delegitimise the inclusion of most gender and feminist considerations. As Ling, in her assertion of the need for more honest and intuitive theorising about the global political economy, articulates, feminists are unusual in ‘directly linking the macro-structural with the micro-personal, the objective with the subjective, and interest with passion’ (Ling 2000: 242). It is a commitment to gender not just as a concern but as the key concern in IPE that ‘marks’ gender analyses within/from the ‘community’ of critical IPE scholarship, even though often it is this alone that distinguishes them. Feminist and gender scholars (whose work very much inspires my own) have, in particular, pointed to the ways in which economic discourses are reworking not only nation-state power but also the rhetorics and practices of development. They have documented how the predication of human agency as rational and rent-seeking results from historically contingent, exclusionary and androcentric systems of gender relations, wherein possible, desirable and ‘typical’ economic arrangements are modelled on an ideal form of masculinity (e.g. Ferber and Nelson 1993, 2003; Elson 1996). They have analysed the ways in which profitability crises encourage the kind of economic restructuring that cheapens production costs for global investors and producers but exacerbates the feminisation of poverty, while relying upon gendered ideologies of domesticity, flexibility, masculinity, femininity and sexuality.


As an example, the World Bank promotes specific policies on ‘trade related lending’, where only governments providing trade reform programmes judged ‘effective’ receive Bank assistance. In seeking to lower trade barriers and reduce tariffs in individual countries, for example, the Bank ‘also provides strategic assistance and capacity building to low-income countries in support of trade-related reforms’ (http://web.worldbank.org). The efficacy of individual governments is explored no further than the measure of their success in five particular areas, each of which is dependent on economic performance. First, they isolate ‘economic growth’ (‘sustained periods of high capital growth’) as key to ‘successful development’, then ‘good governance’ (fostering ‘an environment where contracts are enforced and markets can operate’), a ‘vital private sector’ (playing ‘an important role in generating employment opportunities for poor people’), ‘ownership’ (where countries ‘have ownership of the development agenda’) and, last, ‘empowerment’ (where all should ‘participate in the opportunities provided by economic growth’). Each area implies an enforcement of liberalisation and marketisation: the extent to which an individual government’s policies impinge directly upon individuals and communities is explored here no further than a statement on the economic importance of ‘expanding opportunities for women and girls’ (http://web.worldbank.org). Instead of assuming that the body has ‘a gender’, current gender scholarship highlights a relatively recent theoretical turn in IPE, one which thoroughly (and problematically for those scholars who retain a belief in the universality of ‘woman/man’) problematises gender and its association with the body (e.g. Morgan et al. 2005). It is worth noting that such research recognises the importance of situating the category of ‘woman’ in socio-economic and cultural terms, without risking the argument that all women share in the same forms of oppression. The turn towards ‘gender’ as non-biological has already been embraced by many feminists, and most gender scholars profess a debt to feminist interventions for properly exposing the omission of any gender consideration from mainstream scholarship. As Peterson argues, ‘while feminists share a commitment to the centrality of gender, they do debate how to study it’ (Peterson 2005: 499). Thus, many gender analyses retain ‘woman’ as a valuable and essential tool in analysing the global political economy, while going one step further by employing gender in a broader sense to signal the (global and local) processes of (re)production that prioritise certain, human, identities. As Elias suggests, it is important that a distinction is drawn between those ‘gender’ analyses that import the methodologies and categories

60


of analysis found in mainstream, liberal IPE (and which evince an ‘add women and stir’ approach) and those analyses that take gender as a basic but essential lens through which to look at IPE (2004: 28). The point is that a political economy of gender can feasibly ask ‘where are the women?’ in IPE, while reformulating the ways in which we perceive the ‘global’ so as to reprioritise the position of ‘the particular, the local, the feminine, the “other” ’ (ibid). This in turn creates a space in IPE for asserting the importance of the local and social constitution of global processes. The shift to ‘gender’ does not therefore mean that a gendered political economy has to lose ‘women’ as physically embodied in any sense, gender scholarship, in differing ways, conceives of and articulates visions of the global political economy that combine analysis of women’s varying experiences with assessment of the powerfully subjectivising processes and paradigms of different gendered hierarchies. In suggesting the need for more ‘localised ethnographic and historical studies’, combined with ‘a more heightened and systematic awareness of global changes and developments and how these impact upon the interplay between gender, bodies and work’, gender analysis can inspire exactly the kind of further analysis that is ‘both more sensitive to cultural variations and local differences and also more systematically aware of global trends and processes’ (Morgan et al. 2005: 13).

Neoliberalism as (mainstream) economic discourse It is important to consider that the discourses of gender that produce human identity have no meaning beyond the historical conditions in which they are culturally intelligible. In the same way, neoliberal discourses make little sense without the acquisition over centuries of knowledge concerning, for example, the meaning of rational human action, rights to property and the necessity of capital accumulation. It is for this reason that I articulate the World Bank’s neoliberal discourse as descendent of a variety of approaches to economic organisation. Neoliberalism’s current predominance cannot, as Harrison argues, be abstracted from historiographical concerns, such as the rise of the modern state and capitalism as a global system (2004: 49). The neoliberalism that I analyse here (institutionalised and otherwise) owes a significant intellectual debt to classical liberal thinking from as far back as Adam Smith, but it is never the case that liberal philosophers and economists have expressed their ideas only in the abstract. Their work consists of ‘intellectual acts of their time’, expressions of a


moment in history, so that Smith’s work is as much a chastisement of the early modern state and a critique of the ‘Old Corruption’ therein, as it is an advocacy of the invisible hand (ibid). Hence a large part of the background to my research focuses on economic discourses not necessarily ‘neoliberal’ in origin (Smith’s libertarianism, for example, and Friedman’s free market rationalism). Varieties of neoliberalism The World Bank’s neoliberalism is descendent of a variety of economic approaches: from Smith’s early, classical, liberalism, through Keynesian economic theory to the ‘hyperglobalisation’ thesis and so-called ‘new institutionalism’ of more recent neoliberal models. Although various, quite different, economists appear here together (Smith, Keynes, Friedman, Von Hayek, Rüstow, Stiglitz, for example), and although the stories that they tell are dissimilar in many ways (separated not least by historical moment), they all, as Denis argues, share something in common, since ‘they all had a pre-existing general social philosophy and were in search of a theoretical underpinning for the policy framework they already wished to prescribe’ (2004: 341). Neoliberalism is not, and has never been, a purely ‘economic’ project. Although scholars key to the formation of neoliberal discourse as it is experienced today may often be identified primarily as economists (Friedman and Stiglitz in particular), their theories are intrinsically socio-political: Smith’s work, as the architect of neoliberalism’s belief in the fundamental importance of individual rationality, freedom and self-interest (2003); Von Hayek’s for its suspiciousness of state-controlled ‘central planning’ and unwavering belief in an economically ‘free’ system of competition (embodied in a ‘liberal political society’) as the only guarantor of individual choice (1937, 1944, 1945); Milton Friedman’s as the keenest advocate of a capitalist competitive market as the only means to diffuse political power and preserve individual freedom (1962, 1991); Rüstow for his so-called ‘social market theory’, where free market competitiveness could be insured through a framework of institutional and legal reforms to ensure minimal, effective government (1980). How, then, do certain neoliberal representations underlie the production of knowledge and identities in the global political economy? How, to borrow Doty’s words, do these representations ‘make various courses of action possible’ (1996: 5)? Constructing the central and universal economic ‘problem’ of knowing ‘how to secure’ and then allocate ‘the best use of resources’ (Von Hayek 1945), neoliberal discourses communicate (constructed) universal facts and knowledges on a global scale

62


as simple ‘common sense’. Neoliberalism dominates the creation and perpetuation of economic behaviour based on a model of self-interested individualism, constructing economic activity from the assumption of the innate efficiency of contractual exchange. Such is the dominance of neoliberal assumptions in economic modelling that the assumption of the centrality of the market in modern society predominates both popularly held belief and economists articulations of ‘common sense’. As others have done, I articulate neoliberalism as fairly (but not unproblematically) unified, first, in its dependence on expectations of convergence (i.e., that economic models will converge on the one, neoliberal, pattern) driven by the function of efficiency, and secondly, by the powerful and enduring ‘common sense’ of market mechanisation. In practice the discursive push towards both convergence and mass marketisation has resulted in the creation of varying local hybrids of market-political forms, most obvious in the study of developing or postcrisis countries (in, e.g., Russia, Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, and so on). As Green demonstrates, the ‘blanket term’ neoliberalism conceals the kinds of regional differences between countries that make a singular and tenable neoliberal ‘model’ of development increasingly difficult to sustain (1995: 81). Although neoliberalism may have a clear intellectual genesis, it arrives in different places in different ways, articulates with other political projects, takes multiple material forms, and can give rise to unexpected outcomes. (Larner 2003: 511) In Latin America, for example, no one country has implemented the ‘full neoliberal recipe’: Chile has clung onto its lucrative state enterprises in copper, Mexico and Venezuela in oil. Uruguay, Colombia, Brazil, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Ecuador have abandoned or watered-down privatisation programmes in the face of popular opposition. Many simply mix and match neoliberal adjustment programmes with heterodox government controls, as in Mexico’s setting of wages and prices in adjustment programmes, and Mexico and Argentina’s deliberate overvaluing of the exchange rate in order to bring down inflation (Green 1995: 81). The varieties of neoliberal outcome are hard to ignore. As Larner suggests, we would do better to focus careful analysis on neoliberal ideologies as always and inherently plural than to concentrate too much on providing any sort of singular identity to neoliberalism (2003: 509–512).


Neoliberal discourses draw a good deal of strength both from their apparent unity of subject matter (plotted around the political triangle of marketisation, deregulation and privatisation) and from the degree of flexibility accorded from certain varieties in location, situation and context.

Normalising neoliberalism and ‘Second Generation Reform’ It is with no small success that neoliberalism has come to appear as both intrinsically normal and also entirely necessary to the functioning of contemporary economic relations. One mutation in neoliberalism has been particularly noteworthy, as Hay articulates, regarding a shift from the what-ought-to-be of early (normative) neoliberalism to the what-is-beyond-question-andabsolutely-essential of later (‘necessitarian’) neoliberalism (2004: 503–4). The slightly different purposes served by early and later neoliberal discourses have been variously termed (‘Roll Back’ and ‘Roll Out’ neoliberalism, for example, or ‘First’ and ‘Second’ Generation Reform). Normative elements certainly continue in later neoliberalisms, with the difference being that, by the time SGR takes hold, the normative assumptions of early neoliberal discourse have already become socio-politically embedded. Premised on the acceptance of the ‘first generation’ fundamentals set out in the Berg Report (World Bank 1982), and with the more brutal work of state restructuring out of the way, Second Generation Reform (SGR), or ‘Roll Out’ Neoliberalism, has been able to concern itself less with the scope than the nature of state action, attempting, as Harrison argues, ‘to deepen and extend the social relations of the free market’ (2004: 19). SGR is thus less a case of convincing the sceptics of the viability of the neoliberal project than one of fundamentally altering the precise nature of state action, what Harrison refers to as a more ‘explicitly normative framing of governance’ (ibid: 18). This normativity is particularly evident in neoliberalism’s institutionalised forms (the World Bank, the UN under Kofi Annan, the IMF, and so on), particularly in discourses of development that stress the need to form an ethos of ‘partnership’ between the economic and the social or the need to push for the ‘integration’ of different actors’ concerns and perspectives. Of course, there is clearly also a normative agenda in neoliberal accounts of globalisation and free trade as beneficial to all, where it is believed that, as Milton Friedman argues, the free market is the only guarantor of economic, human and political freedom (Friedman 1991).

64


The importance of ‘Economic Theory’ in neoliberalism’s key assumptions Economic theory (and the discipline of Economics itself) play a crucial role in the formulation and perpetuation of neoliberalism’s key assumptions. These stem, I argue, from a model of human nature governed by the presumption that humans behave as autonomous, unemotional and unconnected agents in the economy. This model of the human self is not only masculinist, but also race and class specific; a figure drawn from an elite form of White, liberal masculinity. The key assumptions (which also themselves generate other, related, neoliberal assumptions, beliefs and ideas concerning behaviour, meaning and identity) that I isolate and examine in this chapter are that: • Neoliberal discourse and the economic theories on which it depends are value neutral; • The market is the central and most efficient mechanism for the allocation of resources; • Competition and competitive individualism are essential to the smooth functioning of the market, and; • A well-functioning, competitive market system is ‘naturally’ efficient (the advance of the free market is the triumph of efficiency over convention). Economic theory’s primary focus is ‘behaviour in market transactions’ and it borrows heavily from neoclassical models of such behaviour. For conventional economics, three points are crucial: first, interpersonal utility comparisons are impossible (advantage is measured as ‘utility’, which is entirely subjective, i.e., it is impossible, according to neoclassical models, to measure objectively which of two persons gained more from a given exchange); second, tastes (or preferences) are exogenous to economic models and unchanging (tastes may or may not vary across individuals and are an input to economic models, but always come from outside the model and are unexplained by the model), and third, actors are ‘selfish’ in markets (i.e., they are motivated by self-interest and have independent utilities) (England 1993: 37–55). Deriving from a ‘separative model of human nature’, these assumptions are governed by the belief that humans behave as autonomous, unemotional and unconnected agents in the economy. This model in turn reproduces a separative self that is not only masculinist, but also race and class specific: the ideal embodiment of a late nineteenthcentury Euro-American educated elite (Williams 1993: 144–152).


This model and its assumptions runs through much, if not all, Economic Theory: Adam Smith’s philosophy, for example, makes little sense without understanding the individual as responsible only for ensuring ‘his’ own self-interest; similarly Von Hayek argues that, since it is impossible for ‘any mind’ to fathom the ‘infinite variety of different needs of different people’, ‘individuals should be allowed, within defined limits, to follow their own values and preferences’, with ‘the individual’s system of ends’ supreme and ‘not subject to any dictation by others’ (1944: 62–63); Milton Friedman (turning to Smith’s Wealth of Nations) argues that the freedom of the individual is at real danger from the tyranny of an encroaching government; Stiglitz nods to Smith to argue that economic outcomes can be improved should individuals be provided with more accurate incentive structures (2003: 168). Nowhere, of course, does neoliberalism claim to rest on assumptions of economic growth and stability, financial transactions and human behaviour that are anything other than universal and neutral. Actors are assumed, like the chemical atoms they are seen to be, to be functionally similar: the closest most economic analysis gets to disaggregating the differences between individuals is in its (limited) assessment of the ‘family’ as an arena in which individuals (mostly men) are assumed to behave more altruistically.6 Kenichi Ohmae, in his own words, a ‘nuclear engineer turned management consultant’ and a key contributor to the hyperglobalisation thesis, suggests that the key to devising effective business strategies in an increasingly ‘borderless’ world is not the discovery of ‘formulas or algorithms for getting things right’, but a ‘particular state of mind’, a thought process that is ‘creative and intuitive’ rather than purely analytical. ‘Great strategies’, he argues, ‘like great works of art or great scientific discoveries, call for technical mastery in the working out but originate in the insights that are beyond the reach of conscious analysis’ (Ohmae 2002: 1–2). This view of the gifted economist as ‘technical master’ and creative genius is common to both the discipline of Economics and the practices of neoliberalism, and derives in no small part from the assumption that the economist’s mind is capable, given the right tools and measurements, of truly and exactly deciphering and understanding how the world works. The World Bank staff that I interviewed spoke of former President James Wolfensohn in much the same way that economists often speak of Adam Smith, as a pioneer and master of an innovative approach to economics. Although Economics has at its foundations the assumption that its models are objective and speak their truths without value judgement,

66


the idea that economists neither speak nor seek to understand the social world is untrue. It is simply that the ‘science’ of society that economists construct is essentially abstract and (for the most part, although there are of course exceptions) devoid of personal observation. Where the economist might, atypically, ‘appear’ in their own work, it is invariably as an objective, passive bystander with little, or no, effect on that which they are measuring.7 It is this air of value neutrality and with it, the authoritative weight of ‘speaking the facts’, that allows neoliberalism so successfully to monopolise apparent ‘common sense’. Thus, before I look at any other assumptions, I want to begin by examining what I believe to be the basis not just of neoliberal discourse but of the discipline of Economics itself, and a subject that has occupied the time of many critical scholars; that of the significance of so-called value neutrality in economic discourse, and its role in the tacit gendering of neoliberalism.

Key assumption (1): the significance of value neutrality in neoliberal discourse The World Bank frames its mandate of ‘fighting poverty’ in an intentionally abstract and apparently objective economic language of resource provision, knowledge sharing, capacity building and partnership forging. Its ‘principles’ of engagement it describes as client-centeredness, accountability, dedication to ‘financial integrity and cost-effectiveness’, inspiration and innovation. Such attributes are not, of course, overtly associated with any racially and/or sex-based person-specific characteristics. The Bank’s Articles of Agreement name only the abstract terms of ‘territories’, ‘members’, ‘capital’, ‘productive purposes’, ‘foreign investment’ and ‘equilibrium in the balance of payment’ (World Bank 1989). ‘People’, that is human bodies, are omitted. This is not to say that the Bank is unaware of the human interactions embodied in the capital markets, member countries, governments and developing economies of which it speaks. The point is that the language of its economic discourse is such that rhetorical abstraction always precedes detailed examination: this is at one level a macroeconomics of (people-less) trade, efficiency, investment, equilibriums, and at another, a microeconomics of country and social specificity. A discursive strategy of abstraction is not peculiar to the Bank, but is a commonality to the language of ‘Economics’ more generally. In abstracting the economic model from the social relations in which it is located, macroeconomic ‘truths’ are much more easily generalisable, economic


models much simpler and the logical coherence of the economic discourse more easily maintained. The role of abstraction in economic discourse is also pivotal to economists’ assumption of value neutrality. Economists believe that the models they draw are objective and contain no value judgements: once the economic ‘facts’ have been exposed and laid out to be measured, they speak for themselves. Economists draw graphs, they calculate ratios and then they calculate relationships between these ratios. ‘Capital intensity’, for example, may be measured as the ratio of capital to effective labour, and effective labour measured in ‘efficiency units’ (Helpman 2004: 10). The marginal productivity of capital may be declining, stable or increasing, but above all there is no value judgement to be made as to what this might mean for those living under the economic conditions in question. That technological progress ‘raises the productivity of workers’, which then ‘expands the effective supply of labour’, tells us deliberately nothing of whether this is a good or bad thing for the workers involved. As Blank suggests, the advantages of such abstraction are numerous, not least that, with economists effectively trained to speak the same language, Economics as a discipline remains cohesive (1993: 133–143). The presumption is then that, if all economists speak the same language, their interpretation of outcome will be (relatively) uniform, that is, that conclusions are drawn from economic facts not value judgements. The assumption that economists may be value neutral in their work (that they are objective decoders of the world’s economic rules and logic) forms the basis of neoliberalism’s commitment to marketisation, for example, or privatisation. Here, tacitly gendered assumptions of rationality, competition and efficiency are central. Most economists, including those working at the World Bank, would likely not be terribly interested in analysing gendered divisions, hierarchies and differentiations in society. This is not because these hierarchies do not impact on and make capital accumulation across the globe, in varying and inconsistent ways, possible, but because the ‘science’ of Economics speaks through terms, assumptions and models that are assumed to be ‘value neutral’. Hence, ‘education’ may become a productivity input in economic models, but access to that education is beyond the scope of economic analysis. Similarly, ‘innovation’ (i.e., ‘technological change’) can be characterised as an ‘input’ to economic growth, but access to the ‘knowledge flows’ that are crucial to transmitting ‘economic developments’ is not. Where economists do conduct examinations of ‘inequality’, these are more likely to be through the mechanism of measuring the ‘personal

68


distribution of income’ and its effect on a given country’s growth rate (e.g. Helpman 2004: 86–110) than through any recourse to social distributions of hierarchy and privilege. Many have commented on the theoretical and technical poverty of measuring per capita income as reflective of human wealth (e.g. Elson 1996; Peterson 2005) but economists continue to rely on it heavily as a measure of a country’s economic ‘growth’. This reflects little on what it means to assume ‘a country’, and how resources within countries are so unevenly distributed as to make income per person only the crudest, and most inaccurate, measurement of a society’s actual economic wealth. Thus, while it is undoubtedly important to consider inequalities in income distribution, the Gini and Thiel indices do not tell us how a country uses its income to promote the welfare of its inhabitants, nor do they tell development agencies and organisations how to improve the quality of life of the people they work with.8 Moreover, they do not even begin to challenge the basic assumption that average per capita ‘income’ is a good measurement of social inequality; nor do they challenge the tacit assumption that we are all in some way defined by our responses to the ‘free market’ (and therefore valuable only in terms of the sum total of our ‘productive’ labour). As feminist scholars have argued, scholarship that produces analyses of intra-household labour and resource allocation, or that offers holistic measurements of human well-being, ‘development’ and ‘social capital’, is not only less politically objectionable, but more accurate too (e.g. Elson 1996; Peterson 2005). Gender scholars have of course long argued that the assumed ‘rationality’ and ‘gender neutrality’ of economic discourse (in particular classical liberal discourse) is a form of male-as-norm androcentricity that perpetuates the modelling of possible, desirable and ‘typical’ economic arrangements on an ideal form of masculinity (Griffin 2007b: 230–234). This androcentricity then works to exclude consideration of how certain knowledges and practices are reproduced according to masculinised characteristics of autonomy, objectivity and rationality.

Key assumption (2): the market, homo economicus and the importance of functional individualism in competitive transactions When it comes to the question of which system today is the most effective at generating rising standards of living, the historical debate is over. The answer is free-market capitalism. (Friedman 1999: 104)


Most, if not all, neoliberal models maintain a committed confidence in the ‘market’ (which is considered inherently efficient, transparent and self-regulating) as the most efficient mechanism for the allocation of scarce resources. The term ‘market economy’ refers more specifically to the allocation of resources through the interplay of supply and demand in free markets, where market and quasi-market mechanisms (as opposed to ‘non-market’ government command, coercion of custom, and so on) are considered the most efficient instruments for allocating private finance. If neo-liberals agree on one central principle, it is that in a world where markets are defined by the voluntary transactions of selfinterested individuals, market failure is produced by external interventions; the product of bad policy choices or poor sequencing of reforms, state failure or resistance by predatory, rent-seeking coalitions. Thus, reform requires that the rationality of markets be protected from the contending but corroding rationality of politics. (Robison 2004: 408) That the concept of the market has come to presuppose the existence of some kind of ‘private property’ is due to the ‘liberal’ political roots of most mainstream (Western) economic discourse. The embryonic union of private property with notions of individual freedom have been cemented in the liberal imagination since the time of Locke, where through his labour a ‘man’ may separate from the Common a right to property from which he may not be alienated. Neoliberalism is descended from a specifically ethnocentric political contract where individuals and/or group representatives are seen to hold the right of ownership, use, authority over and transfer of particular scarce resources. Importantly, the neoliberal idea of the free market is predicated entirely upon a Western vision of inalienable property rights, since without private property as a necessary component of freedom the very possibility for a modern complex, economic society is severely limited. Adam Smith’s work (first published in the late eighteenth century) is particularly important to contemporary neoliberalism, not only because, as Peet argues, Smith was one of the first to set down systematically the central economic beliefs of Western capitalism (2003: 4–5), but also because much of what is diverse in practised, professed and institutionalised neoliberalism today can be traced back to much earlier arguments between the role of government, the state and the individual. Smith’s emphasis on the centrality of the individual is paralleled

70


in many subsequent accounts of the role of the market in securing individual freedom. Historical evidence speaks with a single voice on the relation between political freedom and a free market. I know of no example in time or place of a society that has been marked by a large measure of political freedom that has not also used something comparable to a free market to organize the bulk of economic activity. (Friedman 1962: 9) Smith articulated a classical liberalism that challenged the authority of feudalism with the promotion of individual economic effort through science, evidence, rationality and reasoned values. Society was, for Smith, characterised by competition, specialisation and trade. Smith was not asking that government (‘statesmen’ and ‘lawgivers’) be absented, simply that state government not be allowed to dictate to people the manner in which ‘they ought to employ their capitals’ (2003: 572–573). The centrality of the market to modern political society and the (classical liberal) belief that government constitutes as much of a threat to as a guarantor of individual economic liberty reinforce the extent to which Smith’s philosophy is held as economic common sense. Not only an economic model of action, however, the market is a deeply ingrained ‘cultural’ archetype of Western society, so embedded that it has come to symbolise the only truly sophisticated, advanced and efficient form of exchange.9 In the same way that most populations were unenfranchised at a time when classical economic philosophy first articulated and defended ideas of competition, the market and ‘natural liberty’, the core debates at the heart of neoliberal discussions today operate at a level, and between elites, technocrats and policy-makers, that are in many ways removed from those they seek to govern (be it through identities of race, gender, class, able-bodiedness). Much as neoliberal ideas of governance separate that which governs from those being governed, the neoliberal articulation of the most suitable market-able subject, homo economicus, is (as Williams argues, quoting Africanist Vernon Dixon) ‘the particular offspring of a separative worldview’, wherein the perpetual space opened between the independent entities of self and non-self facilitates the socalled ‘observation’ and ‘objectivity’ of modern Economics (1993: 146). The market thus appears, in neoliberal discourses, as a phenomenon independent of the human subject, an externality and independent mechanism of distribution rather than a fundamentally social and


inextricably human system of relations. Neoliberal discourse upholds a view of the highly individuated and autonomous self that exerts control over their environment, but this ‘self’ is both masculinised and highly ethnocentric, veiled by objectivity and generality to appear as innocent and non-contradictory and, crucially, as ‘naturally’ rather than socially constructed. ‘Maximising economic man’ is intended in economic discourse as a good approximation of humankind across time and space, wherein lies his universality, but this apparently innocent, universal subject both embodies and conceals the long naturalised and dehistoricised associations between (White) men’s bodies and their (superior) capacity to produce, provide for and perpetuate modern economic society. When Smith, for example, speaks of ‘human nature’, he is articulating an idealised notion of the elite, White male as essentially wise, selfrestraining and able to restore peace and order. Smith’s often quoted articulation of an ‘invisible hand’ is more than just the assumption of the centrality of the market, although this is doubtless implied: it is the assumption that (European) man is compelled by his nature to exchange; that his natural environment, and the only one in which he will flourish, is a market society. Smith suggested that individuals do not intend as a consequence of their actions that society as a whole benefit, only that their own ‘security’ and gain is ensured: able to barter and exchange, individuals are thus ‘led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of [the individual’s] intention’ (Smith 2003: 572). That is, the promotion of the ‘public good’ is a happy accident. To this end, a liberal, industrialised society is essential to unencumber individuals from ‘statesmen’ and ‘lawgivers’ so that they might judge economic value for themselves. Smith’s vision of ‘human’ nature as essentially individualistic, rentseeking but cooperative is deeply embedded in much Western culture as essentially, and ideally, masculine. Not only is the ‘propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another’ the consequence of ‘a certain propensity in human nature’, it is also ‘common to all men’ (ibid: 22). Smith chose to distinguish the liberal character through descriptions of a noble, civilised (and male) economic actor, embodied in the democratic credentials of the ‘liberal’ world. When, during the 1990s, an apparently more ‘just’ neoliberalism took hold through the ‘good governance’ dictates of institutions such as the World Bank, a more restrained, socially aware vision of Economic Man also took precedence. The World Bank, as the institutional embodiment of the liberal, ‘free’

72


world, signalled its particular status as development patriarch through the undertaking of great, difficult and noble tasks, explaining its actions through reference to its position as the ‘crucial link’ between the economic affluence of the developed world and the poverty of the Global South. With the administration of global finance organised around the metaphor of the free market (and therefore around the ‘rational’ market participant) neoliberal discourses are more effectively able to claim their neutrality. The overt neutrality, however, of economic discourses conceals the covert masculinisation therein: the ‘rational’, liberal and universal individual has traditionally been the learned characteristics of ‘men’ (specifically, Anglo-American men), with capital, profit and expansion assumed to derive from men’s bodies and their capacity to produce, provide for and perpetuate modern economic society. Women may be included in the definition of the modern ‘individual’, as used by Thomas Friedman (1999), Ohmae (1995 and 2002) and Stiglitz (2002 and 2003), but only to the extent that they exhibit such typically ‘masculine’ characteristics as competitiveness, rationality and efficiency.

Key assumption (3): competition Von Hayek argued that the only way in which a state might provide security to one social group without compromising the security of another was through the ‘competitive system’, a system combining the market and the free individual and based on competition as a ‘principle of social organisation’ (Von Hayek 1944: 127–128). Similarly, Friedman advocates a capitalist competitive market that would diffuse political power and preserve individual freedom (1962). Herein the market,10 and not the state, is the guardian and protector of individual liberty. As the Keynesian Compromise began to disintegrate in the 1970s, Von Hayek and Friedman’s neoclassical brand of liberalism became increasingly dominant. Thus, from the 1970s, ‘neoliberalism’, as a re-articulation of nineteenth century, classical liberalism, and a reaction against its twentieth century social democratic, liberal predecessors, provided the main opposition to Keynesianism. According to neoliberal logic, a market is only considered fully functioning when it is said by economists to be ‘competitive’ (without monopoly). At the most basic level, neoliberal discourse defines the individual subject as a ‘market participant’, rationally autonomous and functionally similar, with competitive interactions described entirely in individual terms as part of an objective process. Indeed, in early


neoclassical and neoliberal accounts, the social realm is entirely organised by the mutually constitutive concepts of competition and individualism: without individual opportunity there is no commerce, without commerce a society cannot develop and prosper. The task of social development is thus that of ‘freeing the individual from the ties that bound him to the customary or prescribed ways’ (Von Hayek 1944: 14–15). Only in the pursuit of individual freedom can individuals ‘spontaneously’ and without external control produce the ‘complex order of economic activities’ crucial to the growth of the economy (ibid). Rarely in neoliberal accounts is competition described in its cumulative and collective form, nor is it often presented as a coercive process, antisocial in the inequalities it produces. Von Hayek chose to employ an intentionally narrow, economistic definition of competition, reflective of economic inputs, such as capital, innovation, and talent such that individual efforts are coordinated in so as to induce the maximum profit possible (1944: 37–44). Competition, in neoclassical accounts, is not only impersonal in nature, but also distinctly unsocial, since no one market participant, as an individual, ‘can determine the terms on which other participants shall have access to goods or jobs’ (Friedman 1962: 119–120). In its most basic definitional form, argued Friedman, competition implies personal rivalry, which is strictly not the preserve of the ‘competitive market-place’. It need not require any ‘personal rivalry’ whatsoever. ‘The essence’, he argued, ‘of a competitive market is its impersonal character’ (ibid: 119). Importantly, the point of competition is not equality, and competitors do not face each other in the belief that the winnings will, and ought to, be evenly distributed. Yet even inequality marks the competitive society as inherently superior to any other form of political organisation, since the individual who is poor but ‘free’ is assumed to be intrinsically better off than a richer individual living without economic freedom (Von Hayek 1944: 37–38). Neoliberal discourses assert ‘true’ human agency as rational, rentseeking and essentially masculine, and predicate ‘success’ in the global marketplace in terms of such ‘human’ qualities of competitive spirit, rationality and efficiency. These are rarely, in contemporary neoliberalism, explicitly associated with any particular person. Thomas Friedman (1999), for example, never mentions ‘gender’, nor claims that the ‘electronic herd’ is anything other than ‘us’ and ‘you’. Yet he only ever interviews and talks with men. A series of influential Chief Executive Officers (CEOs), politicians and heads-of-state pass through his work, all commenting on what it takes to ‘make it’ in the global economy. This

74


would perhaps be less relevant if Friedman were not trying to confirm that the knowledge of these men was not eminently superior to that of the ordinary person, or if he did not believe that they monopolise the economic ‘wisdom’ of the day.

Key assumption (4): efficiency Neoliberal discourses view the expansion of markets as a natural process, resulting (organically) from increases in economic activity and gains in productivity and efficiency. Efficiency, here, corresponds to a measure of the ‘cost’ of certain market transactions. An evaluative term, but assumed to be value free, ‘efficiency’ is attained when the ‘benefits’ or ‘satisfactions’ resulting from a market transaction exist in ideal proportion to the value of the resources expended to achieve it (opportunity costs). The lower the opportunity costs, then, and the higher the benefits the better, but efficiency can nevertheless be guaranteed in some measure so long as the benefits fractionally exceed opportunity costs. In other words, a well-functioning competitive system is ‘naturally’ efficient, arranging the various inputs and resulting outputs in the open marketplace in the most suitably profitable manner. This is, as Best articulates, the ‘efficient market hypothesis’, which states that ‘markets collect and distribute information efficiently, in effect ensuring that market prices are accurate depictions of the real economy’ (2003: 370). Related to this, and embedded in neoliberal accounts of the market economy, is the ‘fundamental welfare theorem’, which states that ‘an efficient market will provide the most optimal allocation of resources, ensuring social welfare’. Neoliberalism also depends on the ‘rational expectations hypothesis’, which states that ‘all market participants will eventually converge on a correct model of the economy’ (ibid). Neoliberalism and its advocates assume that the expansion of the market, and the behaviours that warrant it, has an essentially neutral, but inexorable, dynamism. Perfect competition is, theoretically achievable through the advancement of the free market, with economic resources (including capital, information and innovation), the key determinants of who succeeds in competitive markets (not, e.g., divisions of labour dependent on differences created by sexual, geographic and social location). In a world of purely competitive markets, neoliberalism dictates that prosperity will go to pioneers (Colloredo-Mansfield 2002: 117): that is, those creating new objects, improving techniques and opening up markets. At ‘the heart of capitalism and competitive markets lies the


doctrine of failure’, with the inefficient ‘driven out of business by the efficient’ (Thurow, cited in ibid: 123).

Gender, neoliberal globalisation and the Post-Washington Consensus The kinds of ‘truths’ and ‘realities’ that have been produced about and for the neoliberal globalisation thesis have resulted in a variety of outcomes. A tremendous amount of power goes into knowing what ‘globalisation’ is: selectively deployed information; ideologically driven decision-making; a priori assumption about the world and its truths; the availability and accessibility of these truths. By rejecting any understanding of neoliberalism that posits it as the natural and inevitable unleashing of (value neutral) market forces, we might instead give priority to analysis of neoliberal globalisation as a political project, generating new forms of domination while interacting with old forms. We might also better understand the processes and practices of global governance more broadly. Gender scholarship and neoliberal globalisation To take the neoliberal globalisation thesis at face value is to ignore how the transcendental liberal ‘market’, based on ‘the social stereotype of the manufacturer of goods as an entrepreneurial inventor trying to create a new world’, has not always been so (Rosenberg and Birdzell 1986: 183), but was created in the late nineteenth century to displace traditional modes of manufacture and production, usurping the social stereotype ‘of the maker of goods as an artisan practicing an ancient craft in the received ways’ (ibid). Neoliberal discourses make no references to the constructedness of market society, and the profound changes in human behaviour that this has instigated, particularly, as Benería argues, the prevalence of Economic Man (2003a: 117). Neoliberal globalisation’s tendencies ‘take hold of and change social systems’, eroding and revolutionising forms of work, strategies of social protection, lifestyles and value-orientations everywhere, North and South (Wichterich 2000: vii). Through recourse to ‘natural’ evolution and techno-determinism, neoliberal discourses conceal, however, the many multifaceted processes of social engineering that have led to the creation of ‘market society’, and the techniques of disciplining that have constructed ‘economic rationality’ as an essential norm in human behaviour. Thus, where neoliberal development policymaking valorises the parts of the social system that it can work with,

76


it also devalues, marginalises and excludes that which it conceives of as backward, inappropriate or unworkable. As feminists have so often pointed out, the neoliberal thesis fails to recognise the prevalence of Economic Man in the policy prescriptions it promotes (Benería 2003b: 117). The point of economic models is that they are meant to be used as a standard against which the real world is measured, rather than as the real world itself. In practice, however, the application of economic theory (e.g. the assumption that individuals behave as autonomous and individuated atoms maximising their utility in the market economy) has sought to distort reality to fit the model. ‘Rational economic woman’ is a relatively recent concept in development policy-making, deployed to ‘include’ women in policies designed to achieve economic growth and efficiency, but also political freedom and ‘social justice’. In poor agrarian economies reliant on smallholder production and petty trade, women have increasingly been targeted as the desired beneficiaries and agents of micro-credit-based progress (Rankin 2001: 19). ‘Rational economic woman’ is not, however, designed to challenge the (tacitly held) naturalised and dehistoricised associations between White men’s bodies and their (superior) market-capacity. As market-productive as micro-credit makes women in developing countries, the specific targeting of women in micro-credit schemes is troubling. Since the hours of ‘informal economy’ work that women do to sustain households go officially unrecognised in official measurements of gross domestic product (GDP) and economic growth, micro-credit activities exist therefore in addition to their average daily burden but are the only means by which these women are measured effective or successful. An important point is that rural women are targeted in these schemes not because they are considered universally capable market actors as per homo economicus, but because they are considered essentially reproductive, care-giving and domestically situated and, therefore, more responsible, reliable and trustworthy, since, as nurturers and carers of the household, women are considered less likely to display men’s ‘risktaking’ behaviour (e.g. World Bank 2001b, 2001c, 2001d, 2001e). There is no challenge here to neoliberalism as fundamentally predicated on a signifying economy of manliness. Gender scholarship has examined how the nature/culture distinction supports certain strategies of domination that regularly figure nature as ‘female’ and ‘in need of subordination by a culture that is invariably figured as male, active and abstract’ (Butler 1990: 47–48). Reason and mind tend to be associated with masculinity, body and nature with


what Judith Butler terms the ‘mute facticity’ of the feminine, since femininity itself awaits signification from the opposing ‘masculine subject’. ‘Women’, as the biological essence most frequently associated in dominant discourse with ‘femininity’, have yet to reap the benefit of behaving ‘like women’ in the business world, precisely because ‘femininity’ carries no intrinsic value in and of itself. Since the signified ‘man’ is readily presumed from the signifier ‘masculinity’, men, even men at the bottom, as Hooper argues, ‘have generally been more successful in claiming power (through its association with masculinity) than have women’ (Hooper 2000: 63). International labour statistics reflect these disparities, confining women to the majority of low-paid, manufacturing and service-sector employees. In the export factories of the lowest wage countries, for example, such as Portugal, Greece and Mexico, women have for the last 30 years accounted for between 70 and 90 per cent of the total workforce (Wichterich 2000: 1). Of the US$70 or more that a Nike customer may pay over the counter, Nike’s women workers in Asia (most of its factory workers are women) receive a paltry 3.9 per cent (ibid: 15). ‘Maleness’ and ‘femaleness’ have in relation to the dominant mode of production been differently defined, interpreted and valued in each historical epoch. In matrifocal societies, for example, femaleness was interpreted as the paradigm of all productivity and creativity. Capitalist society, on the other hand, has tended to define femaleness as devoid of productivity, activity, subjectivity, humanity and historicity (Mies 2001: 3). Masculinity, embodied in the wage labourer, has been the dominant form of Western masculinity since the Industrial Revolution: a clearly heterosexual, Anglo-American breadwinner, what Hooper terms the ‘manly ideal’ that has held throughout most of the twentieth century (2001: 65). In relation, femininity has, over the same period, assumed a noticeably subordinate pose, defined almost entirely in relation to women’s apparently pre-given sexuality. Female subjectivity has been marked by women’s reproductive function and femininity defined in relation to its capacity for sexual provision, either in the form of erotic pleasure or through birth and nurture. My research is less a denial of ‘nature’ per se than an implicit questioning of how ‘nature’ has been framed, ‘saturated’ with social meaning, and ‘made to function as a sign of itself or other matters’ (Soenser Breen and Blumenfeld 2001: 12). To borrow Butler’s mute facticity, both femininity’s and women’s ‘presence’ in the labour market provoke a sense of ‘impermanence’, not least since woman’s earning potential is frequently viewed as supplementary

78


to the breadwinning role fulfilled by the male (Wichterich 2000: 2). Where women are sole or equal providers, the burden of childcare and house upkeep tends to fall to them. This is nothing new, and commentators have long remarked upon it. Where neoliberal discourses, as embodied in the Bank, herald an era of opportunity, however, they contradict themselves with narratives of ‘success’ based on making a material and expendable resource of the people at the lowest levels of economic production. As Wichterich points out, economists make a swift and too-easy association between women’s employment and women’s ‘liberation’. Gender and the feminisation of labour The ‘feminisation of labour’ is often read as the increase in women’s (impermanent) presence in the labour force (that more women labouring equals more ‘feminine’ labour). If, however, labour really is being feminised, we might also guess that it is some crucial characteristic of the labour that has changed, and not the people doing it. Peterson, for example, refers to the feminisation of flexibilisation and welfare crises (2002: 1–30). If more women are working, everywhere, than ever before, and yet are consistently seen as a less permanent labour source than, say for example, men, the term ‘flexibilisation’ might reasonably be said to embody more accurately a measure of those women’s expendability than the actual flexibility of business. The flexibilisation of working practices in the more affluent Northern countries has, coincidentally (or not), occurred at the same time as a manufacturing exodus, soaring levels of unemployment and a significant decline in workers’ bargaining power. What flexibilisation actually then refers to is not the practices of employees, very few of whom have the power or job security to tailor their working lives accurately to their domestic needs, but the practice of business, the raison d’être of which is that capital remains plentiful and, more importantly, mobile. For money, or profit, to remain plentiful and mobile, labour must remain cheap and expendable: thus a ‘flexible’ workforce, commanding little in the way of company benefits and investment, is ideal. Officially, however, part-time, temporary, casual and ‘independent’ forms of this work are, statistically, measured as ‘atypical’, although this type of working is increasingly becoming the norm. If flexibilisation is to represent the future of paid labour, however, the whole of the labour force (not just women) will be affected by an increasingly common pattern of work. Women may currently ‘pioneer’ these new ‘flexible’ forms of work, yet this is hardly a sign of women’s success, or the championing of ‘femininity’. Analyses that fail to look


at the ‘feminisation’ of labour more broadly and in relation to wider social and discursive hegemonies thus fail not only to move beyond inadequate and essentialist explanations of women’s ‘natural’ talent for monotonous and poorly paid work, but they also fail to account for the challenges faced by the manly ideal of productive, labouring and industrial-based masculinity. The ‘Post-Washington Consensus’ The centrality in neoliberal discourses has been, as Benería articulates, to efficiency rather than to ‘people and human development’. Neoliberalism and its advocates have often failed to recognise that ‘the commercialisation of everyday life and of all sectors of the economy generates social dynamics that many individuals and cultures across the globe might find repulsive’. Not only repulsive, but, I would add, destabilising and, in many cases, highly antithetical to individual and/or community well-being. Thus we have, in many ways, witnessed ‘the tendency for society to become “an accessory to the economic system” rather than the other way around’ (Benería, quoting Polanyi 2003a: 73). As Friedman argues, a ‘pure market vision alone’ is not enough; it is ‘too brutal’ (1999: 444). The qualifying ‘too’ is a fair indicator of many neoliberal approaches to the disorientating and dangerous effects of contemporary efforts at economic restructuring, since apparently there is a type of ‘brutal’ that is bearable. Friedman’s ‘Golden Straitjacket’ of marketisation, privatisation, deregulation and flexibilisation ‘pinches’ certain groups, while ‘squeezing others’ (ibid: 105). The understatement is, of course, quite striking, but not terribly remarkable given the neoliberal propensity to abstract. This might help us understand why the World Bank pursues ‘globalisation’ so vigorously while proclaiming that ‘institutions matter’. Polanyi argued that while the first wave of globalisation gave ‘unparalleled momentum to the mechanism of markets, a deep-seated movement sprang into being to resist the pernicious effects of a marketcontrolled economy’ (1944: 76). ‘Society’ has come to recognise, argues Munck, that it must protect itself against ‘the destructive effects of an unregulated market economy’, more valid in this era of neoliberalism than ever before. The notion of a self-regulating market on a world-scale, as conceived by the early gurus of neoliberal globalization, is simply inconceivable and unachievable. (Munck 2003: 499)

80


Wolfensohn claims to speak for all institutions of neoliberal governance when he argues that ‘without sound organisation and supervision a financial system can falter’. Instead, ‘we must recognise the link between good economic performance and open governance’ (1997: 3). The ‘not-too-well-hidden message’ of the dominant neoliberal globalisation thesis has, of course, been one of ‘the economy over society: the triumph of the market over people’, constructed as if to take place in ‘some neutral discursive realm where scholars are able to evaluate carefully and objectively’ (Cameron and Palan 2004: 77). Moreover, the ‘triumph of the market’ has already been built into the story, although it is made to seem the ‘natural’ result of efficient economic practice. A Post-Washington Consensus (PWC) concern to acknowledge and remedy ‘market imperfections’ has taken form in broad policy incursions into the social constitution of economic inequalities. According to the World Bank’s Social Development Sector, this means ‘making policies and programs in developing and transitioning economies more equitable and sustainable’, since ‘social development’ is ‘a natural complement to economic development’ with ‘both intrinsic and instrumental value’ (http://web.worldbank.org/). Of particular concern, at least since the mid/late 1990s, has been the concept of making globalisation ‘work’ for all, particularly the poor, with special attention paid to the social and economic costs and benefits of global integration. Development institutions, at once composed of but different to the nation-states that constitute them (not least since larger institutions now work directly with the non-governmental and civil society sectors), sit at a particularly crucial juncture between interstate and global networks of economic, political and cultural relations and, although not always decisive in the politics of development, they are certainly pervasive. Although gender, sex and sexuality have been widely acknowledged to play a not inconsiderable role in the practices, processes and structures of development (see inter allia, Elson 1996; Kabeer 2001; Benería 2003a; Elias 2004, 2003b), descriptions of ‘development institutions’ as themselves gendered (and therefore gender-specific in their policy articulations) are rare. In particular, official development policy-making remains resoundingly centred on embedding the market, private capital and a deregulated economy in the countries with which it works, and although country governments now play a more visible role in drafting policy documents (the World Bank and IMF’s ‘poverty reduction strategy papers’, or PRSPs, are ‘country-led’), the macro and microeconomic criteria they must meet are strict and orthodox (e.g. based on removing


import quotas, improving export incentives, reforming the fiscal system, improving the financial performance of public enterprises, revising agricultural pricing, shifting public investment, revising industrial incentives, increasing public enterprise efficiency and so on). Thus, despite an increasing (PWC) concern for ‘good governance’, international development has largely ignored both gender and power (Parpart 2007: 207). Development institutions (such as the World Bank, the ADB, the AfDB and the IADB) do operate ‘gender policies’, which have been designed to streamline gender analysis into the lending, analytical and advisory ‘products’ that they offer. They are also increasingly likely to claim that reducing gender inequality reduces poverty, a thesis that derives from a variety of sources (particularly from the earliest days of the Women in Development (WID) movement). The argument is that ‘gender equality’ leads to improved living standards, sustainable economic growth, and effective and accountable governance (e.g. Asian Development Bank 2003). This is because women’s improved educational and employment opportunities, equality in political and social participation and increased health and welfare services allow women to be both more productive in the formal economy, while more able to nurture effectively in the informal. The issue is not, however, one of debating whether gender equality is a good or bad thing. Rather, the key consideration here is that, in operational terms, ‘gender’ in official development discourse remains an analytical ‘variable’ that can be added to or removed from the fundamental of economic growth and market access at will. It therefore exists as an externality to ‘good governance’ conditionality and not as an intrinsic component therein. As such, it is easy for international institutions such as the World Bank to overlook how the very basic elements of global governance today (the processes, practices, structures and value-laden assumptions on which global economic and development policy-making are based) might not be ‘value neutral’.

Summary Neoliberal discourses reproduce an apparently common sensical social reality, governed by ideas of marketisation, privatisation, deregulation and flexibilisation, through the predication, prescription and reproduction of certain assumptions (e.g. rationality, competition, the centrality of the market, efficient exchange and transaction). In centring a model of human behaviour revolving around the pre/proscriptive core

82


assumptions of homo economicus, ‘nature’ and ‘science’, neoliberalism constructs as legitimate acts, identities, behaviours and policies solely in relation to the sovereignty of the economically masculine, White, European individual: a regulatory fiction from which neoliberal discourse orders, correlates and limits a potentially infinite number of subject positions. The abstracted nature of neoliberalism’s economic truths (functionally similar individuals, objective models, goods in a state of exchange) belies the constructed realities on which the ‘science’ of economics depends. Though this research is not solely concerned with the ways in which the global political economy is studied, it would be a huge mistake to assume that the practices of economic policy-making are not intrinsically connected to the theoretical means by which they are reproduced. The contemporary processes and practices of the global political economy have not come out of nowhere and policy-makers and development practitioners are and have not been educated in a social void.

3 Analysing the World Bank

This chapter considers in greater detail the discourse and model of economic development embodied in and reproduced by the World Bank. Transformed from an afterthought at Bretton Woods to a preeminent source of contemporary global governance, the Bank is a dominant, but neither unitary nor uncontested, architect of efficient development and trade practice, suitable economic behaviour, and economic ‘common sense’. To begin to understand where and in what ways the Bank’s discourse creates and locates meaning, representation and identity, it is worth examining where the Bank’s particular type of neoliberalism has come from. This chapter is thus divided into three sections. We begin with a brief outline of the history of the Bank, from its inauguration in 1944 to the present day. This includes consideration of the Bank’s mandate, aims and guiding principles and its position in relation to key US federal institutions. In the second section, I look at the organisational structure of the Bank; the workings of the institution as it operates today, including its institutional composition, funding mechanisms, processes of decision-making, staff training procedures and its apparatuses of accountability and evaluation. In the third and final section of this chapter, I examine the organisational culture of the Bank, analysing how Bank discourse is informed and sustained by a discourse of neoliberalism that is contingent, contested and unstable, but which nevertheless represents a powerful articulation of contemporary development best practice. In order to assess in what ways the Bank, as a neoliberal institution, manages its most significant discursive fractures, contestations and fissures, I focus primarily on the ways in which the Bank’s neoliberalism has shifted, particularly since the 1990s, towards a discursive rationality of ‘good 83

84


governance’, ‘post-conditionality’ and ‘alternative development’. This analysis precedes exploration, in subsequent chapters, of the discursive practices through which the Bank, as a global multilateral institution, predicates, pre/proscribes and reproduces a gendered discourse of neoliberalism.

Why the World Bank? Neoliberal discourses, embodying a commitment to the market, to private capital, to flexible labour and to deregulated economies, are, of course, not only to be found in an institution such as the World Bank. Institutions operate within the parameters of their own historical conditions: Bank discourse is necessarily unique to that institution, its history, function and purpose. The Bank is not a monolith, nor does it enjoy unrivalled precedence in the cultures and politics of every developing and underdeveloped economy. It does, however, enjoy a monopoly of economic wisdom in the practices of development that cannot be disarticulated from the institution’s neoliberal doctrine. It is by no means the only development institution, but it is a powerful source of contemporary development practice and the world’s largest provider of development funding. Reformulated in the mid-1990s as a ‘Knowledge Bank’ and development pioneer, the Bank, with its remit of alleviating global poverty (a phrase entirely absent from Bretton Woods), is perhaps ‘the most important development institution in the world’ (Peet 2003: 111).

The structure of the World Bank The World Bank in 2007 commanded US$25.1 billion in development funding, with donor countries in that year pledging the highest amount in Bank history thus far. The International Development Association’s (IDA) 2007 replenishment (the 15th in its history) provided a record of US$41.6 billion in funding over the subsequent three years, ‘the largest expansion in donor funding in [the] IDA’s history’ (World Bank 2007a). Representing a 42 per cent increase from any previous replenishment, such pledges are exclusive of the US$16.5 billion in internal financing from the World Bank Group and prior donor pledges for financing debt forgiveness. This is a ‘strong recognition of the importance of multilateral aid’, according to President Robert Zoellick, but also ‘a vote of confidence in [the] IDA as an effective platform for global development aid’ (quoted in ibid).

Analysing the World Bank

85

Function and purpose The World Bank today is not the same as the singular institution that first appeared in 1944. Established out of the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, hosted at Bretton Woods by the US Treasury Department in 1944, and commencing operations in 1946, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) was initially secondary in both conception and remit to the IMF, which was designed to control and counter the economic chaos caused by the currency and inflation crises of the interwar years.1 As Peet argues, the Bank was an ‘afterthought’ at Bretton Woods, with ‘discussion about the formation of international organisations’ dwelling ‘almost exclusively on the IMF’ (Peet 2003: 111). Issuing its first loan of $250 million to France in 1947 for post-war reconstruction, the Bank’s articles and guiding principles mirror an early focus on war, conflict and the reconstruction of its post-conflict member states, in particular Article I, which commits the Bank primarily to ‘reconstruction and development’ through the promotion of trade, private investment and equilibrium in balances of payments (World Bank 1989). According to its Articles of Agreement, the Bank’s official role is to: • Assist in ‘the reconstruction and development of territories of members by facilitating the investment of capital for productive purposes’. • ‘Promote private foreign investment by means of guarantees or participations in loans and other investments made by private investors’, and where such capital is not available, ‘to supplement private investment by providing [ . . . ] finance for productive purposes out of its own capital’. • ‘Promote the long-range balanced growth of international trade and the maintenance of equilibrium in balances of payments’ through the encouragement of raised productivity within member countries. • Prioritise loans, so that ‘the more useful and urgent projects [ . . . ] will be dealt with first’. • ‘Assist in bringing about a smooth transition from a wartime to a peacetime economy’ through ‘due regard to the effect of international investment on business conditions in the territories of members’. According to a more recent mission statement, the Bank’s role today is, however, simultaneously more expansive and less detailed than at inauguration. The Bank thus claims to ‘fight poverty’, to improve ‘the

86


living standards of people in the developing world’ and to ‘promote growth to create jobs and to empower poor people to take advantage of these opportunities’. Representative of a subtle but significant shift in the Bank’s mandate since inauguration, such a statement remains true to the original Articles, while having, in the Bank’s own words, ‘sharpened’ the focus on poverty reduction as ‘the overarching goal’ of Bank work (http://web.worldbank.org). Although post-conflict reconstruction remains a strong component of Bank policy-making, the catchwords of contemporary neoliberal ‘good governance’ discourse have become so ubiquitous (‘knowledge sharing’, ‘capacity building’ and ‘partnership forging’ between the public and the private sectors and so on) that explicitly less emphasis can be found on the restoration of war-torn economies. ‘Reconstruction’ does, of course, represent an opportunity to embed neoliberal, market principles in developing countries and to that end remains important in and to Bank discourse. This shift is most evident from the beginning of the 1990s, during the Presidential tenure of James Wolfensohn, but it is nonetheless one that has been taking shape since the 1950s. In the late 1950s, at a time (in Britain and the US in particular) of Cold War concerns for the ideological ‘fragility’ of the Third World, the Bank began directing its lending less towards Europe and richer non-European countries than towards the Third World, widening the sectoral coverage of lending from infrastructure investment to agriculture (Peet 2003: 116). By the 1960s, President George Woods (1963–1968) had begun his efforts at transforming the institution ‘from a bank to a development agency’. At this point the Bank doubled its lending, increasingly deploying per capita income (gross domestic product, or GDP, rather than traditional creditworthiness or performance) as a criterion for lending, enabling poorer rather than middle-income countries to borrow. The presidency of former US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (1968–1981) extended a vision of the Bank as a ‘development agency’, beginning the Bank’s translation of ‘poverty alleviation’ into project lending focused more on need than on output and based on large rural development schemes. It was the generally perceived failure of these more ad hoc rural development policies to translate into workable, implementable field projects that then led to an increasing focus on debt and balance of payments in Third World countries. These failures also occurred at a time of quite dramatic events in the wider international system: the dramatic oil price increases of 1973 and 1979 that marked the so-called ‘oil crisis’ decade not only triggered a slowdown and then severe recession in the North and the world economy, but also


87

precipitated what has become known as the ‘debt crisis’ in the Global South. The rise of neoliberalism and the Bank’s swift adoption of neoliberal development strategy were not only the result of the organisation’s own previous failures, however, but also reflected a concern in the North with the record of state involvement in developing economies that had characterised post-independent and dependency-era countries. Heavy state involvement in the economy (as, e.g., expressed in import substitution-based economic planning) was, at this time, held to be inefficient, bureaucratic and an unnecessary drain on public coffers. We see in Bank policy-making a shift during the 1970s towards ‘structural adjustment’ lending, export-orientated policy design and the centrality of trade liberalisation in Bank policy discourse, based on strategies of selling off loss-making public enterprises and parastatal corporations and restricting the role of the state to regulation and economic facilitation. Structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) proved immensely unpopular, so much so that ‘structural adjustment’ terminology has largely disappeared from the lexicon of the Bank, replaced by ‘Poverty Reduction and Growth Facilities’ (based on broadly similar principles but more carefully worded). The World Bank today operates a revised neoliberal discourse ‘stressing market-friendly state intervention’ and a more ‘holistic approach’ to development. The Bank is particularly keen to highlight the multidisciplinarity of its bureaucratic credentials, as an organisation embodying a seemingly diverse range of sectors and staff specialities. It is, the Bank argues, a ‘bigger, broader, and far more complex’ institution than the ‘homogeneous staff of engineers and financial analysts, based solely in Washington, D.C.’ in 1944 (http://web. worldbank.org). Members of the World Bank Group The World Bank Group is the combination of five financial groups: the IBRD, which is the biggest of the five groups; the International Development Agency (IDA); the International Finance Corporation (IFC); the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), and; the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). Designed at inauguration to be financed by governments and not through private capital, the Bank was in its earliest stages, however, largely dependent on selling bonds on international financial markets to raise the bulk of its capital, with the subscriptions of members supplying the rest of its available funds. Post-war Wall Street was, Peet argues, highly suspicious of the Bank, regarding it as a ‘do-good institution’ such

88


that Wall Street’s confidence was gained only through the Bank’s early insistence on the ‘fiscal and monetary discipline’ of borrowing countries combined with the Bank’s use of ‘sound banking practices’, embodied in easily defined, and strictly supervised, public utilities policies (Peet 2003: 114). The Bank today continues to receive funding from member governments through the ‘subscription of shares’, with each member country contributing an amount as determined by the Bank (the US, as the largest shareholder, is the largest source of member-based funding to the Bank). The subscription of shares is divided into two parts: 20 per cent of subscription shall be paid or subject to ‘call’ as needed by the Bank and the remaining 80 per cent is subject to ‘call’ only when absolutely required by the Bank to meet its Article obligations. To date, no ‘call’ has yet been made by the Bank (Bøås and McNeill 2003: 91). Interest-free credit and grant financing comes from the IDA, which is the world’s largest source of concessional assistance. Approximately 40 of the richest members provide the capital for this funding by making contributions every four years (the fund’s 15th replenishment occurred in 2007). IDA grants currently stand at around 21 per cent of Bank resources, and IDA credits make up about one quarter of the Bank’s financial assistance. According to the Bank, however, aside from IDA funds, ‘very little of the Bank’s income is provided by its member countries’ (http://web. worldbank.org). The Bank receives the rest of its capital from its ‘investing’, ‘financing’ and ‘operating’ activities. The IBRD generates this money by offering its securities to private and governmental buyers on worldwide capital markets (with an international AAA credit rating, the Bank is one of the most theoretically sound investments currently on offer). The IBRD also invests in government and agency obligations, time deposits, asset-backed securities, repurchase agreements, securities loans, resale agreements and related financial derivatives including futures, currency swaps (including currency forward contracts), interest rate swaps and options (World Bank 2007b). In 2007 the Bank’s portfolio of investments from trading totalled US$23,054 million, which represented a drop from the previous year’s US$25,672 million. The majority of Bank funding is managed out of Washington, D.C., although some is administered at the Bank’s country offices (particularly the Small-Grants Program and the Development Marketplace). On occasion, some funding will be carried out in partnership with other government donor agencies, such as the UN and bilateral agencies (e.g. the UNDP, DfID and Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA)).


89

In general the Bank restricts individual countries to borrowing no more than US$13.5 billion a year. In 2007 the countries with the highest outstanding loans were the following: • • • • • • • •

China (US$11,584 million); Brazil (US$9,632 million); Indonesia (US$6,842 million); Turkey (US$6,874 million); India (US$6,404 million); Argentina (US$5,906 million); Russian Federation (US$4,474 million); Mexico (US$4,095 million).

Each month the Bank draws up an Estimated Debt Service Report (EDSR), which lists the amount of future debt service repayments for a specific country. If any country fails to meet a scheduled repayment, the Bank will, after 30 days, suspend new loans to that country and will, after 60 days, cease to provide any money under existing loans. • Development grants facility The Development Grants Facility (DGF) oversees several types of funding mechanisms that provide grants directly to Civil Society Organisations (CSOs). During the fiscal year 2003 (July 2002 to June 2003), the DGF provided through (‘Small Grants Funds’ and larger ‘Trust Funds’) US$157 million to 48 internal and external grant programmes. • The ‘Development Marketplace’ The Development Marketplace (DM) programme, according to the Bank, identifies and directly supports ‘innovative’, ‘bottom-up’ development ideas ‘that deliver results, which can then be expanded or replicated’ (http://web.worldbank.org). Country-level Development Marketplaces (CDMs), which are competitive arenas wherein CSOs ‘sell’ their ideas to the ‘entrepreneurs’ that can provide financial and/or technical assistance, are held at the national or regional level and managed by the local World Bank offices. How the Bank spends it money In 2007, World Bank commitments totalled US$24.7, including loans, credits, guarantees and grants that exceeded the previous fiscal year (2006) by 4 per cent. The IBRD committed US$12.8 billion in 2007 for

90


112 projects, which represented a decline in the dollar amount of commitments from 2006. The IDA committed US$11.9 billion for 189 operations, which conversely constituted an increase in IDA commitments of 25 per cent in dollar terms than the previous year. The region to receive the highest levels of Bank funding in 2007 was Africa, at US$5.8 billion. India was the single largest borrower in 2007, with US$3.8 billion in commitments outstanding. Commitments to South Asia overall were nearly 50 per cent higher than that in 2006. In general, the Bank delivered 531 economic and sector work and 430 technical assistance (non-lending) products in fiscal 2007 (World Bank 2007b).

Organisational structure and the Bank’s processes of decision-making The Board of Governors is the most powerful of the Bank’s governing bodies. Meeting once a year at the Annual Meeting, or as called for by the Directors, the Board consists mostly of member countries’ elected ministers. According to the Bank’s articles, ‘all the powers of the Bank shall be vested in the Board of Governors’ (Article V, World Bank 1989). Governors and Alternate Governor sit for five years and may be reappointed. Governors and their alternates are not paid by the Bank (except for expenses incurred), but do decide the salaries of the Executive Directors and the salary and terms of contract of the President. Two out of every three meetings of the Board of Governors are held in Washington, D.C. Every third year the Bank, in order to reflect the ‘international character of the institutions’, holds the Annual Meeting in a different member country (e.g. the 2006 Annual Meeting was held in Singapore). The Board of Governors may choose to delegate to the Executive Directors any of its powers, with some exceptions (such as admitting new members, increasing or decreasing capital stock, suspending members and determining the distribution of the Bank’s net income). The Executive Directors serve on the Board of Directors, which governs and oversees the day-to-day running of the Bank. Executive Directors are the elected or appointed representatives of the Bank’s member governments and work at the Bank’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States (the five largest shareholders) are entitled to appoint an Executive Director while all other member countries are represented by 19 elected Executive Directors. Meetings of the Directors are held once or twice a week.


91

The Bank’s President is selected by the Executive Directors and becomes President of all the five organisations (the IBRD, the IDA, the IFC, the MIGA, and the ICSID). The President’s main function is as chief of the operating staff of the Bank, with full responsibility, under the control of the Executive Directors, for the organisation, appointment and dismissal of Bank officers and staff. It is, according to the Articles of Agreement, a function of the President’s role as head of staff that she/he recruits ‘on as wide a geographical basis as possible’ (Article V, World Bank 1989). According to convention, the President is a national of the largest shareholder, the United States. Chairing the meetings of the Board of Directors, the President retains responsibility for the overall running of the Bank. The President’s only voting power is in the case of an equal division (in practice, however, votes are rarely cast at either the Board of Governors or Directors, with ‘consensus’ more often reached) and their tenure may be terminated whenever the Executive Directors so decide. There exists some debate as to the substantive role of the President in the politics of the Bank. Some argue that the President is little more than a figurehead; others point to instances where particularly charismatic leaders have almost single-handed dictated the Bank’s development agenda. One interviewee commented that the Bank’s President, like any other CEO, will necessarily ‘shape’ the institution in some form. In this sense, Robert McNamara and James Wolfensohn are often considered particularly influential figures in Bank history, not least for their focus on issues of so-called ‘equity’. It was equally clear at interviewing that the President’s role is considered much more than as a figurehead among Bank staff themselves, with several staff raising concerns for the extent and content of Paul Wolfowitz’s allegiance to the Bush (Jnr.) administration.2 As another interviewee commented, it took only 18 months for James Wolfensohn to remove the Bank’s serving Vice Presidents and instigate a management regime closer to his own interests. Submitting to a certain level of ‘checks and balances’ within the organisation itself, the President does, however, enjoy a certain degree of power and persuasion in the day-to-day operations of the Bank, especially in the areas of budget-making and resource allocation (IvWB2 2005), making them a significant (if not omnipotent) figure in Bank politics. Wolfensohn, who remained widely popular throughout his tenure, is particularly credited as the instigator of positive change at the Bank. It would, nonetheless, be a mistake to read Presidents’ speeches as unequivocal indicators of

92


the Bank’s intent, not least since Bank Presidents are apt always to ‘say the right thing’ (IvWB5 2005). Structurally and thematically, the Bank is organised into: • ‘Regional Vice Presidencies’: ‘Africa’ (AFR); ‘East Asia and Pacific’ (EAP); ‘Europe and Central Asia’ (ECA); ‘Latin America and the Caribbean’ (LCR); ‘Middle East and North Africa’ (MNA); and ‘South Asia’ (SAR). • ‘Network Vice Presidencies’, which focus on particular regions or sectors of interest. Vice Presidents act as the principal managers of the Bank in its matrix structure. These Vice Presidential Units, more commonly referred to as ‘networks’, constitute a substantial proportion of policy-making activities, and are the Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development Network (ESSD), the Financial Sector Network (FSE), the Human Development Network (HDN), the Infrastructure Network (INFR), the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network (PREM), the Operations Policy and Country Services Network (OPCS), and the Private Sector Development Network (PSD). • ‘Other Vice Presidencies’, which are made up by: ‘Chief Financial Officer’; ‘Controller’; ‘Corporate Secretariat’, ‘Development Economics’, ‘External Affairs and UN Affairs’, including the Vice President, Europe; ‘General Services’; ‘Human Resources’; ‘Information Solutions Group’; ‘Legal’; ‘Concessional Finance and Global Partnerships’; ‘Strategy and Resource Management’; ‘Treasury’, and; ‘World Bank Institute’. • ‘Other Major Units’, which are ‘Executive Directors and Alternates’; ‘Executive Directors and Alternates’; ‘Institutional Integrity’; ‘Internal Auditing’; ‘Office of the President’, and; ‘Operations Evaluation’. In 1996, Wolfensohn announced the ‘Knowledge Bank Matrix Organizational Structure’. Herein, the Bank is organised according to a matrix of sectors (the network-arranged thematic content of Bank policy-making) and regions (the country-specific work), such that regional and network vice presidencies intersect. Hence, although there is a core Gender Unit situated in the PREM Network, gender specialists work both from here, in Sector Units (such as in Post-Conflict Reconstruction, situated in the ESSD Network) and in Country Offices. World Bank Country Offices operate in just over 100 member countries and employ approximately 3000 staff. These offices are organised according to regional groupings, containing country units and offices, each answerable to a ‘Country Director’. The Europe and Central Asia


93

region, for example, contains nine units and/or offices, East Asia and the Pacific six offices. A majority of, but not all, Country Directors are located within the countries they work on. According to Bank statistics, 55 per cent of staff now works in the six regions, 15 per cent in the Bank’s ‘anchor units’ (e.g. PREM) and the remaining 30 per cent work in finance, administrative and corporate units. Thirty two per cent of Bank staff are based in country offices, and of these 28 per cent are hired locally (World Bank 2004a). Although countries still individually supply Governors and Directors, and their alternates, they are not represented at an individual level in Bank country groupings: the ‘Africa Region’, for example, consists of a Vice President in charge of specific ‘country departments’, where Angola and Mozambique constitute, for example, one country department. Country offices first appeared under Wolfensohn’s leadership as part of a drive to decentralise the Bank and situate it more firmly, as one interviewee commented, as a ‘development’ institution working directly among the people it is designing policy for (IvWB2 2005). Partly a response to the global debt crisis, the decentralisation of the Bank reflected a fundamental component of the shift in Bank discourse away from obviously dictatorial development planning to a subtler rhetoric of country ‘ownership’ and ‘knowledge sharing’. Country offices are technically bound by the same discursive strictures as units within the Bank’s headquarters. All Bank projects and procedures must adhere to Bank ‘operational policies’ as laid out in the Bank’s ‘Operation Manual’, which details good practice guidelines, operational directives and financial practices. This is not to say, however, that country offices do not enjoy considerable relative autonomy in the conduct of their day-to-day affairs. As one interviewee commented, the decision to decentralise has created a certain level of ‘disconnect’ between the Bank’s centre, in Washington, D.C., and the ‘countries’, specifically the country offices. Country offices enjoy absolute control over their own budgets and, as this interviewee commented, operate highly independently of Washington, with a significant say over how they conduct operations; that is, the ‘ability to pretty much do as they please’ (IvWB2 2005).

Evaluation and accountability The Bank is committed to evaluating the results of its lending programmes ‘in terms of how they impact on people and their needs, rather than by measuring input levels’ (http://web.worldbank.org). The

94


primary mechanisms for so doing are through project and country evaluations (which focus on the effectiveness of individual projects) and reviews (intended to examine the Bank’s work in individual countries and/or economic or social sectors of operation). Arguably the most significant independent mechanism of Bank accountability, the Bank’s Inspection Panel is composed of three members who are appointed by the Board of Directors for periods of five years. First established in 1993 in response to significant pressures over environmental policies and projects, the purpose of the Inspection Panel is [T]o address the concerns of the people who may be affected by Bank projects and to ensure that the Bank adheres to its operational policies and procedures during design, preparation and implementation phases of projects. (http://web.worldbank.org) Member countries may register direct grievances concerning the effects of Bank non-compliance with its own operational policies and procedures. To be eligible to request an investigation, claimants must be those who are directly affected or a local representative acting explicitly on their behalf, and although their names are not revealed to the Bank, they are to the panel (claimants would therefore need to have some faith in the trustworthiness of the panel). To date, 46 requests for inspection have been noted, commencing in 1994 with the Arun III project in Nepal, up to April 2007 and investigation of Albania’s ‘Power Sector Generation and Restructuring Project’. According to Fox, the Bank’s Inspection Panel is, among the multilateral development banks, ‘by far the most developed accountability mechanism allowing citizen access’ (2002: 131–132). It is worth noting, however, that the Inspection Panel holds the Bank accountable only to its own operational policies and procedures. Although independent of the Bank, the Panel cannot hold the Bank accountable beyond compliance with its own principles: it does not therefore constitute a means of challenging the basic viability of these policies and procedures. The Bank’s Independent Evaluation Group (IEG), known until 2005 as the Operations Evaluation Department (OED), is the key mechanism of post hoc evaluation. By early 1972, the US Congress and its audit arm, the US General Accounting Office (GAO), had begun to press for evaluations from the Bank, or had commenced undertaking them on its own. The IEG was established in 1973, as a consequence, under very


95

similar criteria for assessment to that of the GAO, particularly with regard to ‘effectiveness’, or the ‘extent to which objectives fulfilled’, ‘efficiency’, regarded as cost/benefit analysis, and ‘economy’, or the ‘reasonableness of unit costs’ (World Bank 2003a). Extensive consultation was undertaken with the US government (here a defining influence on Bank processes) regarding the constitutional position of the operations evaluation service within the Bank. The IEG reports are submitted through the Board of Directors, who examine, debate and transmit each report to member governments. Like the Inspection Panel an independent mechanism, the IEG does not, unlike the Inspection Panel, intervene during the policy implementation process itself. In the Bank’s own words, the IEG aims to assess ‘what works, and what does not’, ‘how a borrower plans to run and maintain a project’ and ‘the lasting contribution of the Bank to a country’s overall development’. ‘Objectivity’ and ‘accountability’ are the intended goals of evaluation (http://web.worldbank.org). The Bank’s Quality Assurance Group conducts assessments of the quality of Bank projects and analytical work by peer review panels of senior staff, professionals from other development agencies, think tanks, universities and CSOs. The Group then provides feedback to task teams and their managers at the approval and implementation stage of a project. In terms of public access and evaluation, the Bank’s ‘Policy on Disclosure of Information’ (World Bank 2002c) nominates a fairly large amount of its work as open for public scrutiny. Certain, important, exceptions do, however, apply:

• The proceedings of the Board of Executive Directors and its committees, which remain confidential unless otherwise approved by the Board; • Documents stipulated as confidential by individual sources (such as country governments), even limiting access within the Bank; • Documents that contain ‘proprietary information’, such as trade secrets or pricing information, are always unavailable unless otherwise stipulated by the owner of such information; • Legal information, information concerning credit ratings, country credit-worthiness and supervision may not be disclosed; • Information concerning the Bank’s operations with other international organisations, bilateral aid agencies, private commercial banks and institutions is not made available;

96


• Internal documents and memoranda written by Executive Directors, their Alternates, Senior Advisors, the President, and by Bank staff to colleagues, supervisors or subordinates are not publicly available; • Estimates of future borrowings (available to the Bank’s underwriters), its financial forecasts, data on individual investment decisions and credit assessments are not publicly available; • The individual records and personal medical information of Executive Directors and their Alternates and Advisors, of the President of the Bank, and of Bank staff, as well as proceedings of internal appeal mechanisms and investigations, are not disclosed outside the Bank, except to the extent permitted by the Staff Rules; • Some information may be precluded from public availability on an ad hoc basis when, because of its content, wording, or timing, disclosure would be detrimental to the interests of the Bank, a member country, or Bank staff. Gaining access to the Bank’s archives can be a particularly complex and time-consuming process, despite Bank claims that the ‘sharing of information is essential for sustainable development’. Members of the public may access the Bank’s archives from Washington, D.C., having submitted themselves to ‘disclosure review’ by the Bank. Disclosure review occurs after the proposed researcher submits an ‘External Registration Report’ (detailing personal details, category of proposed research and a description of research topic) and a ‘World Bank Researcher Agreement on Special Access’. The disclosure review process itself can take up to eight weeks, thus potential researchers need to have identified through the Archives Catalogue the exact documents they wish to consult prior to access being granted. ‘Correspondence files’ (letters, memos and so on) are not open to general access and require an application for special access. This requires the researcher to submit their research products, whether written materials (manuscripts of articles, books, theses, dissertations) or proposed texts of speeches, to the Bank for review and approval. Where information required is specific to a country, permission must be granted from the country office concerned, regardless of how old the information is, which may delay the process further. Although the Bank may have ‘expanded the information that it makes available to the public’ since 1994, prohibitive restrictions make it unlikely that the ‘public’ will ever know or access the contents of its Archives.


97

The role and influence of US Congress and Treasury The Bank was, at its inception in 1944, ‘very much a US creation’, with US nationals comprising much of its early leadership and staff and with the US also providing most of its capital. For at least the first ten years of its existence, the Bank’s only useable subscribed component was the US subscription, since the deposit was in dollars and 85 per cent of the Bank’s bonds denominated in US dollars and sold on Wall Street (Peet 2003: 113). As stated in the Bank’s Articles, all authorised capital must be measured in US dollars and although members may pay a percentage of their shares in their own currencies, 2 per cent must always be in gold or US dollars. When asked, most of the staff interviewed here acknowledged that the US holds some influence over the Bank’s work and also over its shareholders. Although its ‘American’ culture may have to some extent dissipated due to decentralisation, the Bank remains an ‘American institution’, with both Bush (Snr.) and Clinton administrations noted as particularly willing to interfere in Bank policy-making. The exact nature of this influence remains, however, a contentious issue, both within and outside the Bank. One senior member of staff, for example, commented that the United States did, for a time, pressure the Bank for more work on the private sector: less a case of practically applied persuasion and/or threat than a pressure that was ‘intellectually-based’ and therefore a case of cultural change within the Bank (IvWB3 2005). Most staff would, of course, take particular offence at the idea that the Bank can be described as simply a ‘tool’ of US federal institutions (an overly simplistic, and thus unfair, criticism, presenting as one interviewee commented, a caricature of both the Bank and its staff). US dominance is nevertheless not only crucial to understanding the establishment and early development of the Bank, but is also key to understanding Bank policy-making during the 1980s and 1990s. Opinions concerning the role of the United States, Bøås and McNeill argue, are divided into two particular camps. The first, apparently held by many members of US Congress, maintains that the United States has too little influence on the Bank, and that, given the importance of the US market and resources, the Bank is far too unresponsive and unrepresentative of US concerns. The second, opposite view, held perhaps more by some Bank staff and many outsiders, is that the Bank is effectively run by and answerable to the United States, which both compromises its integrity as an institution devoted to the developing world and opens the Bank to questions of political and motivational bias. Bøås

98


and McNeill defend neither of these opposite positions and assert instead that ‘the US influence on the World Bank is important, but not absolute’ (2003: 23). Prior to the establishment of country offices, the Bank was widely considered a heavily top-down institution, designed, in essence, from and for ‘the Capitol’ (IvWB3 2005). Although the Bank has modified in both form and function since inauguration, many, not least a number of its member countries, retain this view. Certainly, at least one interviewee believed that the Bank is too American in approach and mindset, and that with such a high percentage of US-educated staff, there exists very often too much agreement (ibid). A distinctly American feel certainly guides the Bank’s Charter and guiding principles, and, as Kapur notes, the extent to which the Bank consults with US-based CSOs should not be underestimated. Neither should we discount the ‘microgeography’ of the Bank’s location, since the institution remains highly visible to the US legislative branch, where ‘physical proximity makes it easier for the US policy community to engage and thereby influence the Bank’ (Kapur 2002: 66). The Bank, in many way, is financially beholden to the United States, directly, through US capital contributions and, indirectly, through access to US financial markets (ibid: 63–64). The effects of the Bank’s locational influence are of course debatable, since such an argument implies a fairly unproblematic causal link between the (US) training of many staff members and the Bank’s Washington location as influential on policy-making. This ignores that many staff, whether US nationals or not, can embody and evince more than a simple ‘American mindset’. The existence of country offices, which are often run independently to Washington, also problematises any representation of the Bank as a purely American institution. Thus, arguments concerning the role of the United States are strongly and widely contested. Less contested perhaps is the argument that US Congress and the US Treasury have significantly affected the form that Bank policy has assumed. Indeed, some of the most successful methods of networks influencing the Bank have been through US Congress (Park 2005: 128). Scholars have also pointed to the significance of US Congress’s responses to pressures from transnational environment advocacy networks to rethink particularly damaging regional projects. Both Peet and Park point to the case of the Bank’s Polonoroeste project in Brazil in 1982 as evidence of a significant shift in both Bank actions and rhetoric. The Polonoroeste project generated such negative publicity, especially on US television and from environmental non-governmental organisations


99

(NGOs), that US Congress threatened to reduce and even withdraw funding, becoming the first instance that a Bank loan was opposed by an Executive Director, instructed by US Secretary Baker, on environmental grounds. The Narmada Sadar Sarovar project that followed then became ‘the first campaign to actively stop Bank lending to a country on environmental grounds’ (ibid: 125). Under huge external pressure, the Bank allowed the first independent commission investigation of its institutional practices, culminating, in 1993, with the establishment of a permanent independent Inspection Panel (the final decision on whether to start an inquiry remains with the Board of Governors). Two years later, in 1995 and following opposition from USAID and the Bank’s US Executive Director, Bank President James Wolfensohn overruled Bank management to cancel the Arun III project in Nepal outright.

Neoliberalism and the organisational culture of the World Bank Culturally and organisationally, the Bank today is certainly more diverse than at inauguration and, since decentralisation, more representative of the nationalities of its member governments. Frequently referred to as somewhat ‘chaotic’ in organisation (which was considered representative of a certain cultural eclecticism within the Bank), staff tended to compare the organisational culture of the Bank to that of the IMF, which was described as highly controlled and somewhat stifled. Staffing and organisational culture There is an argument to be made, however much more diverse the staff culture of the Bank is today, that the cognitive framework of the Bank remains resoundingly Anglo-American. As one interviewee commented, the Bank’s rationality is nothing if not ‘Anglo-Saxon’ (IvWB3 2005), embodying an English-speaking rationality heavily influenced by Western culture. Few staff disagreed that both the IMF and the Bank are, in nature, quite exclusionary bureaucracies, since most staff, if not Western nationals themselves, have undertaken higher education in one of the major Northern hemisphere universities. Although the IMF was much more frequently described in interviews as an elite endeavour, staffed by trained economists (usually men) operating limited perspectives on the world, what was, at interview, considered in the IMF a sign of its bureaucratic intractability became in some staff’s descriptions of the Bank a symbol of technical expertise.

100


Eighty per cent of those working in the Social Development Sector, for example, possess PhDs. This is considered less a sign of academic elitism than of staff levels of technical competence and intellectual proficiency. As one senior member of Bank staff commented, the Bank is, culturally and bureaucratically, every inch the ‘technocratic organisation’ (IvWB1 2005), composed of technically expert staff but entirely excluded from the same democratic considerations, such as electability and accountability, found in the government institutions of liberal democracies. Although there are indeed both more women and more foreign nationals working at the Bank than ever before, as in most Western corporations, very few women occupy senior management positions, which remain the preserve of White, Europe- or US-educated males. Differences in the perceived bureaucratic cultures of the IMF and the Bank, quite possibly arise, as one interviewee commented, in large part, from the Bank’s more concerted efforts at favourable selfpresentation, publicity and public relations: this does not escape that the Bank is considerably less diverse than it would have us believe. The Bank, sometimes described as ‘at the cutting edge of development thinking’, is largely staffed by people who are indeed personally committed to reducing world poverty. In spite of IEG/OED reports that highlight as particular problems the overburdening and overworking of Bank staff, most interviewees perceived high levels of job satisfaction among staff. Staff surveys carried out internally have, however, frequently pointed to the overburdening of staff, with a significant majority (29 per cent) claiming to have experienced ill-health from work pressures. Budgetary and loan pressures, plus incentive problems, are frequently noted as hampering both the quantity and the quality of work achievable. As a systemic issue, the question of ‘boundaries’ often arises, since individual members of staff are answerable in the first instance to their managers, and not necessarily likely to achieve recommendation through work that is outside their principal remit. This is a particular problem for gender-inspired work, since there exist no formal incentives, and very few informal ones, to encourage Bank staff to include gender, and time constraints make it unlikely that they will seek to burden themselves with extra work. The Bank is certainly constrained structurally in the kind of work it produces by several factors, as noted by a senior Bank manager. First, the Bank is ‘stretched’ as an organisation, with a remit and mandate that effectively covers the entirety of development politics. This also makes cross-sectoral work more difficult. Secondly, budgets are allocated by unit, with little incentive for managers responsible for those budgets to

Analysing the World Bank 101

coordinate work across sectoral boundaries to any great extent. Thirdly, the instigation of cross-boundary work is dependent upon the drive of key individuals. Although some are keen to conduct this kind of work, others are less so.

Social research, macroeconomics and the ‘Economist Mindset’ The bureaucratic culture of the Bank is influenced by what can be termed a high degree of sectoral fragmentation. This is evidenced through, for example, divergences between and lack of coordination across the Bank’s different types of sectoral work. As mentioned previously, it also remains largely incumbent on the personality of individual members of staff to initiate and sustain the cross-fertilisation of ideas and research. Thus, an often-cited reason for the lack of cross-sectoral work is the significant pressures and time constraints that Bank staff experience in carrying out their work. A particularly clear example of the fragmented organisation culture of the Bank is the divide between those working in the Bank’s core ‘economic’ sectors (e.g. the FSE and PSD and a large proportion of the PREM) and those working in the thus-named ‘social’ sectors (e.g. the Environment and Socially Sustainable Network). A fundamental antagonism between the Bank’s ‘number crunchers’ and its social scientists and researchers, the divide is essentially an academic one, but also a highly powerful, quasi-theological distinction between differing conceptualisations of the way things are. Thus, the economists cluster to one side (with their models, mathematical equations and ‘one reality’ approach to the world), while the social scientists apparently struggle for a more ‘bottom-up’, inclusive and accessible approach to development. Sometimes described as a division between the social and the ‘nonsocial’ sectors, this division was also described at interview as one between the economists and the ‘non-economists’. As one senior (Economics-trained) member of staff commented, those working in the social development sectors are likely to be either social or political scientists, working within and from ‘a plethora of methods’. Political science and sociology are, they argued, essentially ‘unscientific’, built not around primary paradigms but to be spaces where ‘everything goes’ (IvWB8 2005). This same interviewee suggested that the economics sector can be further disaggregated according to a ‘macroeconomist’ and ‘microeconomist’ distinction, with macroeconomists working on those issues more closely related to IMF ‘technical’ enquiry and the microeconomists working more extensively on social policy (e.g. deploying

102


economics to ‘determine’ social issues such as labour supply or labour market participation). Certainly, many social sector staff do consider themselves economists in the broadest sense and have at some point Economics in a Western institution of higher education. That they work now on issues that they themselves perceive as broadly uneconomistic does not mean that they do not approach this work through economics-structured thinking (i.e., based on a methodology of formulating an hypothesis, verifying that hypothesis and designing and implementing policy according to that hypothesis. This would be ‘evidence-based’ policy-making in the sense that the policy itself is based on the evidence generated by the researcher). Although not ‘immune to questioning at the limits of utilitarian thinking’ (ibid), the point here is that, for many (if not all) Bank staff, the ‘standard economics approach’ is enough. This kind of thinking, of course, presents a view of most Bank staff as, primarily, different types of economist: it is not then clear who the ‘non-economists’ actually are. It does reveal, however, the ambiguously hierarchical nature of Bank culture and policy-making, not least since the Bank openly defines itself, first and foremost, in ‘economic’ terms as ‘a vital source of financial and technical assistance to developing countries’: creating, for example, ‘the institutional foundations for effective markets’; ‘promoting open and competitive markets’ and supporting social safety nets with market-based instruments’ (http:// web.worldbank.org). Through a discourse predicated on the viability of economic means of increasing growth, market participation and appropriate institutional forms, the Bank tacitly, but clearly, asserts the primacy of the ‘science’ of its economic enquiry over the ‘unscientific’ and difficult to pin down social components of its research and operations.

The changing nature of Bank discourse The final section of this chapter looks at two particular points related to the changing nature of Bank discourse. First, we will consider the Bank’s role in embedding and perpetuating neoliberal development strategy and how this might relate to a so-called ‘alternative’ development discourse. Secondly, we will look more closely at a specific example of shifting Bank discourse, examining the development of ‘post-conditionality’ rhetoric in Bank discourse. The Bank and the global embedding of neoliberalism It is in claiming to ‘ensure development effectiveness’ and ‘more sustainable outcomes’ that the Bank plays its critical role in the global


embedding of neoliberalism, since these policies rely entirely on the embedding of the market and the processes, institutions and mechanisms of marketisation. A discourse of ‘good governance’, of ‘empowerment’ and of enabling and encouraging the poor to participate in their own poverty alleviation signals the Bank’s increasing focus on issues of equity, gender inequality and social development, and shows that, as Bedford describes, the Bank’s answers to development ‘problems’ have changed significantly in recent years (2005: 297). This is less, however, an ‘alternative’ discourse of development than a reformulation of earlier conceptualisations of marketisation, privatisation, flexibilisation and/or deregulation. The Bank’s increasing focus on issues of equity, gender inequality and social development simply shifts the focus to an assumed equation between economic growth and social development. Where once economic growth was assumed to always precede poverty reduction, increasingly the Bank focuses its efforts on improving societal inequalities in order to ‘sustain’ growth. Thus, the Bank remains committed to policies designed to sediment an economic discourse of marketisation, privatisation, flexibilisation and deregulation, making it in this analysis a ‘neoliberal’ institution embodying a ‘neoliberalism’ with a less market triumphalist, and more poverty ‘enlightened’, edge. An increasing focus, for example, on ‘shared growth’ might imply a model of development more representatively calculated than through aggregate measures of economic development and might even suggest the introduction of a broader definition of ‘development’ itself. This is not, however, the case in Bank discourse. The Bank’s concern for ‘reducing poverty’ is undoubtedly sincere, with most Bank staff entirely committed to improving the living standards of the world’s poorest people. Throughout Bank discourse, however, growth, ‘shared’ or not, denotes only economic growth, and ‘shared growth’ refers simply to a more distributively equal division of capital: that is, more growth but with more ‘sharing’ of that growth. In this sense, ‘shared growth’ represents a reaffirmation of, not challenge to, neoliberal macroeconomic rationality. ‘Equity’ and ‘social equality’ thus make sense only in terms of delivering ‘shared growth’ and are effectively reduced to the distribution of material wealth within a society. The Bank’s approach to Africa, for example, has long been to substitute economic growth for ‘development’ (and vice versa), so that both ‘growth’ and ‘development’ are devoid of meaning without the signifying ‘economic’. Some at the Bank have argued, and still do, that as far as ‘development’ is concerned growth should always come first: that is, that ‘social’ issues of equity, participation and representation

104


are essentially secondary to the sound footing of macroeconomic fundamentals. The Bank’s shift towards a governance-based discourse has, however, moved once exterior ‘social’ concerns closer to the heart of the instrumentalist case for economic growth. ‘Shared growth’ retains legibility in Bank discourse because its use does not challenge the centrality of ‘development’ as economic growth, and refers, above all, to an end result of increased GDP. Although the Africa Action Plan professes to ensure that ‘the poor’ benefit from a ‘shared growth agenda’, ‘development’ remains to be gauged only through measurements of economic growth. The economism of the Bank’s ‘governance’ discourse remains clear, although the ‘good governance’ rhetoric of empowerment, partnership and knowledge sharing obscures the ways in which the Bank has been able to sediment its neoliberalism, a macroeconomic rationality of economic growth above all else, into the fundamentals of everyday, every level, development practice and planning. As Sylvester comments, contemporary development thinking is less characteristic of any marked division between ‘mainstream’ and ‘alternative’ development than one between two forms of mainstream development, that is, between human development and structural adjustment. As she argues, [E]ven the neoliberal wing of the mainstream recognises the importance of social development funds within structural adjustment packages, and all programmes nod towards the elimination of poverty. (Sylvester 1999: 709–721) This point is such an important one because the mainstreaming of ‘alternative’ development may have ‘opened’ the Bank to those social concerns that can be economically quantified, but it has also legitimised the Bank’s closure to those considerations that fail to construct a robust enough ‘business case’ for their inclusion on the agenda. This is particularly true of the Bank’s incursions into ‘gender’ as a realm of social inquiry, on which I will go into detail in the next chapter. The Bank thus finds itself in something of a reflexivist dilemma with regards to its poverty mandated, social development agenda. While Western economic rationality remains the Bank’s modus operandi, the Bank takes great pains to highlight its concern for valuing local knowledge and forging ‘partnerships’ with the developing world. This may be a commendable discursive shift, but it is a superficial one, since there exists a point at which the Bank is noticeably complacent, ascribing


itself a position of ‘expertise’ against the unreconstructed simplicity of the ‘poor’. As Sylvester points out, the actual lines between ‘indigenous’ and ‘foreign’ knowledge have long been effectively blurred by the longstanding encroachments of the neoliberal world into the mindsets, policies and practices of ‘developing’ countries. The Bank would seem not to recognise this, and in so doing maintains an artificial, but highly effective, distance ‘between the complex experts and the presumably less complex and thus purer subjects of development’ (Sylvester 1999: 703–721). Although it would be a mistake to confuse contemporary articulations of neoliberalism with the hyper-aggression of 1980s ‘Washington Consensus’ neoliberalism, Bank discourse remains similarly focused on ‘Washington Consensus’ assumptions of marketisation, privatisation, flexibilisation and/or deregulation. The Bank defines itself as promoting ‘growth’ in poor countries, ‘to create jobs and to empower poor people’ (World Bank 2005a). The shift to ‘empowerment’ represents a change in Bank discourse and a move beyond Washington Consensus rationality, but it is a discursive shift that remains as founded in assumptions of individual rationality and the centrality of the market as earlier Washington Consensus discourse. Although the Bank today looks more for the ‘answers’ to alleviating poverty in the arena of social development, Bank discourse shows little divergence from the ever-strong mantra of trade equals growth equals development. Operating a strictly neoliberal and ‘egalitarian’ discourse, the Bank is certainly committed to policies designed to sediment a discourse of marketisation, privatisation, flexibilisation and deregulation, which makes it in this analysis a ‘neoliberal’ institution. This is not, however, to say that the term ‘neoliberal’ is not a difficult one for the Bank to come to terms with, since it would much rather appear the ‘people-centred’, poverty-orientated champion of alternative development that it claims to be. ‘Neoliberalism’ thus assumes a fuzzy place in Bank discourse and, for all its associations with aggressive privatisation and deregulation, is not a category that many Bank staff would apply to their work and working practices. Although most staff, when asked, would define their understanding of ‘social development’ directly in relation to neoliberal conceptualisations of the market as a socially distributive mechanism and would agree that the Bank is committed to a politics of marketisation, the lack of overt mention of neoliberalism or its assumptions does not detract from the neoliberalism of the Bank’s developmental agenda. In signalling an interest in extending itself into areas of ‘social equity’ and ‘social development’, the Bank ensures that it holds some of the

106


cards in areas that had once been remote. The Bank’s arrival, for example, at gender as a ‘core development issue’ (e.g. King and Mason 2001) could appear a quite radical admission that the neoliberal conviction in the distance between economic science and values is, in fact, flawed. On the other hand, however, the selective and strategic incorporation of gender also blunts the possibilities for fundamental change. There can, of course, be no guarantee that an international financial regime will remain relatively ‘stable’, nor that neoliberalism will exert such hegemonic dominance in the future: crises and challenges posed to the Bank, particularly the fierce financial ‘tests’ of the 1990s in Europe, Asia and Latin America, have met with a new discourse tempered by its apparent ‘moderation’. The Bank’s neoliberalism has mutated, and so too its approach to financial regulation, through a process of the reinvigoration, reincorporation and ‘re-embedding’ of the core goals of marketisation and financial liberalisation. Bank discourse thus continues to seek to extend and deepen the role of the market in regulation, inducing developing countries to conform to the neoliberal model (through more overt policing, such as that found in Financial Sector Assessment Programs, or by setting internationally agreed standards and codes). Under the banner of transparency, advocates of a new financial architecture are actually proposing a radically new kind of embedded liberalism – one that seeks to stabilise financial liberalisation by imposing new domestic norms and institutions, effectively embedding finance from the top-down. (Best 2003: 373) ‘Conditionality’ and ‘Post-Conditionality’ discourse The subject of ‘conditionality’ appears at regular intervals in current Bank debates and assessments and represents an interesting example of a particular shift in governance-centred Bank discourse (Griffin 2006: 577). Simultaneous to a wave of ‘partnership’, ‘knowledge-sharing’ and ‘country-ownership’ rhetoric, the Bank has quite subtly shifted the criteria by which it enforces development. It has, I argue, done this through what is best described as a politics of ‘post-conditionality’. This politics is, as Harrison illustrates, both ‘more interventionist and less starkly coercive’ than earlier, first generation neoliberal reform (2004: 71). As defined by the Bank, ‘conditionality’ requires that to receive funding countries maintain ‘an adequate macroeconomic framework’, implement their ‘overall program in a manner satisfactory to the Bank’ and comply ‘with the policy and institutional actions that are deemed


critical for the implementation and expected results of the supported program’ (World Bank 2005a: i). The Bank argues, specifically, that its approach to conditionality is now far more ‘flexible’ and is based on ‘capacity building’ (ibid). By discursively reordering the tropes around which the Bank defines its conditionality requirements, the Bank has ensured that, while the actual use of conditions ‘has declined sharply over the past decade’, its encroachment into the day-to-day governance of developing countries, described by the Bank as ‘the use of indicative actions describing the overall government program’ (ibid), has actually increased. Thus, although the number of conditions per Bank loan has decreased in all country groups over the last ten years, in the same period the number of ‘benchmarks’ (used to ‘describe the contents and results of the government’s program in areas monitored by the Bank’) has increased for lower income countries sevenfold (World Bank 2005b). ‘Benchmarks’ represent a particular ‘governance’-orientated trope in Bank discourse, and are highly representative of the Bank’s desire to be seen as a partnership fostering multilateral. Benchmarks are not, according to the Bank, legal conditions for the disbursement of loans, and cannot delay Bank disbursements if they are not adhered to. They are, however, considered by many countries to ‘define the focus of the Bank’s policy involvement’ (ibid). The Bank presently makes disbursements to 140 countries, a practice that involves most of the world’s population. Consistently describing itself as a centre of development ‘expertise’ for even those countries with less need of the loans it issues, it is more and more the case, however, that any monopoly the Bank might once have been thought to hold on development financing is increasingly being challenged by an international financial market that is providing considerable competition for multilateral institutions. As a member of staff at the Inter-American Development Bank commented, one of the most important issues faced by the modern multilateral institution is that it simply may not be competitive enough for its more ‘developed’ developing clients, especially given that the international financial markets are increasingly better placed to offer good interest rates and flexible repayment schedules (IvIADB9 2005). One major consequence of this is that, for a multilateral Bank to remain attractive to clients who are increasingly looking elsewhere for funding, the necessity of remaining competitive requires that the Bank reduce levels and criteria of ‘conditionality’. Only those countries that present much higher levels of risk on the international financial markets will necessarily depend on multilateral institutions.

108


Twenty nine countries constitute what the Bank terms ‘Low Income Countries Under Stress’ (LICUS) and make up the lowest proportion of gross national income (GNI) of any Bank country grouping. Of these, 20 are Sub-Saharan African countries, which experienced, during the year 2004, a rise in the number of conditions on their disbursements. This is compared to the situation in ‘core IBRD’ countries (representing the second highest GNI, after ‘Investment Grade IBRD’ countries such as Croatia and South Africa), where the number of conditions has more than halved since 2000. Even more noticeable, however, is the major increase in benchmarks for LICUS countries, from none in 2000 to 41 in 2005. This compares, for example, to five benchmarks for the Latin America and Caribbean region of the Bank in 2005. So, while the actual levels of Bank ‘conditions’ are fairly constant for all Bank regions (between 11 and 15), they are considerably lower than non-binding benchmark levels. Not only is this trend highly indicative of the Bank’s shift in rhetoric towards the supposedly ‘non-coercive’ discourse of post-conditionality and ‘governance’, it is complemented by particular trends in the type of areas, or ‘themes’, where conditions and benchmarks are increasingly being set. Such themes are no less revealing in their relation to the embedding of the Bank’s ‘post-conditionality’ governance discourse. For example, the only ‘theme’ to have increased overall between the 1980s and 2005 in its share of conditions is ‘public sector governance’ (World Bank 2005b). The next significant area of conditionality is in the ‘social sector’, which the Bank claims is a result of its focus on ‘pro-poor issues of social protection, education, and health sector reforms’. Such refocusing has been at the particular expense of what the Bank refers to as ‘short-term macroeconomic programs’, such as economic management, the environment and rural and urban development. Thus, a widening of the Bank’s more abstract governance scope conceals the extent to which the Bank is decreasing conditionality in all policy-based areas of lending.

Summary The Bank’s ‘Gender Mainstreaming Strategy’ is not the first time that the Bank has proclaimed a commitment to social issues. Bergeron cites a similar socially motivated shift under Robert McNamara’s leadership in the 1970s (2003: 397–419). This period is most notable, however, for the temporary nature of this shift (with ‘Washington Consensus’ financial discourse dominating Bank policy-making during the 1980s). Washington Consensus discourse emphasised classical


liberal prescriptions for economic growth, demanding that market forces should be allowed free rein in society and economic globalisation should be encouraged to spread this process across the world (Munck 2003: 495–511). At this time, a number of Least Developed Countries (LDCs) were excessively in debt (especially in Africa and Latin America) and facing declining revenues from primary commodity exports, declining agricultural output, and overall economic stagnation. Specifically market-orientated neoliberal economic policies were widely touted as the most effective path to economic development. Key multilateral institutions, such as the Bank and the IMF, thus emphasised privatisation, deregulation and free trade. Bank discourse today is the offspring of that history: a policy-making agenda that conceptualises basic human needs, quality of life and environmental concerns as potential remedies of market imperfections (and therefore tools of market improvement). As such, the Bank’s contemporary approach continues to maintain the macroeconomic ‘fundamentals’ of individual rationality, competition and economic growth, fundamentals that are so much a common sense in Bank discourse that they are, effectively, beyond discussion. The Bank’s neoliberal discourse has undoubtedly changed, particularly since the early 1990s and the ascendance of post-conditionality, good governance rhetoric. That the answers may have changed is not, however, to suggest that the basic assumptions from which they stem have shifted dramatically, if at all. Transformations in Bank discourse neither challenge the inherent neoliberalism of the Bank’s purpose nor negate the vigour with which the Bank pursues its macroeconomic rationality.


Part II Gender in/and World Bank Policy-Making

Introduction In the first part of this book we looked at the ways in which discourse and gender constitute broad and inclusive approaches to research. Part I also began a consideration of neoliberalism, the global political economy and the role of the World Bank therein. I argued in Chapters 1, 2 and 3 that discourse is both produced by and reproduces social, political and cultural formations, of which the Bank is one example. In this second part, we will examine more closely how World Bank discourse reproduces certain kinds of knowledge about successful human endeavour and how these might be gendered. Gender’s presence in Bank discourse as an ‘advocacy’ issue but also a potential tool of economic growth is problematic, and for many reasons that the following chapters of this book hope to make clear. Neither economic discourses nor the institutions that embody them can stand apart from the prevailing relations of power implicit within them, although they may claim to. The World Bank’s ‘common sense’ and everyday rationality only appear as such through the operation of certain power relations (value hierarchies, meanings, behaviours, assumptions and so on), made ‘real’ and reproduced through the Bank’s discursive modes of production. Bank discourse is centred and disciplined, authorising and regulating the predication, prescription and reproduction of human identity according to culturally specific and gendered norms of successful human behaviour. To borrow Enloe’s argument, there are centres of power and there are also margins, silences and bottom rungs, but none exist without a certain conceptual reliance upon gendered dichotomies (1996: 167–189). Power operates at every level, structural and/or personal, in the words we use and the practices and habits we (knowingly or otherwise) submit ourselves to. It not only takes power and resources to create a centre away from the margins, 111

112

Gender in/and World Bank Policy-Making

it also takes specific discursive and rigorously gendered strategies to maintain and police it. Analysis that focuses specifically on the workings of centred structures exposes gender, or at least what is called ‘gender’ (in terms of Bank discourse, defined in relation to the duality of ‘sex’), to be a product of relations of power. I argue that, within Bank discourse, certain kinds of knowledge presuppose particular definitions of successful human endeavour, which depend on gendered and racialised assumptions of where that success comes from. It is at all times, however, a function of the Bank’s neoliberalism that the gendered foundations from which it regulates the production and formation of the suitably neoliberal human subject remain concealed. The appearance of neutrality on which the Bank’s discourse depends is far from accidental. Neutrality, abstraction and universality are the discursive markers signifying neoliberalism’s authority to influence, in the most intimate ways, every aspect of human social meaning. The reliance on neutrality, abstraction and universality also functions to condone a formal/informal, public/domestic distinction that reduces ‘gender’ to the differences between two sexes. To ignore sex and gender as constitutive of neoliberal discourse is to miss the point that gender identities are located, not just as offshoots of an economic structure, but as defining elements, legitimating certain relationships, behaviours rationalities and activities. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 thus look explicitly at how the World Bank situates and rationalises gender in its neoliberal discourse, from the beginnings of a ‘gender’ methodology (embodied in a ‘Women in Development’ approach largely dictated by Western feminists) to the present day, and an approach supposedly more ‘inclusive’ and wide-ranging in formulation and execution. I will argue in these chapters that the Bank understands and reproduces a politics of development only in terms of the cultural specificity of its discursive assumptions. The Bank therefore makes sense of people according to a discursive heteronormativity that predicates, prescribes and reproduces intelligible bodies according to regulatory, partial and restrictive binaries of sex, gender and productive/reproductive behaviour. I will argue that Bank discourse is only comprehensible if we understand the types of people that it predicates, pre/proscribes and reproduces. Gender here is not an anecdotal part of a global order that is essentially neutral, benevolent and pre-given, but an active process of identity formation and reproduction in a system of global governance whose success depends entirely on making sense of, ordering, regulating and reproducing appropriate and productive human bodies.

4 World Bank Policy-Making (1): Gender in/and the World Bank

World Bank discourse is gendered, not because as an institutional environment the Bank is itself particularly sexist or discriminatory, but because it reproduces gendered identity, meaning and behaviour through the discourse with which it medicates the developing world. Bank discourse is predicated on the attainment of certain, entirely gendered, desirable behaviours, identifications and attributes: the attributes most required in appropriate, active but malleable and responsive market participants are not the abstract qualities of disembodied, raceless, sexless and cultureless individuals but are the result of years of Western hierarchy, regulation, colonisation and conquest. The discourse of the World Bank, and the assumptions (of economic growth, trade, financial stability, suitable and rational behaviour) on which its neoliberalism rests create and locate meaning, representation and identity in particularly gendered ways. These cannot be abstracted from their roots in abstract, separatist and ‘scientific’ discourse. With particular rationalist assumptions naturalising and perpetuating heteronormative regulations of what a person ‘is’ and therefore what that person ‘does’, Bank discourse constitutes an integral and powerful part of the intellectual, policy and practitioner networks underpinning the global expansion of neoliberal ideas. As I will discuss in more detail below, there exist in World Bank discourse two types of gender. There is, first, the gender that the Bank can speak of, appearing in specifically gender-related Bank policies and analyses. There is also, however, a type of gender that the Bank does not address, which resides in the very fundamentals of its economic logic. My purpose here is to analyse how the World Bank reproduces a heteronormative discourse of economic viability through policy interventions that are intrinsically sexualised and (because, in 113

114


Western society, sex only ever carries meaning in relation to perceived ‘gender’) gendered.

Gender in contemporary global governance: from WID to WAD to GAD Before examining the World Bank’s specific, but not unique, approach to gender in development, this first section looks, briefly, at the form and content of gender in development policy-making broadly, from the very beginnings of ‘Women in Development’ (WID) activism to the present day and a supposedly broader remit of a ‘Gender and Development’ (GAD) agenda. The relationship between development, human security and gender has increasingly been recognised in the contemporary ‘good governance’ agenda (Parpart 2007: 207). In large part, this focus has been filtered through a lens of concern for and consideration of ‘women’s issues’. Focusing on the empowerment of women has rarely, however, challenged the nature of (gendered) power in governance per se. Although gender’s perceived role in development practices and policymaking has undergone some key reconfigurations since the heyday of Ester Boserup’s highly influential Women’s Role in Economic Development (1970), while it remains framed within a discourse of ‘good governance’ neoliberalism, gender in official discourse will rarely be considered in and of itself an inherent dimension of neoliberal globalisation and governance in and of themselves. A key issue in late twentieth century ‘good governance’ development discourse and policy-making has been the ability (or not) effectively to countenance ‘social concerns’ in policy measurements, calculations and recommendations. ‘Governance’ in official discourse has been viewed as ‘a gender-free concept, associated with those who run political parties, bureaucracy and the military’ (Parpart 2007: 207). Although gender analysis has not failed to make its mark on development politics, the ‘gendered, complex and fluid nature’ of governance itself remains consistently underexplored in governance discourse (ibid). ‘Gender-equitable’ governance is, Parpart argues, infinitely achievable: the dominance of men in local, national and international structures can be reversed; intimate, but no less important, manifestations of gender hierarchy, marginalisation and power can be challenged and reconfigured; ‘empowerment’ can be reconfigured to involve a broad and encompassing idea of engagement, participation and resistance, not just increased economic productivity and effectiveness (2007:

Gender in/and the World Bank 115

207–210). What a gender perspective on development has perhaps most successfully ingrained in development policy-making is that deprivation, poverty, development and economic restructuring are social processes with multiple dimensions. They cannot, then, be assumed to impact evenly. Those reflective and reasonable enough would, I think, agree that women are not more intrinsically vulnerable than men but might be made so through social circumstance and/or inequality in access to power, resources and life ‘opportunity’. This, of course, would also apply to men not in socially advantageous positions or with little access to life opportunity. As such, gendered disparities in discourse and practice are too important not to consider in their interactions with class, ethnicity, environmental degradation, health and disease in development. The term ‘opportunity’ has, in contemporary global governance, been interpreted within incredibly narrow parameters, defined almost entirely in relation to someone’s access, or lack of, to the neoliberal market. Contemporary development policy-making struggles to conceive of incorporating gender considerations beyond improving women’s access to markets (local and global). Thus, women should be educated to better take advantage of market opportunities; they should receive better healthcare and thereby be fit and strong enough to access market opportunities; they should be sufficiently Westernised and socially ‘empowered’ to prevent men impeding their access to market opportunities. Little work is done, in official development discourse, to encourage non-market-based behaviours and activities or to understand local ‘economies’ not based on assumptions of market rationality, ever-increasing consumption and individual profit (such as indigenous tenure principles, localised and pluralist systems of rights and/or little or no separation of government, community and culture from economic organisation). The instrumentalisation of gender in development policy-making stems, in part, from the effort of (mostly Northern) feminist activists themselves. Southern activists and scholars had, by the late 1980s, already begun discussing the need for a new approach, long before institutions such as the Bank had established the necessity of gender policies and strategies in their work. The period between the 1970s and early 1990s was, for the development community and most of the world, a hugely destabilising, uncertain and unpredictable time: a time of hastily assembled and ill-prepared policy measures, of changing economic and international ‘paradigms’ and massive social upheaval. It was in this period that the role of CSOs and NGOs would expand significantly,

116


effectively altering the balance of voices on the international stage with far-reaching repercussions. Before we go on to look more closely at how this might have played out in terms of gender and development, it would be worth spending a little more time outlining where some of these changes came from and what effects they might have had. The debt crisis and the rise of the Washington Consensus Enormous commercial loans had been advanced to debtor countries by financial centres in the industrial North flush with profit from deregulation and technological change. Looking for new investment opportunities, these centres had turned their attentions to southern LDCs, many of which had resources (particularly oil) that could receive a high price on international markets. Labour was also in these areas, of course, low-cost and many LDCs were deliberately running economic development policies designed to favour foreign investment. The volatility of international markets, however, and the oil crisis in the late 1970s created a ‘debt trap’ for both debtor states and their creditors, with too much being loaned to too many. International banks had nonetheless continued to make additional loans to states with growing debt, in part to provide more resources for economic development but also so that debtor countries could sustain interest payments on earlier loans. This debt continued to grow exponentially, generating a major burden on LDCs but also risking the solvency of the financial institutions involved. At Brazil and Mexico’s announcement (soon followed by Poland) in 1981 that they could no longer service their official debts, the IMF initially assumed the lead role, characterising the crisis as entirely the fault of the debtor nations; a result, according to the IMF, of indebted governments corruption, interventionism, bloated bureaucracies and inefficient, often loss-making state enterprises. The IMF in this period started to operate debt management policies based on economic austerity measures designed to cut back state spending, reschedule debt with commercial banks and initiate new private and public lending. Debtor states were, in essence, simply refinancing existing loans and stretching out their repayment periods. The SAPs came into being and were mobilised by what has since become known as the ‘Washington Consensus’ (Williamson 1990). This ‘consensus’ was centred entirely on the political Washington of the US Congress and senior members of the administration, the technocratic Washington of the international financial institutions and the economic agencies of the US government, the Federal Reserve Board and the think-tanks (such as Williamson’s own, the Institute


for International Economics). The Washington Consensus prescribed certain ‘policy instruments’ as mandatory for developing countries: fiscal discipline, reduced public expenditures, tax reform, trade liberalisation, foreign direct investment and secured property rights, which were stipulated as ‘prudent macroeconomic policies, outward orientation, and free market capitalism’ (Williamson 1990: 18). The lack of perceived alternatives precipitated a rapid and wide uptake of these policies, such that, by 1987, the World Bank had approved 52 structural adjustment and 70 sectoral adjustment loans. During the period 1980–1989, 171 SAPs were introduced in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and a further 57 had been initiated by the end of 1996. It was during this period of ‘structural adjustment’ that the role and prominence in the politics of development of NGOs and CSOs expanded exponentially. Campaigning to elicit reform of the Bank, NGO work in particular offered different research-based inputs to the Bank economic and sector work (O’Brien et al. 2000: 29–30). Generally far more successful in securing recognition in the UN’s social institutions than in multilateral financial institutions, the high-profile UN conferences on Women (particularly Mexico, 1975; Copenhagen, 1980; Nairobi, 1985) brought much needed attention to ‘women’s issues’. Women in development As the slaves, agricultural workers, houseservants, mothers, prostitutes and concubines of the far-flung colonies of Europe, colonized women had to negotiate not only the imbalances of their relations with their own men but also the baroque and violent array of hierarchical rules and restrictions that structured their new relations with imperial men and women. (McClintock 1995: 6) ‘Gender’ first found an explicit presence in the politics of development and global governance during the era of ‘structural adjustment’ as a recognition of the need to ‘help’ poor women. In spite of feminists’ early and tireless attempts to apportion value in social, political and cultural discourse to the category ‘woman’, development theory and practice had remained, throughout the 1950s and 1960s, almost entirely blind to women (Third World and otherwise). Omitted, in terms of their productive labour, from the plans and policies of development experts, colonial authorities and post-war development agencies identified women almost solely in relation to their roles as wives and mothers, restricting policies for women to social welfare concerns such

118


as nutritional education and home economics (sometimes referred to as the ‘welfare approach’). Thus, assumptions were made about men and women’s roles in society in which women’s economic and reproductive labour was consistently ignored in favour of the more highly prized market-productive labour of men. A major and formative influence on WID was the resurgence of the women’s movement in the North during the 1970s and the concerted effort by liberal feminists to get equal rights, employment, equity and citizenship for women on to the political agenda. The liberal feminist approach was therefore critical in determining the language of political strategy used by WID advocates, including a focus on the idea that women’s disadvantages stem from stereotyped customary expectations held by men and internalised by women. Such disadvantages can, in principle, be eliminated by breaking down these stereotypes: for example by giving girls better training and more varied role models, by introducing equal opportunity programmes and antidiscrimination legislation or by ‘freeing’ labour markets (Razavi and Miller 1995: 3). Women’s organisations, especially in North America and western Europe, thus mobilised strongly to demand equal legal rights, expanded access to jobs and other economic resources, a voice in government policies and shared responsibility by men for household work and child care (Razavi and Miller 1995: 2–3). The 1975 World Conference of the International Women’s Year at Mexico City and the United Nations Decade for Women (1976–1985) gave particular expression to these demands and women’s groups began more loudly to challenge ‘trickle down’ theories of development, arguing that the development process was itself contributing to a deterioration of women’s position. Women’s groups in the United States actively lobbied Congressional hearings and began to network with women working in United Nations agencies and academia. The term ‘women in development’ was thus coined, in the early 1970s, on the basis of the experiences of US-based female development professionals (working, e.g., in overseas missions and the like). Formulated around demands for equal rights, employment, equity and citizenship, the liberal feminist approach became the dominant approach to including gender in international development, in large part due to women’s groups’ committed lobbying of US legislature in Washington, D.C. Focused on advancing women’s equality and rights in development, WID proponents constituted the earliest suggestion of a need to engage the ‘untapped’ energies and abilities of poor women. This would later become officially codified in making the so-called


‘business case’ for including gender analysis in neoliberal development strategy. Although this approach entirely excluded any focus on men and the constitution of power in its broadest (productive and repressive) sense, the liberal feminist position became the de facto approach to gender and development. As development theory and policy-making began to integrate women into development and modernisation processes, early governance discourse tended only to reinforce the superiority, authority and expertise of the North and Northern experts. ‘Third World Women’, as a seemingly homogeneous group, were essentially consigned to the realm of unenlightenment, oppression and even backwardness (Marchand and Parpart 1995: 221–243), such that the structures and institutions of the development community defined and circumscribed the lives of Third World women to the realms of ‘underdevelopment’, ‘oppressive traditions’, ‘poverty’ and ‘religious fanaticism’ (see, e.g., Mohanty et al. 1991). Women and development Women and Development’s (WAD) advocates argued that women’s disprivilege was caused less by their exclusion from the development process, than by their inclusion in processes entirely reliant on gendered, class-based and nation-specific divisions of labour and power (ibid: 36). A great deal of scholarly and practical effort went into expounding the unspoken assumptions in economic theory that valued women’s work so little, if at all, such that relations of power within households went entirely unacknowledged in official development discourse. [The WAD] critique is a strong challenge to assumptions made by economic planners because it demonstrates that people will not respond to economic or market signals in a ‘free’, rational way unencumbered by social relations. (O’Brien et al. 2000: 36) Particularly in the context of structural adjustment, feminist critiques in this period revealed the incredibly unequal and uneven impact of economic reform, on both women and men. In many cases, the cutting of state expenditure prevented the development of and sometimes dismantling crucial social welfare nets, which impacted heavily on poor households everywhere. Perhaps even more detrimental was the shift towards reforming the productive economies of developing countries, which emphasised production for the market and export but which

120


did not take into consideration the often fragile relations of labour and power in developing countries (ibid: 37–38). By the time of the Beijing Conference, in 1995, the extent of the damage wrought by structural adjustment combined with WID’s inability to challenge the conceptual framework of economistic and technical development policy had become quite clear. Rather than examine why women had fared less well from development strategies, the WID approach had focused only on how women could better be integrated into ongoing development. WID’s ‘nonconfrontational approach’, which had avoided questioning the sources and nature of women’s subordination and oppression, was rejected in favour of an approach exhibiting a greater commitment to the structural disadvantages faced by women, while deliberately intending to keep the practice of development politics ‘local’, small-scale and individually relevant. Women’s labour had been intentionally undervalued, the WAD framework argued, as part of the global gendered division of labour and power. DAWN (Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era), established in 1984, sought to ‘endow women’s work with value in spite of being unpaid’ and was vastly more representative of Southern concerns and approaches than WID had been (O’Brien et al. 2000: 36). This, fairly subtle, shift in focus to wider, more systemic issues occurred at a time when international development organisations, such as the World Bank and the IMF, were also making significant changes to their operations. Until the late 1970s and early 1980s, the World Bank offered loans for specific development projects. The national crises of the late 1970s, however, saw the Bank embark on the more controversial course of ‘policy-based lending’, attaching to loans conditionalities resembling the IMF’s austerity conditions (O’Brien et al. 2000: 25). These newer lending strategies, epitomised by the infamous and much loathed, ‘structural adjustment programmes’ of the early 1980s, were in large part a hastily assembled response to the panic among Northern creditor governments and the transnational banks caused by the impending defaults of Brazil, Mexico and Poland pending defaults (precipitating what has become known as the international ‘debt crisis’). The WAD perspective focused on the relationship between women and development processes rather than purely on strategies for the integration of women into development. Its point of departure was that women always have been ‘integrated’ into their societies and that their work, both inside and outside the household, is central to the maintenance of those societies. A key point for WAD, however, was that


the failure to recognise women’s unpaid work only further sustained existing international structures of inequality. Importantly, a WAD perspective also recognised that Third World men who do not have elite status also have been adversely effected by the structure of the inequalities within the international system (although it has been accused of giving little analytical attention to the social relations of gender within classes). Although, however, WAD was a far more representative endeavour, combining women’s activists from the North and South, cross-national feminist activism is, as O’Brien et al. note, beset with difficulties, not least where women’s economic interests in North and South conflict directly (O’Brien et al. 2000: 40). The question of the dominance of a Western liberal feminist agenda and the most appropriate but universal method of application has remained largely unresolved. Extensive discussion continues to surround the mainstreaming of ‘gender’ in public policy, not least ‘the way in which the category of gender is being used as a strategic tool at the global level to transform policy’ (True 2003: 370).

Gender and development Although the WAD perspective recognised the importance of crossgender alliances within classes, in practical project design and implementation terms, it tended, like WID, to group women together without taking strong analytical note of class, race, ethnicity or disability, all of which may exercise powerful influence on women’s actual social status. WAD did offer, then, a more critical view of women’s position than WID but failed to undertake a full-scale analysis of the relationship between patriarchy, differing modes of production and women’s subordination and oppression. The WAD perspective implicitly assumed that women’s position would improve if and when international structures become more equitable. In the meantime, the under-representation of women in economic, political and social structures is identified primarily as a problem which can be solved by carefully designed intervention strategies rather than by more fundamental shifts in the social relations of gender. Another weakness was WAD’s preoccupation with the productive sector at the expense of the reproductive side of women’s work and lives. WID/WAD intervention strategies therefore tended to concentrate on the development of income-generating activities without taking into account the time burdens that such strategies place on women. Development planners thus tended to impose Western biases and

122


assumptions on the South, assigning little, if any, economic value to social reproduction. The so-called ‘GAD paradigm’ has evolved from the WAD approach in an effort to challenge and transform, as broadly as possible, the existing frameworks of development institutions and policy-making. More ready to embrace the contingency of what it means to be a boy, girl, woman or man over time and according to location, GAD examines from a more holistic perspective social, economic and political organisation. Thus, GAD approaches have sought to understand the broader shaping of particular aspects of society. As such, GAD has generally been less concerned with women per se than with the social construction of gender and the assignment of specific roles, responsibilities and expectations to different types of bodies. The development of a broad and inclusive gender perspective and the proliferation and impact of transnational networking among gender movements have been much remarked upon. So much so, in fact, that it is arguably the case today that talk about gender is, indeed, everywhere (Pearson 2005: 157), and gender analysis ‘part of the routine practices and institutions of global governance’ (True 2003: 368). Gender mainstreaming, so-named because it is a strategy designed to mainstream gender concerns in all aspects of an institution’s policy-making, has thus achieved widespread endorsement by state governments, regional supra-state bodies such as the EU, the Nordic Council of Ministers and the Organization of American States (OAS), and global governance institutions such as the UN and its various agencies, the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the Council of Europe (ibid: 369). More generally, many development institutions today operate some form of ‘gender policy’ (the Development Banks in particular, but also many development NGOs, government aid agencies, such as CIDA, and United Nations programmes and institutions, such as the UNDP and WHO).

Gender and efficiency It is important to bear in mind that researchers and practitioners working and researching today use ‘gender’ in a number of different ways. This is not without its problems, and tensions certainly emerge from the different (and sometimes oppositional) conceptualisations of gender that circulate. In operational terms, international organisations struggle with advanced and diffuse conceptualisations of gender, relying instead


on essentialist, binary and limiting definitions of ‘gender’ as gender equality and women’s empowerment (e.g. the ADB, the UNDP, the EU). This is largely a result of the ‘efficiency framing’ of gender relations in the international community, where gender may feasibly be included in policy-making only where it is measurable, which necessitates a rather crude but operational definition of gender as synonymous with women’s ‘empowerment’ (i.e., access to education, health services and economic ‘opportunity’). The ‘efficiency’ case for gender stems directly from a WID approach to women’s role in development. Although in terms of gender scholarship somewhat out of date, it is the WID approach that remains (practically if not always theoretically) predominant at the World Bank. Boserup’s analysis is highly influential in this regard, since she examined the changes that occurred in traditional agricultural practices as societies became modernised, analysing the differential impact of those changes on the work done by men and women and providing a clear rationale for the need to include gender disaggregated data in economic measurements.1 Using the new evidence generated by Boserup and others, a set of common ‘WID’ concerns had begun in the 1970s to be articulated (almost entirely by US liberal feminists). These advocated legal and administrative changes to ensure that women would be better integrated into economic systems. Primary emphasis was thus placed on egalitarianism and on the development of strategies and actions designed to minimise the disadvantages faced by women in the productive sector and ending discrimination against them. A WID perspective is particularly amenable to the economic rationality of the World Bank, not least for its foundations in a modernisationbased development paradigm. In such a paradigm, ‘modernisation’ is held to improve the standards of living of developing countries by expanding education systems and therefore providing well-trained workers and managers. Although the ‘trickle down’ approach (where the benefits of modernisation leading to economic growth are held to result in better living conditions, wages, education and health services that ‘trickle down’ to all sectors of society) has been heavily criticised both within and outside the development community, institutions such as the Bank continue to replicate policy prescriptions based on investing heavily in the establishing education systems and developing strong cores of workers and managers. Women were rarely, if ever, considered in the modernisation literature that prevailed during the 1950s and early 1960s, since it was assumed

124


that the norm of male experience was generalisable to all, and thus that all would benefit equally as societies increasingly became modernised. By the 1970s, however, evidence had been marshalled to suggest that the position of some women had actually declined (Boserup 1970; Boulding 1976; Tinker and Bramson 1976). New technologies introduced in the agricultural sector, for example, tended to be directed at men rather than women. In the industrial sector, women were relegated to the lowestpaying, most monotonous and sometimes health-impairing jobs, partly as a result of their generally lower levels of education, but also because of the perceived supplementarity of women’s role as wage earners (see Lim 1981). The uptake of a WID approach in development circles thus meant that the study of women as a separate area of development research was institutionalised and legitimised. Since an important theme of the feminist movement in this period, especially in the United States, was equal employment opportunities for women, particular attention was paid to developing women’s productive labour (rather than, e.g., social welfare and reproductive concerns). Development policy-making thus focused on integrating women apparently more completely into the ‘formal’ economy as a means of improving their status (Razavi and Miller 1995: 3). A particular reason that Boserup’s work had proven so influential in the development community was that created a particular space to influence development policy, combining in particular the argument for justice and efficiency (Tinker 1990: 30). If, as Boserup suggested, women had in the past enjoyed a position of relative equality with men in agricultural production, then it was both appropriate and feasible for development assistance directed towards women to remove inequalities. Furthermore, by suggesting that in the recent past women were not only equal in status to men, but also equally productive, Boserup challenged the conventional wisdom that women were less productive and therefore unentitled to a share of scarce development resources (Razavi and Miller 1995: 4). As Razavi and Miller note, such an argument has its problems, not least since an efficiency argument rests on a ‘criterion of merit’ based on the presumption of women’s equal productivity, which can ‘easily be turned against women’ (ibid). If, for example, data can be garnered to show that women’s productivity is consistently lower than men’s, it might also be argued that women deserve fewer resources than men. It is not surprising, therefore, that WID ‘has given rise to numerous studies documenting rural women’s contributions to agricultural


productivity’, leading to ‘serious attempts to include women’s productive and reproductive contributions in GNP and labour statistics’ (ibid). A women-only focus in research would, however, secure the delivery of resources through women’s projects, improve women’s access to technology and credit, increase women’s productivity and impact positively on national development. This is perhaps the most fundamental point to the efficiency case for inclusion of gender analysis; one that rests ultimately on resources for women’s projects justified in terms of eventual economic growth (in essence, an ‘add women and stir’ approach to development).

Making the ‘Business Case’ for gender analysis in Bank work Noted for its slowness in responding to gender-based demands, the World Bank is also renowned for having been for most of its institutional life inaccessible and unresponsive to women’s movements. Thus, despite the increased visibility of and intensive pressure from women’s groups and transnational movements from as early as the 1970s, the Bank’s interest in the role of ‘gender’ in the politics of development was not fully articulated until 1994, when an Operational Policy on the gender dimension of development was issued, henceforth the Bank’s ‘gender policy’, which was revised and reissued in 2003 (World Bank 2003c). This change of direction at the Bank is often attributed to the loudness of civil society demands for reform, at a time when the Bank was becoming much more responsive to NGO and CSO movements more generally and had already allowed its environmental policy to be considerably shaped by its interactions with non-governmental (and governmental, in the shape of pressure from US Congress) environmental movements. Wolfensohn’s leadership is often cited as particularly significant to many of the changes effected in Bank responses to gender from the mid-1990s. The first World Bank president to attend a UN Women’s Conference (in Beijing, in 1995), Wolfensohn also directly referred to the importance of ‘women’s issues’ in his speech to the World Bank Group and IMF Annual Meetings in 1997. From the beginning, one of my priorities has been to take the pulse of development firsthand. I have now visited almost 60 countries. I have met with governments, parliamentarians, and the private sector. I have talked with national and international NGOs on subjects

126


ranging from women’s issues to the environment, from health to the impact of macroeconomic reform. (Wolfensohn 1997) The announcement of the Bank’s gender policy was followed, in 1996, with the foundation of an ‘External Gender Consultative Group’, and then, in 1997, with a ‘Gender and Development Board’ (more commonly known as the Bank’s ‘Gender Board’, where gender representatives across departments meet at regular intervals). In September 2001, as recognition of ‘the need to find more effective ways to integrate gender-responsive actions into the Bank’s development assistance’, the Bank’s Board of Executive Directors endorsed a ‘gender mainstreaming strategy’. Defined as the ‘process in which gender concerns and women’s needs and perspectives are considered in all aspects of Bank operations’, gender mainstreaming includes ‘a focus on women’s participation in the decision making process in development activities’ (Bouta et al. 2005: 6). In stating the goals of ‘reducing gender disparities and enhancing women’s participation in the economic development of their countries’, the strategy attempts to relay the ‘business case for mainstreaming gender’ in the Bank’s work, contending that gender equality ‘is an issue of development effectiveness, not just a matter of political correctness or kindness to women’ (World Bank 2002a: 1–61). The Bank’s adoption of a gender mainstreaming strategy occurred at a time, under Wolfensohn’s leadership, of so-called ‘inclusion’ at the Bank, part of an effort to integrate the ‘social’ and ‘economic’ dimensions of development. This softer-edged ‘post-Washington Consensus’ discourse was intended to complement a general and wider shift in development and economic thinking, a shift towards replacing the ruthless dismissal of the state and uncritical adoration of the market advocated in the Washington Consensus of the 1980s with a rhetoric of ‘development community’, ‘forging partnerships’, and of giving people back their ‘self-esteem’ and ‘pride’ through policies of ‘inclusion’ (James Wolfensohn 1997). Such changes notwithstanding, many of the Bank’s economists continue today to reject the notion of women’s advocacy networks having any legitimate sway over economic policy-making. Gender and ‘Advocacy’ at the World Bank In the early 1990s, after much protest and considerable pressure from US Congress and Treasury, ‘the environment’ finally became a key concern in Bank policy-making. Enough motivation had been apparently summoned for the Bank’s economists to view environmental questions


as of economic concern, not just questions of advocacy. The ‘advocacy’ issue remains, however, a crucial one, however, not least since the push to include gender analysis in Bank work has largely depended on moral appeals to justice and equity, arguments that remain singularly unimpressive to the Bank’s economists.2 For gender to be an effective ‘variable’ capable of sharpening economists’ mathematical tools, it must equate to something more concrete than an (apparently) abstract description of hierarchical social relations. It is interesting, and perhaps not entirely unsurprising, that the current Head of the Gender unit (appointed in 2005) has been noted for her commitment to a WID-orientated approach to development. The fact that, having tried and failed to institutionalise an approach based on the analysis of ‘gender inequalities’, the Bank is now keener to return to an approach that refocuses on women is revealing. This refocus, and the appointment of a Gender Head who is heavily influenced by 1970s feminist development literature, have developed out of certain misgivings about the (constructivist, unconcrete) ‘rhetoric’ of gender. A concern to refocus (both attention and resources) more carefully on women, as a particularly disadvantaged group and as somewhat ‘left behind by development’ (IvWB4 2005), is simply easier for the Bank to operationalise, despite the many and various questions and problems that warrant a broader focus than women-only Bank policy (issues, e.g., in men’s health or children’s education, as in Russia most recently, or the Caribbean, where educationally boys are falling dramatically short of girls).

Gender and efficiency at the World Bank Despite criticisms of Boserup’s research and the way in which it has been taken up by WID advocates, efficiency arguments thus remain central to the gender and development discourse, particularly at the Bank. Although efficiency arguments have become increasingly sophisticated in recent years, forming what might be termed the ‘gender efficiency approach’ (Razavi and Miller 1995), concerns remain that the emphasis on women’s productivity ignores the impact of a broad range of social divisions and social relations, constraining all society’s participants, their choices and life opportunities. The Bank’s (contemporary) mandate is to ‘fight poverty’ and its mission statement mentions only that ‘people’ be enabled to ‘help themselves’. Framed by a superficially objective economics of ‘providing resources’, ‘sharing knowledge’, ‘building capacity’ and ‘forging

128


partnerships in the public and private sectors’, the Bank describes its ‘principles’ of engagement as being ‘client-centred’, ‘accountable’, ‘dedicated to financial integrity and cost-effectiveness’, ‘inspired’ and ‘innovative’. Again, these attributes are not associated with any genderand/or sex-specific characteristics. The Bank’s Articles of Agreement are yet more abstract, describing ‘territories’, ‘members’, ‘capital’, ‘productive purposes’, ‘foreign investment’, ‘equilibrium in the balance of payment’ and so on. Indeed, ‘people’ do not even figure here. World Bank staff are well aware that the capital markets, member countries, governments and developing economies of which they speak involve human interaction, but the language of the Bank’s institutional discourse is such that rhetorical abstraction always precedes detailed examination. This is at one level a macroeconomics of (people-less) trade, efficiency, investment, equilibriums, and at another, a microeconomics of country and social specificity. The Bank characterises the key to ‘successful development’ as ‘empowerment’, particularly ‘women’s empowerment’. ‘Women’s empowerment’ (in Bank terms, improving women’s access to education and expanded opportunity through the reshaping of discriminatory society) is generally considered fundamental to the micro-level: at the macrolevel of Bank policy-making, however, social considerations are rarely central and in many cases are entirely absent. The Bank’s Financial and Private Sector Development Network (PSD), for example, is concerned with creating ‘the institutional foundations for effective markets’, which includes ‘property rights’, ‘collateral systems’, ‘corporate governance’ and ‘financial market infrastructure’. It also seeks to promote ‘open and competitive markets’, by, for example, ‘opening up entry, access to finance for promising firms, deeper and more liquid financial markets, and exit for failing firms’. Lastly, the Network supports ‘social safety nets with market-based instruments’, including ‘financial marketbased instruments’ and ‘risk management for pensions and insurance systems’. In terms of ‘measuring results’, PSD assesses a project’s impact on its ‘stakeholders’, measuring development outcome against ‘clear project targets that are defined at the outset’. To date, however, only specifically gender-related IFC (the part of the Bank Group responsible for financial and private sector development) donor projects include any gender-related aims (‘Donor Gender Policies’ include CIDA’s ‘Policy on Gender Equality’, the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ ‘Gender Equality in Danish Development Cooperation’, the EU’s ‘Roadmap for Equality between Men and Women’ and so on). ‘Gender’, for the


IFC, remains synonymous, however, with the recognition that ‘aspiring businesswomen are often prevented from realizing their economic potential’. The IFC is committed, it argues, ‘to creating opportunities for women in business’, thus the IFC’s gender policy can best be described as ‘helping to better leverage the untapped potential of women as well as men in emerging markets’ (http://www.ifc.org). In 2007 the World Bank and the IFC launched the ‘Gender Action Plan’, subtitled ‘Gender Equality as Smart Economics’ (World Bank 2006c). At a time when the international community is drawing ever closer to the deadline for achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (2015), the Bank seeks with its action plan ‘to advance women’s economic empowerment in client countries as a way to promote shared growth and accelerate the implementation of the third MDG’ (ibid). Lagging gains in women’s economic opportunities, the Bank argues, are ‘inefficient’, since increased women’s labour force participation and earnings are associated with reduced poverty and faster growth; women will benefit from their economic empowerment, but so too will men, children and society as a whole. In sum, there is a business case for expanding women’s economic opportunities: it is smart economics. (ibid: 2) A major part of the ongoing feminist concern for gender-inclusive development has been that development, as conventionally conceived of and practiced, is masculinist in its basic assumption that the interests and needs of men can be taken to reflect the interests and needs of society as a whole. Not only men, but White, middle-class, Western men. The point for many more recent gender analyses is that this kind of assumption not only renders invisible all non-men, but also marginalises those men who do not behave like typical White, Western entrepreneurs. Although the World Bank, under pressure from the fast-approaching MDG deadlines, is keen to emphasise the productive importance of women’s work and the significance of ‘making markets work for women (at the policy level) and empowering women to compete in markets (at the agency level)’ (World Bank 2006c: 4. Emphasis in the original), their strategy remains wedded to assumptions of economic behaviour and rationality entirely andro- and ethnocentric in formulation and execution. Women, here, are not perceived to be entirely the same as men, since their lack of ‘development’ necessarily impacts more profoundly on ‘education and health outcomes for

130


children’ (ibid: 2). It is enough, for the Bank, that a limited economic rationality, based on heteronormative Western presumptions of meaning, behaviour and identity, be inculcated in women, such that ‘tangible results’ are promised in select ‘focus countries’.3

Situating gender and sex in Bank discourse It is important, in analysing the gendered configuration of an institutional discourse already operating a ‘gender policy’, to consider the extent to which gender analysis is already included in that organisation’s work. The Bank’s incursions into ‘gender’ as a realm of social inquiry provide a particularly good example of how deeply sedimented neoliberal discourse is at the Bank, not least because, as argued previously, a discourse of so-called ‘alternative development’ actually serves to legitimise the Bank’s closure to those considerations that cannot easily be economically quantified. As noted by a senior member of staff, the Bank has been ‘singularly unsuccessful at mainstreaming gender’ (IvWB5 2005). Although the Bank refers to the aim of ‘mainstreaming gender responsive actions’ into its Bank’s work (World Bank 2002a), gender mainstreaming has simply not been effectively institutionalised at the Bank. Gender, I argue, resides in Bank discourse in one of the two ways. First, there is the ‘gender’ that the Bank can speak of, appearing in specifically gender-related Bank policies and analyses. As previously noted, the Bank’s core ‘Gender Unit’ is situated in the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network (PREM), considered one of the Bank’s most ‘credible’ and respected Vice-Presidential Units (VPUs) (the Gender Unit is, however, quite tiny, with approximately ten members of staff). The Gender Unit fulfils the corporate function of the Bank’s gender work, which also explains its location in PREM, a primarily conventional economics-based VPU. The Bank also operates a gender mainstreaming strategy (2002a), designed to implement gender analysis in all sectors of Bank work, that is, across networks, departments and country offices. The Bank’s ‘gender specialists’ thus work both from the core unit, in Sector Units (such as, e.g., post-conflict reconstruction, situated in the ESSD Network) and in Country Offices (varying degrees of gender work exists throughout the country offices). As the Bank admits, however, mainstreaming gender in the ‘economic sectors’ has been ‘slow’ (World Bank 2006c). As one interviewee commented, ‘nobody really cares’ about gender: the Bank, still somewhat ‘stuck’ on the question


of the successful incorporation of gender themes, has yet to see gender take hold in its operations in any real sense. Secondly, there is also, however, the ‘gender’ that the Bank does not address, which resides in the very fundamentals of its economic logic. It is not, of course, the case that ‘gender’ and ‘sex’ are always invisible categories in neoliberal analyses. As mentioned, the Bank operates under a rubric of an explicit gender mainstreaming strategy and releases periodical policies designed to ‘promote gender equality’ and ‘empower women’ (e.g. World Bank 2002a, 2003e, 2004c). That which is rarely explored, however, is the extent to which Bank analysis is predicated on the duality of sex, or the ways in which it constructs from regulatory discursive practices the so-called ‘gender differences’ along universal axes of sexual difference. To conceive of gender as constitutive of the very processes that drive global economic power, exchange and interaction is also to ask how and where the construction of gender takes place. As Butler argues, the compulsion to become ‘man’ or ‘woman’ does not come from ‘sex’ (Butler 1990: 12), but from the setting of ‘certain limits to analysis’, or the safeguarding of ‘certain tenets of humanism as presuppositional’, particularly concerning analysis of gender. Through the enactment of such limits, heteronormative discourses (such as neoliberalism) are able to ‘presuppose and pre-empt the possibilities of imaginable and realizable gender configurations within culture’ (Butler 1990: 13). The Bank experiences particular difficulties deciding whether gender is an instrument of market efficiency or an indisputable, and unquantifiable, dimension of social development. This relates in many ways to the schizophrenia of the Bank’s own character and its position as both corporate bank and ethical development institution. As noted above, the release of the Bank’s 1994 Operational Policy, which pledged ‘a commitment to enhancing women’s participation in economic development and making gender issues an essential component in the Bank’s strategy to reduce poverty’ (World Bank 2003c), began a series of Bank incursions into gender analysis that, if slightly sporadic, remain ongoing today. The 1994 policy, committed to the goals of reducing ‘gender inequalities’ and ‘empowering women’, also culminated in the release in 2001 of the Bank’s ‘flagship’ document on gender, Engendering Development (King and Mason 2001), and the subsequent publication of a gender mainstreaming strategy. Operational policies and reports such as Engendering Development are, of course, intended to guide the Bank’s policies on development: they do

132


not represent an assessment of the Bank itself. Engendering Development’s call to sediment gender equality as a ‘core development issue’ occurred eight months before the Bank had actually operationalised its official gender mainstreaming strategy (which was endorsed by the Bank’s Executive Directors in September 2001 and released publicly in January 2002). Thus, while Engendering Development was demanding that other countries’ institutions be reformed ‘to establish equal rights and opportunities for women and men’, the Bank’s Executive Directors had yet to endorse a strategy that would commit the Bank to paying ‘systematic and widespread attention to gender issues in the context of [the Bank’s] poverty reduction mandate’ (World Bank 2002a: 12). In official discourse, the Bank defines gender as those differences ‘created by social constructs that result in different roles for, and power relationships between, men and women. Such roles are learned, vary across different societies, and change over time’ (World Bank 2001a). At the theoretical level, the actual thinking of staff working on gender tends also to conceptualise ‘gender’ as an organising principle of social life, with staff, in person, understanding and describing ‘gender’ as quite a broad social category. Thus, although in many instances ‘gender’ might be described in Bank work as socially constructed, variable, and structural, ‘sex’ throughout Bank discourse is invariably fixed, binary and biologically and physically constant (e.g. Bouta et al. 2005). There are, for the Bank, ‘men’ and ‘women’, whose identities may be multiple, but whose bodies are fixed. The next section thus continues by looking specifically at gender mainstreaming at the World Bank, but not in the usual sense of the term. My point here is to begin to understand the predication, prescription and reproduction of heterosexual neoliberal identity by looking at the ways the Bank mainstreams gender: not in the ways that it includes gender in its policy prescriptions (which have not in and of themselves constituted a terribly successful endeavour), but in the ways that the Bank neoliberalises gender, making sense of gender identities according to the Bank’s own purposes and parameters of acceptability.

Gender mainstreaming/mainstreaming gender The Bank’s adoption of a gender mainstreaming strategy suggests that it is Bank policy that is being ‘mainstreamed’ through the admission of gender analysis, and not that the Bank has its own agenda for the form to be assumed by gender analysis (which, I argue, it does, and which asserts that ‘gender equity’ must relate in some way to market


efficiency). If gender-aware policy can be seen, argues the Bank, to raise women’s productivity, then economic policy that explicitly incorporates a gender ‘awareness’ will combat inefficiency and unsustainability. No mention is made of women’s, nor men’s, reproductivity, except for the kind of implicit discursive assumptions that designate the benefits of women’s education and empowerment to be in the realm of reducing infant and child mortality, nutrition and of lowering fertility (World Bank 2001a); a direct correlation of woman with nurture that deeply essentialises women’s role as the carers of future (productive) generations. There is nothing subversive here in the gender challenge to mainstream economic discourses. Gender can be marketised, and where it is most effectively commodified, ‘market failures’ can be avoided. Gender, or, more accurately, a limited and heavily econometric understanding of ‘gender inequalities’, thus becomes a tool in the smooth functioning of the neoliberal economic market. One reason for the Bank’s failure to mainstream gender across its work is that the kind of work that the Bank actually pursues is heavily dependent on the personality of individuals, and with a high turnover of staff, few of whom can be relied on to be interested in gender, there is little guarantee of gender appearing in policy work. Another, perhaps more fundamental, reason is, however, that gender cannot make sense to Bank economists except through a thinly superficial veneer of instrumentalism and economic efficiency, resulting in an instrumentalisation and limited operationalisation of gender that fits too poorly with how people actually function and develop to be useful. The Bank defines its gender mainstreaming strategy as ‘a process in which gender concerns and women’s needs and perspectives are considered in all aspects of Bank operations, including a focus on women’s participation in the decision making process in development activities’ (World Bank 2001a: iii). Intended, as True articulates, as a strategy to ‘scrutinize and reinvent processes of policy formulation and implementation’ from a specifically ‘gender-differentiated perspective’ and across all policy areas (2003: 369–371), Gender mainstreaming is neither conceived of as an achievement in itself nor as a liberal policy to include women in decision-making roles, although this may be one of its effects. Rather, it is conceived as a strategy to re-invent the processes of policy design, implementation and evaluation by taking into account the gender-specific and often diverse interests and values of differently situated women and men. (ibid: 371)

134


The introduction of a policy of gender mainstreaming in World Bank operations is, in this sense, a step to be commended. Perhaps, in an unintended manner, it is even an admission that previous Bank policies, even the institution itself, are themselves already gender and that regular policies are a major constitutional element in the construction of gendered social institutions, and that gendered social institutions are an important component in the continuous reconstruction of gender inequality. (Verloo 2001: 2–3) In its own descriptions and policy documents, the Bank clearly classes gender mainstreaming as something done to the institution and its processes of policy-making. An alternative reading might, however, articulate mainstreaming as something being done to gender: a process in which a Western, heteronormative understanding of gender-as-sex is rationalised into the Bank’s processes of policy-making. Neoliberalising gender so as to operate a partial and restricted categorisation of gender at the micro-level of women’s productivity, Bank discourse therefore reproduces a categorisation of gender as synonymous with ‘gender inequalities’, and the concern shown for women’s oppression a means of increasing women’s entry into productive markets. In its attempts to ‘mainstream’ gender into the entirety of its procedures the World Bank actively delimits the production of economic knowledge, matching specific and particularly constructed human identities with the types of productive behaviour considered most economically effective. The Bank, while assuming the role of paternal custodian and guarantor of development, thus limits itself to issuing ‘gender-responsive policies and interventions’ only where they can be directly related to measurable instances of poverty reduction and the enhancement of ‘economic growth, human well-being and development effectiveness’ (World Bank 2003b). Here, the Bank’s articulation of ‘gender’ is explicitly concerned only with women’s oppression, their entry into productive markets and the discrepancies in market efficiency that they might make up for. The Bank quite openly exports an incentive structure, for example, microcredit schemes for local women to invest in, ‘sectoral’ lending strategies which are seen as important for women, such as agriculture and water, which is viewed as the best answer to the problems that might have arisen out of the neoclassical model of economics.


Critics of the Bank have particularly noted that ‘characteristic features’ of the Bank’s institutional culture, cognitive framework and decisionmaking processes have not only made it effectively indifferent to the gender justice and equity argument, but have led it to produce a developmental discourse fundamentally, in and of itself, flawed. ‘Women’s disprivilege’ has not been caused by their exclusion from the development process, but ‘by their inclusion in a process which relies upon gendered divisions of labour and power (as well as systems of class and national inequality) to fuel processes of growth’ (O’Brien et al. 2000: 36). The mass-scale restructuring of development that has taken place specifically over the last 15 years represents a particular and directionally controversial shift in development ‘rationality’, [F]rom a view that the state (specifically the commercial banks it owns and regulates) has an obligation to make finance capital accessible to the disadvantaged rural poor, to one that devolves responsibility for securing economic opportunity to individuals acting as responsible agents of their own well-being. (Rankin 2001: 20) The Bank’s focus on ‘inclusion’ under Wolfensohn’s tenure (1995–2005), and particularly its focus on gender, indicated, in many respects, a real concern to better govern the development agenda at a time when the Bank was being heavily criticised for its slowness to respond to the concerns of women’s movements. Having spent much of the 1990s apparently reorganising itself to give the appearance of taking gender issues seriously, the Bank certainly gives the impression of operating a more ‘inclusive’ approach to development. Criticisms of the Bank’s strategy have, however, been frequent (such as those concerning, during the 1970s, the Bank’s failure to include women in the development process; in the 1980s, its exclusion of gender issues in economic and sector work; or in the early 1990s the ineffectiveness of its gender policy), with some of the most recent suggesting that the Bank’s incorporation of ‘gender analysis’ is intended only to disarm resistance to market-led neoliberal development and globalisation. These criticisms have pointed out that the Bank frames its interventions on issues of gender through a deliberately ‘economistic and paternalistic lens’ (see, e.g., Bergeron 2003). The point is that the Bank’s development rationality is so narrowly focused on a neoliberal model of development that, although the Bank states a concern for the damage done to effective economic policy through ignorance of indigenous

136


‘gender’ inequalities, without defining this ignorance as either deliberate or unintentional, the Bank shows a lack of concern for the very structures of power that have kept gender from the mainstream of economic discourse. In this regard, gender mainstreaming can be seen as part of a broader instrumental-capitalist restructuring agenda that does not necessarily create any change in the political space that can be opened up or in the material conditions available for women at the grassroots of development (Bergeron 2003; True 2003). Although the Bank has taken on board some of the criticisms directed against it, and has made efforts to remedy them, the enduring result of its gender mainstreaming strategy is a limited institutionalisation of gender-as-sex, and the repeated failure, in practical terms, to sediment a serious and extended gender strategy. The Bank, for example, cites ‘clear evidence’ that ‘gender equality enhances economic growth and poverty reduction’ and that ‘early integration of gender issues should increase the efficacy of the Bank’s efforts in a given country’ (World Bank 2003b: 1–6), having previously admitted a failure on its part ‘to address gender issues in development policies’ (World Bank 2001a: 1). Empirically there is little evidence of the Bank having produced a clear and reliable enough gender policy to change in any significant respect the lives of ordinary citizens. As the Bank notes in 2006, gender continues to hold little ‘traction’ in the ‘economic sectors’ of it work (World Bank 2006c). Not only has the Bank thoroughly neoliberalised the terms by which the debate on gender’s inclusion in its policy work are set, it has effectively marginalised ‘gender’ as insignificant grounds for policy intervention.

Failing to make the business case for gender analysis in World Bank policy-making Making the ‘business case’ for including gender analysis in Bank work has proven to be a contentious, divisive and unresolved issue in Bank politics. Without a strictly mandated policy and lacking strict and enforceable guidelines on how much gender work should be included in individual sector and country projects, the Bank’s gender specialists must ‘sell’ their services in ways that will attract the support of project designers, which means, in a neoliberal environment, stressing the business case for gender equity over any social justice considerations. Certainly, there is an awareness among Bank staff that in trying to make an instrumentalist, business case for the inclusion of gender,


they are opening their work to particular criticisms from women’s and advocacy movements, where gender is invariably considered a matter of importance per se than something to be efficiency framed (i.e., framed through appeals to productivity, efficiency and growth). Women, men and the World Bank Some analysts have posited gender mainstreaming strategies as a logical extension, or step on, from earlier ‘Women in Development’ (WID) efforts to ‘move women from the margin to the mainstream of policy by creating projects with a special focus on women’ (True 2003: 369–370). The Bank differs, however, on this point by claiming that ‘gender mainstreaming’ represents a move away from the kind of WID approach ‘that focuses exclusively on women and their needs, without regard to the power relationships between men and women’, while ‘gender mainstreaming’ focuses instead on specifically ‘gender-related goals’ (World Bank 2001a). In its definition of ‘gender mainstreaming’, however, the Bank clearly names only ‘women’, their ‘needs’ and ‘perspectives’ in tandem with the concept ‘gender’. Most Bank project-work on gender involves country-specific lending projects designed, essentially, to sediment women in the (‘productive’) market economy. That is, to make of women the partially rational, productive market actors that the Bank believes men entirely to be. The language through which the Bank attempts this is invariably one of ‘empowering’ individuals, in this case women, to participate more fully in the market economy. Wolfensohn, in a conversation with J. Michael Cook, argues that the ‘empowerment of women’ is an issue ‘which recognizes no gender distinction. It is an issue for both men and for women’ (World Bank 1999a). Ironically, such rhetoric in many instances justifies policies that actively and continually overlook ‘men’. Stern, for example, argues that in the areas of social protection, micro-credit and agriculture there is ‘strong evidence’ to suggest that women borrow and repay ‘more reliably than men do’, that they more efficiently balance ‘inputs’ (i.e., household expenditure) with outputs, and, with regards to social protection, that ‘there may actually be a case, from a development effectiveness perspective, for targeting larger transfers towards women’ (Stern 2001: 3). The only real way the Bank here might feasibly be said to be identifying the ‘empowerment of women’ as an issue for ‘men’ would be at the operational level, where presumably men (as the more numerous holders of public office and positions of authority) may be required to effect ‘gender-related’ policies that specifically target women.

138


The seemingly deliberate connection made between gender and women is unusual in official documents on gender mainstreaming in other institutions, but a persistent point in Bank discourse. While ‘gender mainstreaming’ has most commonly referred to the working definition supplied by the Group of specialists at the Council of Europe, who accentuated ‘gender equality as an objective, and not women as a target group, and because it emphasizes that gender mainstreaming is a strategy’ (Verloo 2001: 2), the Bank’s depiction of a direct relationship between women and gender signals that their strategy of gender mainstreaming may not be as dissimilar to WID as they claim. Although, then, the World Bank professes its aim to be the improvement of women’s (market) productivity, the fact of women needing better education assumes a particularly domestic nature in World Bank discourse. In 2001 the Bank identified such ‘feminine’ sectors as ‘population, health and nutrition’, ‘education’, ‘agriculture’, ‘water supply and sanitation’, ‘social protection’ and the ‘environment’ as requiring public policy to replace the ‘market failures’ that have hampered growth and exacerbated gender inequality (World Bank 2001a). None, however, with the exception of agriculture, was given, from 1990 to 1999, a percentage share of the Bank’s portfolio exceeding 8 per cent. Agriculture’s share had actually dropped, from 24 per cent in 1989 to 13 per cent in 1999. With the association already made between women’s education and their role as welfare providers for the next generation, the reproductive arena, although officially uncited in World Bank discourse in favour of terms such as ‘productivity’ and ‘growth’, is in fact the only arena where the Bank feels it has a mandate to issue policy. Even then, the expenditure released is relatively inferior, a sign that the Bank considers women valuable the more productive they can prove themselves, a discourse predicated upon the ability to control women’s bodies but not the structures that govern them. The workings of business, on the other hand, carry value in and of themselves, existing beyond the scope of obvious institutional intervention. Thus, although the Bank expresses a politics of women’s empowerment, I argue that its discourse is very much reliant upon a public/private dichotomy that serves to initiate policy to further objectify the female body. I was frequently struck, when talking to Bank staff, by how regularly they spoke of gender as one issue among many, as if development ‘issues’, such as gender, class and ethnicity, fall easily into separable analytical categories which may or may not influence development


at a given stage. Gender was considered less a structural dynamic, implicated at every level of people’s relationships, than a concern for difference. ‘Gender’, for many at the Bank, spelt the kind of ‘gender inequalities’ and ‘gender-disaggregated data’ that are actually terms and measurements based on differences in sex. The reduction of gender to sex, however, allows the Bank’s macroeconomics to appear gender free, so that legitimate concerns relating to the essential purpose, applicability of and gendered effects of the neoliberal market remain unanswered. However, increasing women’s productivity, within a development discourse where the market model has already won, is perfectly justifiable.

Gender, heteronormativity and instrumentality Neither uncontested nor unitary, Bank discourse does certainly necessitate significant effort for those developing countries attempting to implement its policy-making and is powerful in its reach. The neoliberal rationality that the Bank makes ‘real’ through its inscription on the developing world has had considerable effect on development economics, and has come in to fruition in no small part from the mainstream belief that the market, business and corporate transactions are largely asocial, ahistorical and immune to questions of social justice and human rights ‘advocacy’. The Bank, as, simultaneously, both ethical development organisation and global market-trading merchant bank, treads a shaky line between responding to the interests of its shareholders (member countries) and the global ‘poor’. Above all, however, it is the efficiency of the Bank’s own work that takes precedence. The Bank’s mandate has undoubtedly undergone a subtle but significant shift since inauguration to one that has ‘sharpened its focus on poverty reduction as the overarching goal of all its work’ (http://web.worldbank.org), but this remains a mandate predicated on recognising a causal link between policy and development only where measurable economic profit can be ascertained. In the light of the instrumentality of its remit, a particularly contentious issue in recent World Bank politics has been that of making the ‘business case’ for including gender analysis in its work. That efforts to make such a case have failed stems, I argue, from a particularly problematic relationship between the Bank’s neoliberal instrumentalism and the position of sex and gender in its wider institutional discourse. The Bank’s macroeconomic discourse is predicated on a neoliberal ideal of economic development based on efficient market and trade practice,

140


suitable economic behaviour and macroeconomic ‘common sense’ (e.g. ‘stable’ consumption patterns and exchange rates, ‘trade openness’ and flexible ‘investment climates and labour markets’, market-friendly governance and infrastructural strategies). All of these can, in Bank rationality, be proven effective when linked causally to ‘economic growth’ (i.e., per capita income, or GDP). Thus, the Bank locates its ‘entry points’ for programme-level interventions at the level of the economy alone, not society more broadly. Bank policy is evaluated and decided effective only where it can be shown to have created or complemented economic growth, that is, as cost effective. ‘Project Performance Assessment Reports’, for example, ‘rate’ projects according to their outcome, gauged as ‘relevance, efficacy and efficiency’. ‘Impact Evaluation Reports’ assess ‘the economic worth of projects’ first, then their ‘long-term effects on people and the environment’. ‘Country Assistance Evaluations’ examine the Bank’s ‘performance’. As I have argued, the Bank functions through a separation of the ‘macroeconomics’ (of people-less trade, efficiency, investment, equilibriums and economic regressions) and the ‘microeconomics’ (of country and social specificity) of its work. To many staff in the Bank’s social sectors, the macroeconomists consist of ‘men in white coats’ with ‘limited perspectives on the world’, while their own work is utterly committed to actual people and the pragmatics of ‘life on the ground’ in developing countries (IvWB2 2005). Hence, while basing its macroeconomics on functionally asocial ‘truths’ of mathematical and economistic productivity, the Bank simultaneously coordinates microeconomic analysis designed to consider and include existent social relations. This macro/microeconomic divide is a pertinent one, confining analysis of ‘social issues’ to work of the social sector staff, which both legitimises and reinforces the exclusion of these issues from the work of the macroeconomists. Gender staff at the Bank take some pains to highlight their concern that men be included in development policy, in no small part because of the ‘policy problems’ that they encounter in approaching gender at the Bank (Bedford 2005: 295). Such policy problems arise in the Bank’s approach to gender and development because of the assumptions on which the Bank’s development discourse depend. These assumptions, while presented as universal and commonsensical, are both power-laden and hierarchically gendered. As Bedford, in reference to the Bank’s Ecuadorian strategy, argues, the Bank’s gender policy makes economic common sense, and gender inequalities can be measured and accepted as important, only through the reconfiguration of what she calls models


of ‘loving partnership’, such that women work more (in the productive economy) and men care better (reproductively). The Bank, Bedford suggests, is essentially seeking to (re)forge normative arrangements of intimacy, a policy preference that remains invisible unless sexuality is taken seriously as a category of analysis in development studies’. (Bedford 2005: 295) As Bedford explains, Bank staff find themselves under intensive pressure to frame gender policy as a complementary sharing between men and women. Thus, by necessity, sex in Bank work must be dichotomised: women must be inculcated with a limited rationality that makes them better workers while continuing to encourage their altruistic attachments to their loved ones; in men, a rationale of ‘better loving’ must be inspired so that poor men compensate in terms of caring labour when their wives enter into productive work. Involved, as Bedford suggests, not only in the macro-processes of economic restructuring, but also in the ‘micro-processes of sexuality adjustment’, the Bank’s policy interventions are, therefore, intrinsically sexualised, although presented to the world as effective, objective and value neutral. Such processes of sexuality adjustment are key to the functioning of Bank discourse, inculcating the communities and individuals with which the Bank comes into contact into a cultural matrix to which they should adjust their behaviours, perceptions of self and understandings of development. Heteronormativity, reproducing the ideal of compulsory heterosexuality, is a cultural matrix because it constitutes a predominantly Western articulation of gender identity: a contingent and hierarchical discourse that regulates persons’ identities, meanings, behaviours and effects according to the gender and sex identities considered most suitable to perform reproductively. The Bank’s neoliberalism is heteronormative (embodying compulsory heterosexuality) in subtle and complex ways. Without dictating that men and women must reproduce, the Bank depends upon an unspoken discourse of compulsory heterosexuality that both stabilises and consolidates the binary opposition of men and women as the sole carriers of human identity, dictating that ‘men’ and ‘women’ exist in a reproductive relationship to each other. An example is the Bank’s work on ‘gender equality’ and, in particular, its so-called ‘flagship’ document on gender, Engendering Development (King and Mason 2001). Here, the Bank suggests the need for careful consideration of the relationship

142


between ‘gender disparities’ and increased poverty. Countries cannot grow sustainably, the report argues, while possessed of significant gender inequalities ‘between women and men’. Underwritten by the assumption that gender equates to sex, and gender inequalities are the disparities in resources, rights, economic opportunities, power and ‘political voice’ between women and men, the report professes that women and men are ‘biologically different’ but that all societies have ‘social expectations about what behaviours and activities are appropriate’ (ibid: 1–2). Gender inequality is an obstacle to effective development because it hinders ‘the accumulation of human capital in the home and the labour market’ (ibid: 10). That is, institutions, households and the economy make sense only in terms of women’s and men’s ‘biologically different’ but mutually reproductive (and heterosexually predicated) capital inputs; however, ‘social expectations’ may vary. The leading international institutions of neoliberal economic governance (multilaterals such as the World Bank, the IMF, the African and Asian Development Banks, for example, and financial organisations such as the WTO) have long professed the ‘neutrality’ of their economic discourses, with the administration of global finance organised around the metaphor of the free market, and thereby around the so-called ‘gender neutral’, ‘rational’ market participant. Feminist critics have, however, long noted that where human agency is rational and rent-seeking, it can, historically, also be argued to be essentially masculine. The overt neutrality of economic discourses conceals the covert masculinisation of those discourses: the ‘rational’, liberal, and universal, individual has traditionally long been the learned characteristics of ‘men’, and, specifically, Anglo-American men. Hence, women’s success at engaging with international finance depends upon their ability to exhibit such typically ‘masculine’ characteristics as competitiveness, rationality and efficacy. Efforts by the Bank to ‘incorporate gender’ into its economic narratives are designed to fit with pre-existing conceptions of the rational, autonomous, masculine individual, and have led it to produce a developmental discourse fundamentally, in and of itself, gendered. ‘Women’s disprivilege’, argue O’Brien et al., has not been caused by exclusion from the development process, ‘but by their inclusion in a process which relies upon gendered divisions of labour and power (as well as systems of class and national inequality) to fuel processes of growth’ (2000: 36). The point is that no matter how progressive a Bank economist’s mindset, gender is consistently situated as an essentially secondary


consideration in the Bank’s economic analyses. Within an economic discourse reproduced according to the presumed rationality and marketwillingness of homo economicus, ‘women’, where they appear, are categorised as less educated and intrinsically more nurturing, vulnerable and domestically situated, but also more responsible, reliable and trustworthy, since, as nurturers and carers of the household, women are considered less likely to display men’s ‘risk-taking’ behaviour (e.g. Stern 2001; World Bank 2001b, 2001c). Thus although a certain case can be made for women’s empowerment as a matter of improving ‘human capital’, gender analysis at the Bank, in its broadest, most structurally implicated sense, is conspicuous by its absence. As the Bank itself points out in a 2002 OED Report, its limited ‘gender awareness’ stretches no further than ‘sectors related to education, population, and social protection’ (World Bank 2002b). The report found ‘no consideration of women’s/gender issues’ in relation ‘to private sector development, small or medium sized enterprises, or public sector management’. ‘Homosexuality’ and ‘bisexuality’ do appear occasionally in Bank analysis, although they remain consistently underexplored avenues of enquiry. Where the Bank examines homosexuality or bisexuality, however, it does so overwhelmingly through analysis of men, as in analysis of young men, ‘masculinity’ and HIV/AIDS in SSA (Barker and Ricardo 2005), a subject to which I will return in Chapter 6. Here, it is only ‘young men’ who display particular ‘patterns of risk behaviours’, which, the report assumes, ‘suggests that young men play a key role in shaping the future of the epidemic’. Having analysed countless Bank documents I have still yet to find evidence of any study of women’s homosexuality and/or bisexuality, or consideration of how women’s sexual practices contribute to the spread of HIV/AIDS. The question for gender’s advocates therefore largely remains unanswered as to what kind of gender argument can be made that will carry weight in the institution. It is unlikely, as one interviewee suggested, that the Bank will more strictly mandate gender’s inclusion into its operations, for example, by issuing directives and orders for the inclusion of gender (IvWB5 2005). Thus, despite the best efforts of the Bank’s Gender Unit (and also the rather obvious fact that the institution operates a gender mainstreaming strategy), the Bank’s macroeconomists continue to remain almost entirely unconvinced that the gender ‘case’ is anything more than an advocacy issue, related to a justice and equity argument that is nothing if not tangential to the promotion of economic growth. This lack of purchase for gender analysis stems not from gender’s position as a ‘social’ concern, but because, as a social concern, the Bank’s

144


‘second generation’ neoliberalism only allows it to conceive of gender concerns within a framework of development rationality that is both decidedly ‘Anglo-Saxon’ and entirely predicated on a view of development ‘that devolves responsibility for securing economic opportunity to individuals acting as responsible agents of their own wellbeing’ (Rankin 2001: 18–37).

Summary To claim that neoliberal discourse is sexually configured and fundamentally gendered we must first inquire into how this discourse locates and bestows value. An assessment of how neoliberalism is embodied in the Bank, and the ways in which the Bank’s neoliberal discourse articulates identities, behaviours and meanings, in specifically gendered ways, necessarily involves consideration of the extent to which gender is, or is not, taken to be a key component of relations of economic governance. It has of course been well documented that the Bank recognises, to a degree, the importance of gender in development and has devoted a certain space within its organisation to a ‘core’ Gender Unit. The discursive limits of the Bank’s rationality are such that social relations may be conceived of only in reference to the metastructure of the neoliberal market. Thus the Bank, as an organisational entity, socialises and educates its staff, and the countries and people it engages with, through a discourse entirely centred on a particular cultural construction of social relations, that is, a construction of social relations dependent on the distributive mechanism of the market. It is in the places that the Bank does not explicitly discuss or mention gender that gender identity(ies) most clearly reside, constituting the foundations of the Bank’s neoliberal economic logic and informing at every level the Bank’s processes of decision- and policy-making. It is an all too easily made assumption that gender analysis is about and for women. Absorbing and reproducing such an assumption means that we will invariably fail to appreciate that gendered distinctions affect almost every aspect of our lives, in developed and developing countries, from the labels our birth certificates bear to the types of schools, clubs and social activities we are allowed to partake in. Efforts by the Bank to instrumentalise gender indicate the fundamental tensions embodied in an institution with the rhetoric to claim that society matters, but without the economic framework with which to quantify the social. The post-conditionality discourse of governance, ‘benchmark’ rhetoric obscures the extent to which the Bank operates as it always has done,


as a powerful but culturally ‘Western’ multilateral, now, more than ever, struggling to maintain its elevated position of ‘expertise’ in an increasingly competitive international market. With this in mind, the next chapter examines in closer detail the ways in which particular instances of Bank policy-making sustain and reproduce certain heteronormative (and therefore gendered) discursive assumptions and development practices.

5 World Bank Policy-Making (2): Reproducing (Economically Viable) Gender Norms

Chapter 4 began an exploration of the ways in which the World Bank situates and rationalises gender in its neoliberal discourse. This chapter looks more closely at the ways in which the Bank not only privileges heterosexuality, but, in its (understated) exclusion of all other possibilities, embeds heterosexual behaviour as imperative to economic development. I argue that the Bank imbues the politics of development with ‘the invisible, tacit, society-founding rightness’ that heterosexuality carries with it in the Western world (Berlant and Warner 1998: 548). People are, according to Bank discourse, culturally intelligible only according to their heterosexually reproductive function: they are coherent only according to a developmental heteronormativity that predicates, prescribes and reproduces the binaries of sex and gender on which Bank discourse depends. As heteronormative in its dependence on the tacit but crucial privileging of heterosexuality, the Bank’s neoliberal discourse informs and sustains its policies and practices in particularly gendered ways and gender is made intelligible in order to better serve the Bank’s neoliberal ideals of marketisation, privatisation, deregulation and flexibilisation. In other words, the Bank neoliberalises gender (making sense of gender according to particular discursive assumptions and practices) in order to ‘straighten’ development (banishing the subversively divergent parts of human identity that do not fit with its model of heteronormative development). As a discourse, the Bank’s neoliberalism rests on foundational assumptions of economic growth and stability, financial transactions and human behaviour that are deeply gendered whilst presented as universal and neutral: gender, through the regulatory function of compulsory heterosexuality, performs neoliberalism’s articulation of economic viability. 146

Reproducing (Economically Viable) Gender Norms 147

Although the consequences of economic policy are felt at every level, neoliberalism’s focus remains firmly on formal-sector economic institutions and processes such as corporations, markets and financial and development institutions, with all visible ‘gender’ discussion consigned to the less formal and thus less valued arenas of households, informal communities, collectivities and transnational networks. This chapter thus examines the discursive practices through which Bank discourse straightens development, creating and sustaining policies and practices tacitly, but not explicitly, formulated according to gendered hierarchies of meaning, representation and identity.

Predicating, prescribing and reproducing neoliberal rationality World Bank discourse creates and sustains policies and practices tacitly, but not explicitly, formulated according to heteronormatively gendered hierarchies of meaning, representation and identity. Such hierarchies both privilege heterosexuality and define how individuals are expected to behave, what their interests are, how their relationships with others proceed, which in turn legitimates the relationships, behaviours, rationalities and activities most suitable to the expansion of the neoliberal market. As in neoliberal discourses more broadly, Bank discourse articulates human identities through apparently coherent gender norms in which the oppositions ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ can only be understood as the expressive attributes of ‘male’ and ‘female’. Where the Bank is able explicitly to mention gender, it is as a true expression of sex, normalising and naturalising a regulatory, heteronormative assumption of what a person ‘is’ and therefore what that person ‘does’. Reproducing an a priori economic and social reality (that ‘development’ exists only in relation to economic growth), Bank discourse predicates, prescribes and reproduces the meanings, behaviours and human identities that best correspond with this pre-given reality. Such a reality, as constructed by Bank discourse, is articulated through a discourse of so-called development ‘partnership’, where each participant in development, be it the poor farmer in Benin, the governing mechanisms of that country, or the Bank itself, is obliged, for the good of market efficiency and economic growth, ‘to reduce barriers to trade’, to ‘address constraints that prevent (developing countries) from fully realizing the benefits from trade and investment flows’, and ‘to ease debt burdens’ (http://www.worldbank.org).

148


This is very much in line with a neoclassical, libertarian economics of enablement, where individuals seek out their own best advantage through access to the distributive effects of a market allowed to function freely, unencumbered by oppressive state intervention, and is one of the key foundational beliefs of contemporary neoliberalism. ‘Developing countries’, the Bank argues, ‘must focus on good governance, sound policies and robust institutions’. This commitment to ‘good governance’ and ‘robust institutions’, although at odds with earlier forms of anti-state, ‘Washington Consensus’ neoliberalism, is, however, designed to fit entirely with the Bank’s construction of economic ‘reality’. Where the IMF acts as a central bank and lender of last resort, intent on maintaining the stability of global financial relations, the Bank goes so far as to deny that it is actually a bank, stating instead that it is a ‘specialized agency’ supplying ‘low-interest loans, interest-free credit, and grants to developing countries’ (World Bank 2004b). This does not quite encapsulate the Bank’s role, for where financial returns from Bank-assisted policies are likely to be low or are not likely at all, the Bank has no mandate to issue loans. It cannot make loans for projects to improve social justice, for example, or to reduce income equality per se and must instead rely upon policies that promote financial growth and economic development. Thus, in confining policy-making directly to the realm of market logic, the Bank is deliberately refusing any causal link between its policies and any socially advantageous, environmentally sound outcome. Rather, the only causal link it recognises would be that between policy and any subsequent measurable economic profit. By privileging heterosexuality throughout its work, the Bank is able to reproduce a particular ‘imaginable domain of gender’ (i.e., those configurations of gendered bodies that Bank discourse both makes possible and disallows) based on the embedding of heterosexual privilege. Particular meanings, behaviours and effects are predicated, pre/prescribed and reproduced out of this imaginable domain so as to endow neoliberalism with the authority to articulate appropriate and (re)productive economic behaviour. The gendered meanings, behaviours and effects thus reproduced include appropriate and (re)productive economic behaviour, assumptions of economic growth and stability and appropriately ‘economic’ formations of financial transactions and human behaviour. These are intrinsically gendered, while presented as universal and neutral.


‘Inclusion’ and ‘Progress’ In 1997, at the World Bank’s Annual Meeting in Hong Kong, then Bank President James Wolfensohn gave a speech entitled ‘The Challenge of Inclusion’, in which he claimed the Bank was seeking to take ‘the pulse of development firsthand’. As evidence of the Bank’s interest in the ‘disadvantaged’, he went on to register specific concern for ‘women’s issues’, the environment, health and the impact of macroeconomic reform. This, for Wolfensohn, was what the ‘challenge of development’, as he termed it, was all about: ‘inclusion. Bringing people into society who have never been part of it before’. This last sentence is an interesting but also a troubling statement. ‘Society’ is here an essentially uncontested site of exclusion, embodying an apparently unproblematic insider/outsider duality writ large. The ‘disadvantaged’ have, of course, always been a constituent part of ‘society’, but they have most certainly been excluded from the processes and practices of development policy-making. That the Bank appears a passive bystander in such processes is disingenuous at the very least. As O’Brien et al. point out, the course of policy-based lending on which the Bank is set, and the ensuing influence the Bank wields over how loans are spent, give it a powerful position in setting the terms of development policy discourses (2000: 25). As such, the Bank is certainly no passive observer of ‘society’. Bank discourse, as I have mentioned before, is based on ‘development’ defined as a reduction in aggregate levels of national poverty. The Bank measures poverty according to the number of people living on US$2 a day. The Bank works to reduce poverty by ‘promoting growth to create economic opportunities’ and ‘helping poor people to take advantages of these opportunities’ (http://www.worldbank.org). Measurements of economic growth are, therefore, entirely central to the Bank’s own conceptualisation of whether, as a development organisation, it is effective or not. The conception of ‘progress’ fundamental to the Bank’s discourse (based as it is on the number of people ‘lifted out’ of poverty each year) is a positivist and universal one, but also dependent on partial and ethnocentric ideals of human behaviour, as embodied in poor people’s willingness and ability to ‘take advantage’ of economic opportunities. So effectively has this ideal been sedimented in the policies and practices of development that great swathes of the world’s population currently structure the limits of their ideas about (human) possibility, progress and achievement accordingly.

150


Privatisation and flexibilisation Abstract assumptions, such as progress as economic growth, development as capital creation and economic and scientific ‘value neutrality’, exclude, silence and delegitimise all forms of enquiry that might wish to label themselves ‘value specific’. In the first instance, they help reproduce a form of male-as-norm androcentricity, perpetuating only ‘what men define [or have defined] as economics’ (Peterson 2005: 501). Secondly, and in relation to this, they render all inquiry beyond that which White men have defined as economics as entirely illegitimate and essentially antithetical to ‘rigorous’ economic enquiry. Similarly, neoliberalism’s focus on privatisation is discursively articulated as the only effective means of reducing the scope of state action. Herein is embodied not only a ‘confidence in the use of private finance in public projects’, but more generally a confidence ‘in the allocative efficiency of market and quasi-market mechanisms in the provision of public goods’ (Hay 2004: 507–508). State and market appear here as mutually constitutive, and the purpose of the ‘fact’ of their mutual constitution is the creation of spaces designated as public but privately controlled and managed for private purposes. Such abstraction, and therein the forceful disembodiment of once-public space, not only allows for the marketisation of all areas of social life but also legitimises the exclusion of those already excluded from the control and management of ‘private’ capital. Consider also that the need for a flexible labour market, well entrenched in neoliberal doctrine, is a discursive trope reproduced because it is an effective means to militate against ‘human capital formation’. Reproduction of the ‘fact’ of flexibilisation only further reifies the necessity that the state moves ‘to further restrict the rights of trade unions in pursuit of a cheap and flexible workforce’ (Elias 2004: 62). Flexibilisation (which is always articulated as an inherently positive attribute in neoliberal discourses) is worth considering further, since it refers not only to a type of organisation of production (technologically dynamic and highly flexible) but also a compatible form of macroeconomic coordination (mass consumption society). Both of these are characteristically body-less types of flexibility in neoliberal discourse. Indeed, the first type of neoliberal flexibility, used specifically to refer solely to a mode of production, explicitly avoids any focus on workers themselves. Rather, the important thing here is how effectively firms use ‘flexible capital equipment’ so as ‘to produce a constantly changing variety of goods’ (e.g. Storper 1994). Where flexibilisation is used to refer to the flexibility of the labour market itself, the language tends to remain equally abstract, with industries considered


flexible when they efficiently balance competition and cooperation among firms (‘cooperation’, because it is assumed that learned social practices and more formal rules travel with the labour market). Hence, a labour market’s value lies in its transitory nature, not in those who people it. Through an intrinsic reliance on abstract, neoliberal categories of analysis, there is, of course, no room to ask who ends up doing this kind of low cost, low wage work, how workers experience the ‘transitory nature’ of their employment, nor how they might find (or be prevented from providing) their own solutions to ever lowering wages, since human social existence has no meaning beyond such abstract organising concepts as labour and capital ‘flexibility’, or ‘low cost production’. Neoliberalism and its advocates have long argued that trade and labour unions are the antithesis of a free, competitive market. Milton Friedman, for example, suggested that trade and labour unions have a distorting and monopolising effect on the labour market, artificially elevating the cost of labour in some areas while cheapening labour in others (1962: 124). Similarly, Von Hayek stated that the power of trade unions to prevent unemployment and wage depreciations can only ‘interfere with the most productive use of our resources’. A ‘maximum of employment’ is possible in the short run, he argues, but only at the expense of sound monetary policy. ‘Some unemployment’ is, on the other hand, highly advantageous since it raises the productivity of labour through a subtle decrease in the proportion of the working population (Von Hayek 1944: 213–214). As Hay articulates (2004), a defence of labour market flexibility is closely allied, in neoliberal discourse, to the promotion and nurturing of cost competitiveness. One is impossible without the other and each are mutually constitutive, since markets cannot promote cost competitiveness without a ready-made pool of labour willing to work at prices that will keep costs low. This ‘fact’ of the need for a flexible, willing pool of labour conceals the incredibly invasive state measures that have progressively eroded the power of the trade union, in particular since the 1980s. It would thus be a mistake to overstate the laissez-faire credentials of economic theories that are justifiably famed for their focus upon individual, political and economic freedom (Rüstow and Von Hayek’s neoclassical liberalism, e.g., or Washington Consensus rationality). Government intervention in obstructing workers’ attempts to organise, while superficially antithetical to liberal doctrine, has played a key role in so-called ‘globalisation’, ‘FDI’ and the ascendance of the Multinational Corporation

152


(see, e.g., Elias 2004). Much as the neoliberal project of deregulation, or the attempt to free the market from the potential tyranny of national states, explicitly depends on the intervention of the state, for example, to remove tariff barriers and subsidies and ensure the optimum mobility of capital, so flexibilisation has relied on a state willing to court foreign investment while dismantling the organising potential of its workforce, since the deregulation of exchange rates requires an institutional investment and form of executive action that is highly regulatory, as does the enforcement of trade liberalisation, privatisation and the revision of tax and property laws. As entirely supportive, and reproductive, of neoliberal rationality, the World Bank actively intervenes in the intimate minutiae of people’s lives. In February 2007, for example, the World Bank’s representative in Montenegro suggested that, As difficult and divisive as [labour market] reforms might be, policymakers must not dodge the decision and adapt the labour market to prevailing realities . . . Firms’ decisions of whether or not to hire follow an inherent economic logic – and if the labour costs cannot be reduced in instances of sluggish demand and low profits, they will hesitate to recruit even in periods of high demand and large profits. (Olters 2007) With the priority here clearly to the firm and not to the worker, there is not even the hint of a suggestion that human rights exceed profit maximisation. The recourse to the ‘inherent economic logic’ of firms, however, both naturalises the role of the corporation in ‘development’ and sediments the assumption that private capital is the only means by which an entire country might normally compete on the international market. To rephrase Polanyi (1944), neither in the nineteenth or the twenty-first century can the notion of a self-regulating market be considered ‘natural’. The effects of economic restructuring on the workforces and populations involved have been dramatic, but rarely documented in neoliberal accounts. As Benería articulates, these policies may have ‘increased the economic freedom of many actors involved in the functioning of markets’, but they have also depended on ‘the use of a strong hand on the part of national governments and international institutions to build the neoliberal model of late twentieth century’ (2003a: 71). The actors whose freedom has increased are invariably of a national and


global elite far removed from the Montenegrin fabric cutter at the local garment factory. Reproducing appropriate women, men and economic behaviour in Bank discourse The ‘reality’ that Bank discourse reproduces, that ‘development’ can be measured via a progressional axis of economic growth, is predicated, prescribed and reproduced through particular meanings, behaviours and human identities. The unspoken assertion of normative heterosexuality in Bank discourse as essential to economic growth predicates heterosexuality as essential to productive economic behaviour, circumscribing appropriate life narratives or social identities accordingly. In particular, the Bank contributes to the promulgation of heterosexuality as the basis for, as Bedford articulates, a ‘two-partner model of love and labour wherein women work more and men care better’ (Bedford 2005: 295). Bank practices, and the discursive articulations that result, are gendered because they are sexually configured. That is, they are predicated, pre/proscribed and reproduced according to a heteronormative discursive framework, one that regulates persons, and the identities best suited to govern, and be governed in, the GPE, according to a logic of compulsory heterosexuality. Such a logic, ever-present but rarely spoken, constitutes, in a tacit but vital way, the means by which the world is made sense of, and the identities, behaviours and meanings best suited to succeed in the GPE. One effect, in Bank discourse in particular, of this discursive regulation is that, in articulating the oppositions ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ as the expressive attributes of ‘male’ and ‘female’, ‘sex’ is then asserted as true only where it is affirmed as biologically reproductive, and ‘gender’ where it is heterosexual. Having historically always presented the ‘definitively human’ activity of economic production as a characteristically masculine activity, neoliberal discourses have consigned both non-men and non-masculine persons to the spheres of non-productive or reproductive labour, where they are thus situated outside the society of male producers. Consolidating the opposition of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ as the sole carriers of human identity, the heteronormativity of the Bank’s neoliberalism is such that ‘men’ and ‘women’ exist only in terms of their reproductive relation to each other and the wider market society. Bank discourse, therefore, is able to order and regulate people according to hierarchical and heterosexual binaries of sex and gender, based on men’s ‘natural’ inclination towards the productive economy against women’s

154


essentially reproductive inclinations (see Griffin 2007b). This has several key effects in terms of the Bank’s development policy-making: • Women, considered primarily reproductive, are perceived to embody only a limited market rationality; • Men, considered primarily productive, are taught to perform according to the desirable constraints of an economic discourse predicated on White, Western, ‘rational’ and entrepreneurial masculinity;1 • Those who cannot or choose not to adhere to the above are marginalised and/or excluded from development policy-making, which effectively cannot ‘see’ them. The ‘reality’ of Economic Man in Bank discourse, as for neoliberal discourses elsewhere, is modelled on a White, Western and elite form of masculinity, such that Economic Man is reproduced as the ‘natural’ economic actor. Women are articulated as quite differently behaved in the market sphere (e.g. Stern 2001; World Bank 2001e). Next to the illustration chosen to lead the Bank’s Gender and Development website in September 2006 (depicting a set of scales balancing female and male symbols at either side), the Bank had stated, in a theoretical manoeuvre that proposes the special consideration of women’s essentially different and nurturing role in the market, Half of the world’s population is female, hence, the extent to which women and girls benefit from development policies and programs has a major impact on countries overall development success. Research also shows that women and girls tend to work harder than men, are more likely to invest their earnings in their children, are major producers as well as consumers, and shoulder critical, life-sustaining responsibilities without which men and boys could not survive much less enjoy high levels of productivity. Women’s empowerment is particularly important for determining a country’s demographic trends – trends that in turn affects its economic success and environmental sustainability. (http://worldbank.org, September 2006. Emphasis added) Gender in Bank discourse thus equates to a highly fixed and binary notion of sex, with ‘matters of gender equity’ pertaining to such issues as ‘women’s’ and ‘girl’s’ education, ‘women’s’ health and ‘women’s’ productivity (e.g. World Bank 1999a, 1999b, 2001d, 2006b). ‘Productivity’ in the above statement is reserved for men and boys (as soon-to-be-men). Women ‘produce’, but their productive role is viewed


as a result of their essentially nurturing propensities, and their work is concerned primarily with the well-being of family members. Consolidating the opposition of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ as the sole carriers of human identity, the heteronormativity of the Bank’s neoliberalism is such that ‘men’ and ‘women’ exist only in terms of their reproductive relation to each other and the wider market society. Without the hierarchical heterosexuality of the above statement, binaries of sex and gender would make little sense, and the cultural intelligibility of women and man would be effectively much harder to regulate. The standard of normalisation, in Bank discourse, is not only gendered but also heteronormative, based on men’s ‘natural’ inclination towards the productive economy against women’s essentially reproductive inclinations. Where the Bank does explicitly discuss ‘gender’, the illustrations shown typically consist only of women and/or children. As the Bank itself points out in a 2002 OED/IEG Report, its limited ‘gender awareness’ stretches no further than ‘sectors related to education, population, and social protection’ (World Bank 2002b: 4). In relation ‘to private sector development, small or medium sized enterprises, or public sector management’ the report found ‘no consideration of women’s/gender issues’. For the World Bank, prioritizing work in the economic sectors ‘will give gender issues more traction’. (World Bank, quoting James Adams, Vice President of the OPCVP, 2006c: 1) In overtly situating gender, not at the core of economics, but in the ‘reproductive economy’ of women’s unpaid labour, the Bank again thus invokes a highly regulatory and exclusionary gendered hierarchy wherein women exist outside the productive economy, while men, and even those traditionally excluded from the neoliberal market, assume a more natural, and normal, position therein. Women can, of course, enter into the productive economy in Bank work, but, as I have shown, they must do so on fundamentally different terms, as ‘natural’ caregivers and reproductive providers. The reduction of gender analysis to ‘women’s issues’ instigates the added tendency of reifying the female body as intrinsically vulnerable and subject to the authority of others (i.e., men, who are assumed to hold more power than women), thus denying women agency in their own lives but also making of their (highly various and multiple) bodies a ‘problem’ to be remedied and overcome.

156


The Bank presumes, for example, that young women are more vulnerable to sex in exchange for money (World Bank 2008a), but target the remedy not in terms of the wider neoliberal economic dictates young women are forced to operate within but in terms of women’s levels of education concerning sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and ‘risktaking behaviours’. In many countries, the Bank states, girls ‘do not gain the capacities or the skills to actively engage in the formal work sector’. Higher levels of education have, however, ‘shown to be highly correlated with less risky sexual behaviour’ (World Bank 2008b). Young men, on the other hand, are assumed to ‘seek’ sexual partners, such that the counteraction of ‘risky behaviour’ rests with their ability to seek information as the ‘sex’ that is taught to be ‘self-reliant’ and ‘knowledgeable’ (World Bank 2008c). Here, men have a degree of agency and power denied women, regardless of the specificity of social circumstance (young men are also frequently trafficked or forced into prostitution, but the Bank, apparently, has no concern with this). Crucially, women always appear in Bank work not only as always potentially vulnerable, they also appear invariably as reproductive and, therefore, heterosexual. Where the Bank examines homosexuality or bisexuality (which is not, at the moment, very often), it does so overwhelmingly through analysis of men (e.g. Barker and Ricardo 2005). The diversity of women’s sexual behaviours, practices and identities receives no mention. Importantly, however, although men’s sexuality warrants greater attention in Bank policy discourse (at least, compared to women’s) and although the Bank considers that some men do struggle with their sexuality, not only are women portrayed as entirely heterosexual, but most men in Bank discourse also continue to appear as such, with non-heterosexual behaviours, practices and possibilities marginalised from policy-making discourse, if not entirely excluded.

Reproducing heterosexual (economic) viability in Bank discourse The discursive separation of ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ is a power-laden, binary discursive practice designed, in Bank discourse, to bring coherence, unity and intelligibility to the figure of the neoliberal person. This separation is both an artificial and an intentionally disciplinary one, the apparent coherence of ‘sex’, ‘gender’, ‘sexuality’ and ‘sexual practice’ predicated, prescribed and reproduced by prohibitive and disciplinary discursive practices articulated in reference to a cultural order of compulsory heterosexuality. Neoliberal discourse articulates human identities


through apparently coherent gender norms in which the oppositions ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ can only be understood as the expressive attributes of ‘male’ and ‘female’. ‘Gender’ thus becomes a ‘true’ expression of ‘sex’, centred on the myth of economic manhood, that is, successful human behaviour modelled on an abstractly masculine identity. The Bank reproduces heteronormativity in its prescriptions for the developing world by privileging reproductive heterosexuality as the only functional form of sex. Not only does the Bank privilege heterosexuality, but, in its (understated) exclusion of all other possibilities, it also embeds heterosexuality as imperative to economic development, imbuing the politics of development with the tacit moral rightness that heterosexuality embodies in Western discourse. In creating ‘woman’ and ‘man’ as immediate and pre-given categories, beyond question and belonging to a ‘natural order’ of biologically determined physicality, Bank discourse regulates persons according to an implicit assumption of reproductive heterosexuality. People are thus, according to the Bank, only culturally intelligible according to their heterosexually reproductive function; they are only coherent according to the hierarchical (compulsory) heterosexuality that orders the binaries of sex and gender on which Bank discourse depends.

Homosexuality and bisexuality in Bank work The use of sexuality as an analytical concept extends, as Bedford argues, beyond discussion of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender issues to consider the ways in which heterosexuality as ‘unmarked’ (i.e., thoroughly normalised) is (re)produced in changing forms by political actors (2005: 296). The Bank tacitly, but not explicitly, genders its development discourse by rationalising, privileging and normalising heterosexuality as universal. ‘Homosexuality’ and ‘bisexuality’ appear very occasionally in Bank analysis, although they remain consistently marginal and underexplored avenues of enquiry. Where the Bank examines homosexuality or bisexuality, it does so overwhelmingly through analysis of men, as in one Bank-sponsored analysis of young men, masculinity and HIV/AIDS in SSA (Barker and Ricardo 2005). Here, young men display particular ‘patterns of risk behaviours’, including, for example, acquiring multiple sexual partners before marriage, displaying an ‘aggressive’ heterosexuality, substance abuse and/or engaging in gang and other forms of organised violence. These risk behaviours plus the multiple constructions of

158


manhood in Africa and the relationship that these constructions have with gender hierarchies suggest ‘that young men play a key role in shaping the future of the epidemic’. This point is certainly true, and African men’s sexuality certainly worth considering. Barker and Ricardo thus comment on the ‘widespread denial, stigmatization and condemnation of homosexuality throughout Africa’ (2005: 21). They comment that, although often referred to as ‘un-African’, and sometimes classified as illegal, ethnographic research has shown a variety of accepted cultural practices, many of which point to non-heterosexual forms of arrangement. They point to only ‘limited research on same-sex attraction’ in Africa, which shows that, Male-to-male sex is more common than assumed and . . . often, young men might have sexual experiences with other men, without necessarily considering themselves of a non-heterosexual orientation. (Barker and Ricardo, citing Kiama 1999, ibid) Barker and Ricardo’s research does not represent a formal World Bank publication, and neither author is numbered among Bank staff (the authors are employed by the Instituto Promundo in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil). It would, then, be unfair to assume that this report speaks for the Bank, although it is certainly supported and sponsored by the Bank. The analysis shows consideration and care for the multiple ways it is conceivable to ‘be a man’ in Africa, and for this should be commended. The report points to how, for many African men (particularly low income, urban-based men), the language that their society deploys to refer to them is often pejorative: they might, for example, in Sierra Leone be referred to as ‘rarray boys’ (footloose youth), or in Nigeria they may be called ‘jaguda’ (crook) or ‘area’ boys, and in East Africa ‘bayaye’ (rogue people). Less pejoratively, the South African term ‘young lions’ has been used to refer to those (often revered but sometimes considered out of control) young men involved in violent methods of overthrowing the apartheid regime (Barker and Ricardo 2005: 2). For analysis that seeks to assert the need for and provide, however, a ‘more sophisticated gender analysis’, women constitute a remarkably unproblematic and uniformly heterosexual category, in both Barker and Ricardo’s report and in Bank discourse more generally. Their remit is, of course, to analyse young men and the construction of masculinity in SSA and so, to a point, women’s sexuality is arguably irrelevant. It is, however, virtually impossible to speak meaningfully of the construction of gendered identity without speaking of society as a whole.


Thus, the authors do frequently refer to women and girls, particularly in relation to violence, coercion and negotiated sexual practice. Same-sex attraction as it concerns women and girls would undoubtedly figure in those ‘sexual encounters in Africa that are invisible or hidden’ (ibid: 21), but there remains crucial (and long overdue) work to be done in outlining those that are not invisible or that speak to Africa’s small but by no means non-existent gay movements. Having analysed a number of Bank documents, however, I have still yet to find evidence of any study of women’s homosexuality and/or bisexuality, nor how these might contribute to or challenge gender hierarchies and the spread of HIV/AIDS. Analyses of various and culturally specific practices of masculinity are a vital ingredient to any gender analysis. The implication, however, of Bank work in this area is that manhood automatically associates with ‘masculinity’, as a discursively restrictive and regulatory category. This, in turn, reinforces the binarity and essential physicality of sex and its causal relationship with gender. Gender, for the Bank, depends on the idea that performative behaviour attached to ‘sex’ somehow prescribes human identity. The Bank’s neoliberalism prescribes certain forms of practice and behaviour according to values ordered by a logic of compulsory heterosexuality, where ‘sex’ produces the ‘sexual’ to revolve around the signifier of ‘sexuality’ as heterosexuality. Gender then, however culturally constructed, cannot but be produced according to the sexual binaries on to which it is mapped. Thus, masculine/feminine become the crude gender vessels of male/female. The Bank’s descriptions of men’s sexual agency in direct opposition to women’s apparent lack of sexual exploration assume both that masculinity follows from manhood and also that women are little more than the passive conduits of men’s sexual appetites. According to Bank analysis, women do not, it seems, initiate sexual activity, nor indeed do they appear in Bank discourse as anything other than (reproductively) heterosexual. Hence, although the World Bank expresses a politics of women’s empowerment, it is a discourse very much reliant upon a public/private dichotomy that serves to initiate policy to further objectify the female body. The lack of analysis of homosexuality and/or bisexuality among girls or women suggests that women are considered only heterosexual. Men’s sexuality, on the other hand, warrants greater attention, and although some men appear to struggle with their sexuality, they appear in Bank discourse as overwhelmingly heterosexual. Not only this, but women are represented in Bank discourse as essentially reproductive and always potentially vulnerable.

160


The Bank’s predication of gender identity The first part of the reproduction of (heteronormative) heterosexuality in the Bank’s neoliberal discourse depends on its predication of suitably neoliberal identity(ies) (those identities that the Bank’s discourse asserts as true). Predication is a process actualised through the heteronormative discursive structures from which a heterosexual regulatory ideal is reproduced. The Bank’s neoliberalism is highly normative, in Butler’s sense of the world, in that it is a locus for practices that normalise heterosexuality. ‘Economic’ actions, therefore, make sense (i.e., they are only socially intelligible) within a gendered framework where masculine and feminine, and man and woman, have been produced and naturalised in relation to each other. As Butler articulates, the insistence on the binary of man and woman is ‘a regulatory operation of power that naturalises the hegemonic instance’ (2004: 43. Emphasis in original). Bank discourse perpetuates itself and its ability to govern by actively regulating the formation of the ‘normal’, economically active and functionally reproductive person through its implicit reliance on a logic of heterosexuality, where men and women produce, economically, and reproduce, heterosexually. Through the articulation of ‘intelligible genders’, the Bank’s discourse systematically forms the identities of subjects and objects of which it speaks. In the preamble to the 2006 World Development Report (WDR), the Bank asks whether ‘inequalities’ matter, and to what extent it is possible to ‘reduce them in ways which, rather than harming economic efficiency and growth, may indeed help promote them’ (World Bank 2005c). In defining ‘equity’, a report outline states that the forthcoming WDR will conceptualise equity as ‘equality of opportunities’ (their emphasis), that is ‘equality in the capability (or freedom) of different individuals to pursue a life of their choosing’ (World Bank 2004b: 1). The assumption that ‘individuals’ are both ready and willing to seize, or at least try to seize, their opportunities as ‘citizens of the world’ who are already familiar with the workings of the market is, however, both an ethnocentric and a gendered one. The Bank constructs ‘individuals’ as market actors waiting to be liberated (through market ‘opportunity’) from the social inequalities that hamper their access to education, resources and opportunity. Gender herein quite broadly approximates the differences between men and women as actors attempting to overcome ‘different opportunities owing to differences in their status, power and influence within society’ (ibid). The Bank does not necessarily consider men and women functionally similar individuals, instead


(tacitly) predicating the ‘individual’ as normatively masculine. The Bank does, however, advocate that women can be inculcated with a limited rationality such that they operate as better workers, with men, as Bedford eloquently articulates, encouraged to do more at home when their wives move into the labour force (2005: 295). ‘Initiatives to empower women’ thus might ensure some ‘growth’ and ‘opportunity’ as women take on productive work more frequently (World Bank 2003b). Women’s ‘identity’, however, is persistently premised on a perceived misalignment with the market, a structure with which they are assumed to be inherently unfamiliar and which requires that they be ‘educated’ in to. Inequalities between genders are considered by the Bank one of the major hampers to equity and economic efficiency, with the primary issues of concern household allocation of labour between men and women, ‘customary restrictions’ on girls’ schooling and access to credit (World Bank 2004b: 2). The Bank is entirely unconcerned with challenging the assumption that women bear responsibility for the household and their children’s education. It simply advises that there are two genders and that these are essentially different (represented by ‘men’ and ‘women’), but, that by improving equity and allowing individuals the opportunities to function within the market to their best advantage, poverty can be alleviated. Interestingly, the Bank states that its concern for equality of opportunities also involves consideration of inequalities in ‘recognition’ of individual’s ‘status, power and influence’ within the society (ibid: 1). The Bank is not saying that actual inequalities of status, power and influence ought to be eradicated, and it argues explicitly that ‘equality of outcome’ is not the concern of an equity-based policy. It is, however, saying that by recognising, and thus to some degree accepting, these inequalities, which are a ‘fact of life’, the ‘workings of the investment environment’ and the ‘empowerment of the poor’ can be improved. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the single most important issue in most of the countries we are dealing with is the enfranchisement of women. I have seen that everywhere: from urban slums to rural villages, to new governments created after struggles where women have been part of the campaigns. It is so clear that if you do not deal with the questions of women’s education, women’s opportunity and women’s rights, you simply cannot have effective development. (Wolfensohn, quoted in World Bank 1999a)

162


‘Women’, as an apparently intelligible gender, constitute, across Bank discourse and policy-making, an entirely coherent and homogenous group. The statement, for example, that in ‘no region do women and men have equal rights’ (World Bank 2001c) tells us not how regions vary and how ‘rights’ are held differently, only that ‘women’ and ‘men’ ought to be considered functionally incommensurate categories. A Bank publication on Participatory Poverty Assessments constructs a particularly narrow range of gendered possibilities, stating that ‘poor men’ identified ‘transportation, farming, and drunkenness’ as particular relevant to poverty assessment, while ‘poor women’ identified ‘food shortages, lack of clean water, and illness’ (Robb 2002: xxviii). Here both women’s and men’s only intelligible gender exists in reference to their assumed sex, in tandem with the assumption that men are concerned primarily with the public sector (and are the chief breadwinners), women with the private. Similarly, the comment that ‘there is a decrease in the level of corruption as the number of women in public office increases’ asserts as true in all times and in all cases that women’s and men’s political ‘styles’ are essentially different. The report from which this statement came goes on to claim that women ‘have shied away from power because it has always meant control, domination and manipulation. Power needs to be redefined in order for women to claim it’ (World Bank 2001b: 4). Some Bank staff would no doubt be troubled by this problematic view of women’s nature, but it is nonetheless a view that is widespread and deeply embedded in Bank discourse, and suggests that women, as a singular group, exist fundamentally outside of the sphere of politics and governance, or that their ‘growth reserves’ are ‘hidden’ in certain economies (2001d: 1). To argue, for example, that politics and governance ‘will change when women engage in public discourse and play a significant part in decision-making’ is to propose a particular arrangement of women as always exogenous to the ‘public’ sphere of power and authority (World Bank 2001b: 4–5). Such a statement also suggests, even more problematically, that women choose not to engage in public discourse, nor play a significant part in decision-making. Characterised (in an aggregate category) as fundamentally alien to the public face of economics and politics, women are also then ‘hidden’, ‘unexploited’ and occupying a position only of potential advantage to the ‘overall effectiveness of development’. Not assumed to ‘naturally’ inhabit the market arena, women and girls may or may not add value to the market, depending on how successfully a society encourages them to seize their economic ‘opportunity’. The most successful developing economies learn to make best use of women’s potential


economic productivity as a kind of added market bonus, but their work is not assumed to be already implicated in the promulgation of the free market, nor are measurements deploying broader calculations of ‘productivity’ advocated. Nicholas Stern comments, for example, that ‘the active participation of women, whether in education, income generation, social protection, or governance, contributes to more effective economic development’ (2001: 2), as if women not only can participate only passively, what ever this might consist of, but that they invariably do. It is, therefore, one Bank predication that women are not in and of themselves naturally programmed to contribute to the efficiency/ productivity of the market. The second one is that they will not contribute to the efficiency/productivity of the market unless they embody a partially rational actor role (partial in the sense that they continue to remain domestically reproductive). The third one is that women must be encouraged to enter the realm of the market in order to aid economic growth, which is itself dependent on the smooth and free functioning of the market. There is no question here that ‘men’ need to be encouraged to enter the market, since it is assumed (but not asserted) that men are already in the market. Accordingly, since we cannot assume that women are always already present in the market, the Bank asserts as true that the market is almost entirely a manly endeavour, more attuned to men’s needs, behaviours and actions, which are essentially rational, since there is no question here that the individual most capable in the market arena acts rationally. The (flawed) concern then is that men, although more accustomed to the operations of market, are increasingly exhibiting a careless recklessness with their unequal share of resources, and ought to have at least some of this share diverted to women who, as guardians of hearth and home, will display far more frugality in their dealings (Stern 2001: 2).

The Bank’s pre/proscription of gender identity The second part of the gendered configuration of Bank discourse involves discursive practices of pre/proscription. The predication and the pre/proscription of human (gendered) identity are particularly closely linked, since the assertion of ‘truth’ and the prescription of an appropriate response (and proscription of an inappropriate one) are mutually constitutive. Neoliberalism’s discursive processes of predication affirm that if its basic ‘facts’ are true then so also are the conclusions it derives from

164


them: it asserts causality and through causality, it prescribes ‘truth’. Such basic facts, for the Bank, constitute the most elemental levels of its rationality; that development is essentially economic development (e.g. World Bank 2001c: 2); that the market is a naturally distributive social mechanism; that individuals are in essence economically productive (and reproductive); and that ‘poverty’ is an arbitrary measurement that can be eradicated through greater ‘economic efficiency’. Hence, people’s essential productivity is eroded through bad governance, but can be enhanced by marketisation strategies embedded in a discourse of good governance: the smoother the functioning of the market the happier a society. Delineating ‘the terms of intelligibility whereby a particular “reality” can be known and acted upon’ (Doty 1996: 6), Bank discourse draws very clear boundaries around the appropriate and desirable human subject. This is effected through a language of economic ‘knowledge’ discursively produced as ‘truth’, where meanings and identities are projected as commonsensical and correspondent with a pre-ordained, discursively constituted, economic reality. This reality is invariably linked to processes and practices of economic production, such that real life can be essentially divided into ‘inputs’ (such as manual labour and/or technology) and ‘outputs’ (or end productivity). Stern, for example, argues that a simple examination of the evidence for agricultural productivity in developing economies finds that, since ‘women’ tend to use fewer household resources at the input level, ‘unequal allocations of productive resources by gender are inefficient’. That is, where men are allowed greater resources these should be shifted to women because their ‘marginal productivity’ is higher than men’s (Stern 2001: 3). Here, a deceptively simple analysis of economic ‘fact’ belies a series of assumptions, truths and discursive practices that prescribe economic viability and proscribe inefficient action. Stern is not asserting that men are incapable of acting productively or reproductively, but he is saying that women are intrinsically attuned to the reproductive process as naturally more reliable and ‘sensible’ individuals, since they are primarily responsible for ‘child schooling’ and ‘nutritional status’. This is a statement of apparent social ‘reality’ that underlies the preordained economic ‘reality’ of the primacy of production. It matters less, according to this rationality, that the analyst generalises about ‘women’ and ‘men’, since both categories are understood within a framework of macroeconomic rationality that is primarily concerned with increasing the margins of productivity. Any behaviour exterior to this reality thus becomes by nature intrinsically irrational.


The clearest neoliberal prescription here is, then, that men and women (who must be ‘encouraged’, as a disadvantaged group) ‘seize their opportunity’ and function in the market. This prescription necessarily proscribes all those who do not ‘seize their opportunity’ and become market actors. These people simply do not exist in Bank language. Not only is the market assumed to be inherently beneficial, but appropriate people are also assumed inherently market-willing and able.

The Bank’s reproduction of gender identity The third and final part of the sexual configuration of Bank discourse involves discursive practices of reproduction. Bank discourse and the practices it institutes are highly productive of meanings, identities, representations, narratives, myths and of the contexts within which these are constructed and reconstructed. They are reproductive in that they perpetuate both neoliberalism’s authority to govern and the identities of subject and self most conducive to being governed. The Bank thus simultaneously produces a world of economic viability, issuing policy while prescribing the appropriate response, and reproduces its own discursive relations of power, in ways that are highly performative, immediately producing the identities required to initiate successful outcomes, and then reproducing these identities while perpetuating the authority to govern. Certain categories, appropriate vocabulary, behaviours, identities, circumstances, definitions and relationships are reproduced through language in which the appropriate response is immediately prescribed. ‘The things that are said’ exist denotatively, as pronouncements of authority, pre/proscriptively, as commands and prohibitions, but above all as performative utterances, transforming identity through the words that are rendered. In this way, the Bank’s neoliberalism actively and continually predicates, prescribes and reproduces a pre-ordained ‘reality’ to which individuals must fit by redefining their behaviour. Social relations, as described by the Bank, are based entirely on the foundation of the market. Bank discourse reproduces the assumption that, all things being equal, the neoliberal market is an essentially sound and reliable distributive mechanism. Should all things not be equal, the market is maintained as a fundamentally, and eventually, sound and reliable distributive mechanism (e.g. World Bank 1989). In terms of gendered norms, the Bank reproduces the assumption that functionally, men and women are the similar enough such that they aspire to function profitably within the mechanism of the market, but that

166


they are biologically different enough such that women may always be considered reproductive and also vulnerable. This may not seem, on the surface, to be the worst assumption the Bank can make about people: it is, nonetheless, a dangerously fixed and limiting classification of men and women’s essential difference but complementarity, confining all people to incredibly narrow parameters of what they might do and where they might achieve most. Fundamentally then, what is being produced is power, and the meanings that complement relations of power. As Doty argues, this ‘is not the kind of power that preexisting social actors possess and use’. Rather, ‘it is a kind of power that produces meanings, subject identities, their interrelationships, and a range of imaginable conduct’ (1996: 4). The individual human subject, and therefore its identity and sense of self, is rendered coherent through specific categories of the economic, in particular the rationality of profit-maximisation. The power of the Bank’s discourse is to make certain cultural exchanges seem so natural as to be beyond refute, naturalising the contingency of economic discourse through meanings that are projected as commonsensical, coherent and correspondent to the exterior economic ‘reality’ they are said to equate with.

Gender equality as ‘Smart Economics’ In its 2006 Action Plan (‘Gender Equality as Smart Economics’), the Bank suggests that the world is ‘falling behind in its commitment to meet MDG3’ and, therefore, that ‘there is a need to recapture the Beijing momentum and reenergize the gender agenda’ (2006c: 1). Gender mainstreaming, the Action Plan argues, is ‘a sound and viable strategy’ but ‘has to be made more operationally relevant and more focused on results’. The Bank claims that, for ‘participation in all markets’, interventions that ‘increase the compatibility between women’s productive and reproductive roles are key’ (ibid: 6). The Bank is clearly constrained by a certain ‘time frame’ for its Action Plan, namely, the achievement of the third Millennium Development Goal, which is the elimination of ‘gender disparity in primary and secondary education’ no later than 2015. This is measured through ratios of girls to boys in primary, secondary and tertiary education, ratios of literate women to men, the share of women in wage employment in the non-agricultural sector and the proportion of seats held by women in national parliament. Given the urgency of the Bank’s time frame here, the Action Plan purposefully


overlooks those interventions focused on ‘human capital variables’, or ‘family, social and cultural factors that affect women’s access to and participation in . . . markets’, since these factors can only affect women’s ‘economic empowerment’ in the medium and long term (ibid). Part of the Bank’s overall strategy here is to make women’s ‘contributions to the economy visible’. In Africa, this translates into strengthening ‘women’s contribution to shared growth’; in East Asia and the Pacific, into researching ‘women’s migrant labour (both domestic and international) labour market policies, and the determinants of women’s economic and political empowerment’; in Europe and Central Asia, into increasing ‘the access of women entrepreneurs to commercial credit’; in Latin America and the Caribbean, into making ‘the business case for engendering national development’; in the Middle East and North Africa, into advancing ‘the region’s ongoing efforts to provide women with access to public resources, jobs and benefits, and assets’, and; in South Asia, into understanding ‘the interaction between gender and other features of social exclusion’ (2006c: 7–8). ‘Equity’ and ‘prosperity’, the Bank argues, ‘are complementary’. Market failures in key markets mean that resources are not allocated where returns are highest, and many of these market failures are gender related. Making key markets work in more gender-equitable ways can significantly raise women’s productivity and incomes and contribute to economic growth. (World Bank 2006c: 14) A ‘key challenge’ in promoting ‘gender equality’, the Bank notes, is the ‘poor and limited availability of sex-disaggregated statistics’. That is, although indicators detailing, for example, wage differentials in formal employment are ‘relatively easy to measure’, those detailing gender differences in informal sector earnings and productivity ‘require more effort’ (ibid: 15). The Bank is not clear on how it will approach ‘informal measurements’, simply that research and statistics will be ‘improved’ through ‘better’ research and an ‘increased number of sex-disaggregated impact evaluations of Bank interventions’. Slipping between ‘gender inequalities’ and ‘sex-disaggregated statistics’, there is little scope for the Bank here to focus on ‘informal economy’ productivity, since, as the Bank states, prioritising gender in the ‘economic sectors’, not the ‘social sectors’, is key to increasing women’s productive output. While ‘some “general” interventions’ will benefit both women and men’, the interventions provided in the Action

168


Plan are ‘focused solely on women’ (2006c: 5), thus configuring women (and women’s ‘invisibility’) as both a problem in and also a solution to economic development. Although the Bank claims to acknowledge that ‘human agency’ is a ‘core concept’ in the development process, however, and that certain ‘unfreedoms’ constrain individual choice, the legitimisation of the exclusion of ‘non-economic’ sectors only further reifies the lack of individual choice women will experience, targeted as they will be through measures designed, for example, to offer commercial credit lines and financial services for women, or provide information to women entrepreneurs on potential export markets and trade agreements and introduce legislation promoting women’s employment (World Bank 2006c: 5). The Bank suggests that its ‘more succinct’ definition of ‘agency’ is ‘the ability to define goals and act upon them’. Structured within a limited economic framework intent on raising women’s official productivity, women’s goals and actions will be legitimate only where they can statistically be proven to promote economic growth. It is generally unclear how exactly these measures and potential ‘actions’ might benefit both women and men, as the Action Plan suggests. As far as I can see, there is, instead, a danger that women-focused policy-making alienates the non-female and/or non-entrepreneurial ‘workers’ that it excludes, rendering illegitimate all non-entrepreneurial behaviour but also reproducing someone ‘agency’ entirely in relation to their engagement with the neoliberal market. Within a discourse reproducing the assumption that ‘women’s ability to compete’ must be increased, the focus on competition and entrepreneurial behaviour entirely eradicates all other behavioural possibilities for women, and may only prove more socially divisive to the societies targeted. Although predicated on remedying existing inequalities, policies that (due to pressures of time frame, yes, but also a certain sloppiness on the Bank’s part) create no room at all to consider the ‘medium and long term’ effects of social issues show no concern for the disruptive and undesirable effects that a focus on economic production alone might reproduce. Such policy-making, at least to my mind, only reiterates the hastily assembled and violently anti-social restructuring reproduced with SAPs during the 1980s. Usurping ‘society’ with ‘economy’ is a dangerous practice for any development institution to subscribe to. The precedent is already established in neoliberalism, but the Bank’s professed care for the importance of the ‘social’ elements of its work is contrary to its defining logic, which is that of reducing poverty through economic growth (‘shared’


or otherwise) alone. Social change, urbanisation and political upheaval impact heavily on the social construction of gender identities (not least, but not only, on constructions of ‘manhood’ in certain settings), with the expansion of formal education, the dislocation of urban from rural society, fluctuating migration patterns and other ‘modernising’ tendencies highly contested, uneven and sometimes contradictory processes. Economic restructuring, and the socio-political upheavals that go with it, both present ‘modernising’ messages with regard to gender norms and also reinforce rigid and sexist norms (see Barker and Ricardo 2005). In seeking to socialise women, men, girls and boys into competition-based hierarchies of economic productivity, the Bank claims only to be advancing ‘women’s economic empowerment’, reproducing the myth that there is no alternative but the neoliberal ‘free’ market. The consequences of Bank policy-making, beyond the short term of its agenda here, are, however, likely to be intimately invasive, strongly felt and highly divisive.

Summary The World Bank, as a powerful modern-day articulatory site of efficient development and trade practice, suitable economic behaviour, and economic ‘common sense’, locates and bestows economic value through a system of economic relations dependent on dominant, hierarchical and heterosexual formations of gender. One effect of this has been that of associating successful human behaviour almost exclusively with a gender identity embodied in dominant forms of ‘entrepreneurial’ masculinity. Another has been the objectification of poor women, making of them a problem to be regulated and solved as secondary ‘market actors’, but also predicating Third World women as a resource to be exploited as untapped, currently ‘invisible’ economic producers. Any effort by the Bank to ‘incorporate gender’ into Bank economic discourse is designed to fit with pre-existing conceptions of the imposed rationality and market-willingness of Economic Man, a category that is both universal and highly masculinised. ‘Women’, where they appear in Bank discourse, are categorised as less educated and intrinsically more nurturing, vulnerable and domestically situated, but also more responsible, reliable and trustworthy, since, as nurturers and carers of the household, women are considered less likely to display men’s ‘risk-taking’ behaviour. Not only reproducing an essentialist and highly restrictive categorisation of ‘woman’ in its discourse, the Bank has also

170


chosen, in recent years, to more aggressively target women in developing countries through an economistic methodology explicitly not predicated on exhibiting concern for the significance of existing social and economic practice. Although a certain case can be made for women’s empowerment as a matter of improving ‘human capital’, gender analysis at the Bank (in its broadest, most structurally implicated sense) is conspicuous by its absence. As the Bank itself pointed out in 2002, its limited ‘gender awareness’ stretches no further than ‘sectors related to education, population, and social protection’. The report found ‘no consideration of women’s/gender issues’ in relation ‘to private sector development, small or medium sized enterprises, or public sector management’. By 2006 this situation had clearly not improved, with the Bank finding its ‘achievements in promoting women’s economic participation, in strengthening institutions to collect sex-disaggregated data, and in measuring the sex-disaggregated results of its interventions’ unsatisfactory, with ‘progress in the economic sectors that matter for growth’ much ‘less robust’ than that of ‘social’ sectors, such as education and health (World Bank 2006c: 2). The Bank’s gender strategy has, then, failed in two key respects. First, the Bank has been unable to situate and prioritise gender in the ‘economic sectors’ of its work because gender issues apparently have little ‘traction’. Secondly, the Bank (where it has managed to incorporate gendered analysis into policy and programmes) instigates a problematic relationship between sex and gender. This has resulted in a narrowly economistic, essentialist and ethnocentric reading of ‘gender inequalities’ as entirely defined by women’s so-called ‘vulnerability’ and economic ‘invisibility’. By ignoring that a comprehensive and inclusive approach to gender, sex and sexuality can significantly improve development policy-making and practice (particularly, but not only, in relation to HIV/AIDS policy, on which I will go into more detail in Chapter 6), and without a clearly articulated policy for incorporating gender analysis cross-sectorally throughout its work, the Bank continues to fail the people it claims to care most about.

6 World Bank Policy-Making (3): Gender, HIV/AIDS and Sub-Saharan Africa

Among the cases reported between 1993 and 2002, heterosexual sex was the primary mode of transmission. (World Bank, in reference to Bhutan, 2006d) Studies conducted in the early 1990s in the US and several European countries have shown that, controlling for other risk factors such as STIs, it is much easier for a woman to contract HIV from sexual contact with a man than it is for a man with a woman . . . The evidence on this subject, however, is still not complete. For example, a recent study from Uganda showed that the rate of male-to-female transmission of HIV-1 was not very different from that of female-to-male transmission. (WHO 2003) In 1999 most women with AIDS became infected with HIV through heterosexual contact and this number has only increased. (Charlesworth 2003: 60–61) There is growing recognition of the damage HIV does to national economies, and clear evidence now that women are bearing the largest share of the costs . . . The proportion of women living with HIV/AIDS is increasing in all regions of the world. But the ‘feminization’ of the epidemic is much more pronounced in Sub-Saharan Africa, where the gap in prevalence started earlier and widened rapidly. (ILO 2004) 171

172


This chapter interrogates the gendering of the World Bank’s discourse through examination of specific instances of the Bank’s naming of ‘sex’, ‘sexual activity’ and ‘sexual behaviour’. Such moments typically occur only, in Bank discourse, in reference to HIV/AIDS policy-making and are each linked in various ways to conceptualisations of ‘risk-taking behaviour’. Since HIV/AIDS and sexual behaviour are so strongly connected in the minds (if not always the evidence) of many, HIV/AIDs policy-making thus provides one of very few policy arenas in which the Bank issues policy explicitly in reference to consideration and discussion of sex. The HIV virus was first ‘discovered’ in the United States in the mid1980s and was deemed initially an infection restricted to homosexual men. Now considered a more serious crisis for the Third than for the First World, the development community has, since the late 1990s, begun to direct its attention more particularly to heterosexual patterns of HIV/AIDS infection, effectively dedicating billions to anti-HIV/AIDS policy-making. Reports are periodically released, however, to suggest that HIV infection rates continue to increase, having over the last ten years increased in women significantly. The International Labour Organization (ILO), for example, suggests that the statistics for women as a proportion of all adults living with HIV/AIDS ‘rose from 43 per cent in 1998 to 48 per cent in 2003’, with the figures continuing to grow. Worldwide, 60 per cent of new HIV transmissions are to women, and 52 per cent to young adults. In Sub-Saharan Africa, already 57 per cent of all HIV-positive adults are women, and 75 per cent of young people living with HIV are women and girls. (ILO 2004)

Racism, the West and HIV/AIDS Since there are many different forms of marriage in Africa and around the world and these have changed over time, to define marriage in one form only would be misleading, oppressive and ultimately unhealthy for society. (Ibhaze and Sholola 2008) The ethnocentricity of the West’s approach to African society and culture has often been remarked on but is certainly not restricted to a period in history not of our own. It should be unsurprising to the World Bank that many Africans are suspicious of Western intervention in the

Gender, HIV/AIDS and Sub-Saharan Africa 173

intimate details of their daily lives and yet many Western organisations fail to acknowledge such concerns, assuming instead the backwardness of ‘traditions’ of condom disapproval or masculine (hetero)sexual prowess. Among the many myths Europeans have created about Africa, the myth that homosexuality is absent or incidental in African societies is one of the oldest and most enduring. For Europeans, black Africans – of all the native peoples of the world – most epitomised ‘primitive man’. Since primitive man was supposed to be close to nature, ruled by instinct, and culturally unsophisticated, he had to be heterosexual, his sexual energies and outlets devoted exclusively to their ‘natural’ purpose: biological reproduction. (Murray and Roscoe 1998: xi) As Murray and Roscoe articulate, the figures of ‘natural’ and ‘primitive’ man have been foundational to Western projects of self-determination since the Greeks first imagined the non-Greeks as darker, hairier, cruder and more profligate barbaros (ibid). That which has so often distinguished Western culture is the ability to describe and then ‘correct’ the non-Western. What has perhaps been most damaging to portrayals of African sexualities, and which has failed to dispel the myth of African sexual exceptionalism, has been the historical inability of anthropologists to investigate seriously and responsibly patterns of same-sex behaviour(s), ‘failing to report what they do observe, and discounting what they report’. Thus the reporting of long-held traditions of age-stratified homosexuality have frequently been ignored, unremarked upon or actively silenced (ibid: xii–xiii). A history of racist understandings have posited African sexuality as ‘inherently pathological in AIDS’, which has in turn served to instigate discriminatory public health policy responses to the epidemic (Mbali 2004). Mbeki’s denial of the link between HIV and AIDS, for example, can be seen in large part as an effort to counter racism in AIDS research. A ‘legacy of racism in AIDS science and racist responses to the epidemic’, Mbali argues, clearly tainted Mbeki’s judgement, with the President himself stridently vociferous in speaking against the racist image of African people as ‘depraved and diseased people’ and ‘natural-born promiscuous carriers of germs’ (Mbeki, quoted in Mbali 2004: 111). Mbeki’s response is perhaps understandable given the powerful, and arguably racist, social discourses that Western science has constructed around this ‘new phenomenon’ since the AIDS pandemic first received

174


attention in the twentieth century. Initially, following the recognition of an epidemic of fatal, wasting disease in previously healthy homosexual American men (first reported in 1981), an initial hypothesis proposed that AIDS was due to toxins, particularly nitrites, popular with homosexual men as a sexual stimulant. When similar illnesses were described in intravenous drug users and haemophiliacs, however, the cause of AIDS was quickly proposed as an unknown infectious agent, the result being the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV, initially labelled HTLV III). That HIV is the sole cause of AIDS was quickly accepted as theory if not fact by the great majority of scientists engaged in research on AIDS. Dissenting views and alternative hypotheses have remained on the heretical fringes of AIDS science and have been given little attention in mainstream scientific conferences and publications. (Harrison-Chirimuuta 1997) As Harrison-Chirimuuta describes, the singularity of a new infectious disease inevitably raised the question of its source. The possibility that this source might lie within the United States, where the epidemic began, ‘was never entertained by scientists or general public’. When, in 1982, Haitians were diagnosed with AIDS, it was immediately assumed that the as yet unidentified infectious agent came from Haiti. With no evidence to be found that this was the case, the source was soon replaced with the African hypothesis (sometimes with the proviso that the virus had passed via Haiti en route to the US). The African origin of AIDS ‘was immediately accepted in the West with minimal critical assessment’. Significant debate thus only continued on whether the reservoir of HIV was in a remote tribe of Africans or in African monkeys, and at what point it spread from Africa to the West (Harrison-Chirimuuta 1997). In 1985, for example, Yinka Adeyemi, the science and health correspondent for the Nigerian Weekly, Concord, wrote, To the average European researcher in virus cancers, the notion that the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) had its origin in Africa is now a scientific fact. (Adeyemi, quoted in ibid) Similar to other disease hypotheses circulating in Western science at around the same time (Ebola and Marburg viruses and also Lassa fever were also being posited as endemic in Africa), HIV/AIDS discourse is certainly no stranger to misjudged and offensive comments. American


scientist Robert Gallo’s identification, for example (in 1985 at the First International Conference on Virus-Related Cancers in Dakar, Senegal), of the AIDS-causing virus as ‘closely related’ to a virus isolated in African monkeys might easily be read as an assertion that Africans are in essence closer to monkeys than Westerners.1

Why HIV/AIDS policy-making? Analysis of HIV/AIDS policy-making provides a rare opportunity for analysis of a highly influential development organisation’s explicit consideration of and approach to sex. This is not the ‘sex’ that people might think they already have clarity about (i.e., ‘sex’ as a physical attribute or an act), but concerns the sexual configuration of mainstream development discourse and, as such, a ‘sex’ that is tacitly located, and rarely spoken. More than a simple, but gruesome, tale of desolation ‘the scale of which humanity has yet to comprehend’ (Poku 2007: 152), analysis of HIV/AIDS, and with it at least some critique of mainstream articulations of development common sense and expertise, has to involve more careful analysis of something that is at once ‘an emergency’ and ‘a chronic condition’ in the politics of development (ibid: 154). In its 2004 Operational Guide on ‘Integrating Gender Issues into HIV/AIDS Programs’, the Bank confirms that ‘gender inequality’ is ‘a serious obstacle to sustainable poverty reduction and socio-economic development’, with ‘gender inequalities’ underlying ‘the spread of the HIV/AIDS epidemic’ (2004c: 2). As I have noted in the previous chapters, notwithstanding that the Bank runs a central ‘Gender Unit’ and operates a gender mainstreaming strategy, in terms of the specifics of policymaking, the Bank lacks a strictly mandated policy on how much gender work should be included in individual sector and country projects. Recognising that a variety of ‘vulnerability factors’ affect the chances of contracting the HIV virus, but that ‘cultural and sexual norms’ play a significant part, Bank policy-makers may or may not choose to include gender considerations in their work. HIV and its frequent end result, AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome), have dominated the politics of development in recent years. HIV/AIDS is thus a subject that the Bank appears to take very seriously, not least since those most likely to contract the virus are at an age where they are, theoretically, at their most economically productive. There are of course a myriad of experiences and problems encountered by people living in poor countries and my choice here to focus on HIV/AIDS

176


is not to suggest that we ignore the many and various obstacles to human development in all parts of the world. Far from it, in fact: I am absolutely convinced that good analysis, leading to inclusive and representative development policy, must be especially attentive to the ways in which circumstance, environment and history interact to reproduce or challenge axes of exclusion and poverty. As Rahnema articulates, the HIV/AIDS epidemic of recent years is unusual, both actually and metaphorically. No disease, since the plague in the Middle Ages, has so haunted the collective imagination of a whole epoch (Rahnema 1997: 111). A syndrome concoctive of punitive, stigmatising and maudlin fantasies of sexual character has become one of the most meaning-laden of contemporary conditions. As Susan Sontag’s excellent essay describes, [T]he advent of this terrifying new disease, new at least in its epidemic form, has provided a large-scale occasion for the metaphorizing of illness. (1988: 104) Incorporating metaphors of ‘invasion’, ‘pollution’, ‘contamination’ and ‘threat’ but also invoking humiliating and highly racist and sexist stereotypes of cultural deficiency, backwardness and sexual recklessness, HIV/AIDS constitutes an enormous problem (theoretically and pragmatically) for all levels of the development community. Much more than the death of millions, the disease has become a vessel for all the racist, sexist and imperialist tendencies of the international system, an ‘ideal projection for First-World political paranoia’ (Sontag 1988: 150). Characterised more than any other contemporary health condition by its connection with certain ‘risk-taking behaviours’, the condition of HIV/AIDS also presents an unusual opportunity to examine in some detail the explicit articulation by developmental actors of human sexuality and sexual practice.

Why HIV/AIDS and Sub-Saharan Africa? My focus lies with SSA and HIV/AIDS policy for two reasons. First, and perhaps most obviously, HIV/AIDS wields a devastating blow to African human development. As the largest single cause of death among Sub-Saharan Africans, the HIV/AIDS pandemic frequently combines with crippled state infrastructures, extensive corruption and the widespread unavailability of effective treatment. In no small measure,


then, HIV/AIDS contributes to SSA’s enduringly divisive levels of economic inequality. Importantly, it is also a pandemic that should not (or even can not) be considered in isolation to such ‘social’ issues as gender, race, class, disability and so on. Some (if rather limited) evidence does exist to suggest that the outcomes of both community-based and state-led HIV/AIDS policy initiatives that explicitly and broadly include gender analysis impact positively on the communities in question. Geeta Rao Gupta, for example, points to the ‘Men as Partners’ or MAP project, conducted by the Planned Parenthood Association of South Africa, and also the Sonagachi sex worker project of West Bengal, India, as truly transformative and empowering programmes (2000: 10–11). According to Barker and Ricardo, a small ‘but growing’ number of impact evaluation research reveals noticeable attitudinal change and decreased numbers of self-reported STI symptoms in several programmes (2005: 46). The authors cite promising approaches to genderinformed HIV/AIDS policy-making in Nigeria, South Africa, Botswana and Uganda. As indicated in these countries’ reports to the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS (UNGASS), however, only Botswana noted a decline in HIV prevalence among the general population. The World Bank’s own Gender and Development Group is keen to stress that gender is significant in the fight against HIV/AIDS and must be taken into consideration at all stages of policy-making (World Bank 2003e). In its Gender and HIV/AIDS Operational Guide (2004c), the Bank, however, names only Uganda and St Vincents and the Grenadines as including promising approaches to ‘gender-sensitive’ policy-making and programming. Interestingly, its 2008 report to UNGASS, St Vincent and the Grenadines stated that, Nationally, there is a reported number of 509 (2007) persons living with HIV, 265 (52%) being males and 230 (45.2%) being females; 14 (2.8%) were categorised as being of unknown sex. (St Vincent and the Grenadines UNGASS Report January 2008) Being of ‘unknown sex’ is not a common or typical identity in development policy-making and it is not clear from the St Vincent and the Grenadines UNGASS report exactly what is meant here (i.e., whether the 2.8 per cent of those classified as having HIV are intersex, or whether the government simply does not have this information). The possibility

178


of ambiguity in otherwise fixed and given sex categories brings me to the second reason for focusing on SSA and HIV/AIDS policy. In June 2008, the United Nations Secretary-General released a United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) report on the ‘Commitment to HIV/AIDS and Political Declaration on HIV/AIDS’. This report came at a ‘midway’ point towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (2015) and only two years before reaching the deadline for universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support. More than 80 per cent of countries, including 85 per cent in SubSaharan Africa, have policies in place to ensure the equal access to women to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support. Women in Sub-Saharan Africa have equal or greater access to antiretrovirals, but the reverse is true for women in concentrated epidemics. (UNGA 2008: 2) The report goes on to suggest that, Countries should ensure a massive political and social mobilization to address gender inequities, sexual norms and their roles in increasing HIV risk and vulnerability. (ibid: 4) Sub-Saharan Africa resides at the epicentre of a pandemic whose ‘humanitarian and economic toll’ will only continue to increase unless ‘the international community takes immediate action to follow through on the pledges made to implement an exceptional response to HIV’, as per the 2001 Declaration of Commitment (UNGA 2008: 5). Thus, in 2007, while an additional one million people were started on antiretrovirals, 2.5 million were newly infected. The SSA is an interesting part of the world to study in terms of sex, sexuality and sexual practice because it has, through years of colonial exploitation and conquest, incited such strong sexual stereotypes in the Western (primarily European) imaginary. This is particularly true in terms of Western mythologies of the supposed sexual insatiability, potency and propensity to ‘risky’ behaviours of Africans (a kind of panAfrican hypersexuality considered applicable to African women as well as African men). Engaged in general assaults on African modes of production, Western colonialists were also, of course, heavily concerned with social control. Travellers’ and early colonialists’ reports of Africans’ carnal athletic feats, sexual insatiability and generally un-Victorian behaviour only further justified the colonialists’ claims to mastery.


There remains, however, little evidence to support Western perceptions of African sexual promiscuity, although the myth of hypersexuality remains widespread in the West. In terms not least of attitudes to sex and promiscuity in Western society, many African societies seem noticeably chaste in comparison with the West (Geshekter 1994). Geshekter points to a 1991 survey by researchers from Médicins Sans Frontières and the Harvard School of Public Health, which examined sexual behaviour in the Moyo district of northwest Uganda. Their findings revealed behaviour not very different to that in the West, with similar reports of premarital and casual sex. As Allen and Heald also note, policies that have attempted to reduce HIV/AIDS prevalence in Africa have tended to be more successful where they have less openly targeted ‘sexual behaviour’ per se and have instead engaged national and local level leadership, religious groups and local healers, or where they have (more controversially) enforced procedures of social compliance (2004: 1141). They point to sex education campaigns in Botswana that failed because they exhibited little responsiveness to the particular sensitivities of their target groups, they were written and circulated in English and because they actively offended those Botswanans who were unwilling to talk openly about sex (ibid: 1144). In contrast, slogans used in Ugandan campaigns that were noticeably more opaque in their references to sexual behaviour proved far more successful. These included references to ‘love faithfully’ and ‘zero grazing’ (this latter slogan, Allen and Heald suggest, refers to the technique of tethering a cow or goat to a post, ensuring that it eats grass only in a circle). There was, however, little or no reference to condoms, which the Botswanans had found particularly offensive (ibid: 1148). One result of the respective failures and successes of the Botswanan and Ugandan campaigns has been that, although both countries introduced HIV/AIDS awareness campaigns around the same time and consulted widely and internationally, there have been indications from Uganda that HIV prevalence and rates of new infection have been stable or in decline, while rates in Botswana have during the same period rapidly increased, despite Botswana’s comparatively elevated standards of living, education and health care (Allen and Heald: 1141–1142). As a region, SSA is frequently noted (not least in Western media) for its histories of conflict and armed combat, the widespread use of ‘child soldiers’, the ‘unequal balance of social power between young men and women’ and models of masculinity based on aggression, experience and power-over, as if these might be endemic to Africa alone (see, e.g., Barker and Ricardo 2005: v–ix). While such models and stereotypes do not

180


reflect the enormous variety of ways it is possible to be a child, adolescent, woman or man in Africa, they tend to hold powerful sway, particularly over HIV/AIDS discourse and policy-making. As Barker and Ricardo articulate, Norms related to masculinity and sexuality, such as those which espouse male sexual needs as uncontrollable, multiple partners as evidence of sexual prowess, and dominance over women (physical and sexual), can place young men and young women at high risk of HIV infection. (ibid: vii) The point for me here is that it is not ‘sex’, ‘sexuality’ or ‘sexual practice’ that are in and of themselves ‘risky’, although they are made to appear so. My concern lies with the ways in which (Western) institutions and organisations, such as the World Bank, instigate policy designed to intervene directly in the intimate behaviours of people in developing countries, while simultaneously constructing out of ‘sex’ and ‘sexuality’ problems to be remedied and regulated. Sex, sexuality and sexual practice have become in public (i.e., state-based and international) discourses ‘things’ to be problematised, medicated against and controlled.

The World Bank and HIV/AIDS The Bank works on HIV/AIDS in a number of ways, through its own programmes and projects and by working with its ‘partners’, such as non-governmental and community-based organisations. Approximately 190 active projects currently embody some scope to address or reference to HIV/AIDS. These projects derive from a variety of regional and sectorspecific research. The Bank stresses that its ‘Global HIV/AIDS Program of Action’ emphasises five priority action areas, which are in keeping with the Bank’s commitment to the ‘Three Ones’ principles of ‘one national strategic plan, one national coordinating authority and one national monitoring and evaluation system in each country’. These priority areas are the following: 1. Support for strengthening national HIV/AIDS strategies to be more prioritised and evidence-driven, and better integrated with national planning processes; 2. Sustained funding for national and regional HIV/AIDS programmes and for strengthening health systems;


3. Accelerating implementation of national programme plans; 4. Strengthening country monitoring and evaluation systems and capacity to collect, analyse and use data; and 5. Generating and sharing knowledge, through evaluations and other analytic work to deepen the impact of programmes (http://web/ worldbank.org). In its ‘Factsheet’, ‘Ten Things about HIV and AIDS and the World Bank’, the Bank states that, Preventing HIV infection remains vital in every country. Effective prevention focuses on behaviours that contribute most to new infections. In many countries, groups that engage in risky behaviours include sex workers, injecting drug users, men who have sex with men, and people with multiple concurrent sexual partners. Working with vulnerable, often marginalized groups to reduce their exposure to HIV may require involvement of communities, peers, NGOs, police, health and social workers. (http://web/worldbank.org) (The problems with) statistics According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), although ‘the number of new infections has fallen’, in 2007, between 30.6 and 36.1 million people were estimated to be living with HIV, between 1.8 and 4.1 million people became newly infected and 1.9–2.4 million people died of AIDS. SSA remains the region most severely affected, with an estimated 22.5 million people living with HIV (68 per cent of the global total). Eight countries in SSA now account for almost one-third of all new HIV infections and AIDS deaths globally. Since 2001 (the signing of the United Nations Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS), the number of people living with HIV in Eastern Europe and Central Asia has increased by more than 150 per cent in 2007. In Asia, the estimated number of people living with HIV in Vietnam has more than doubled between 2000 and 2005. Indonesia has the fastest growing epidemic (WHO News Release 20 November 2007). According to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), co-sponsored at inauguration by the World Bank, although approximately US$10 billion was estimated to be available in 2007 for the global response to the epidemic, the shortfall ‘between actual need and funds available’ was estimated at approximately US$8 billion.

182


As Allen and Heald suggest, data ‘can be very misleading’, is rarely collected in the same way and, even when some uniformity of method is deployed, there is little guarantee that equivalent indicators can be provided (2004: 1142). As shown with the WHO statistics, such data are in many instances a ‘best guess’ or approximate range. The main method for collection of national HIV trends is through anonymous surveillance at static clinics, with, depending on a person’s location, access to such clinics by no means certain. Most frequently, antenatal clinic statistics are used to indicate HIV prevalence rates as apparently good estimates of young adult prevalence, although antenatal surveillance can often prove biased towards urban or wealthier areas and, of course, only targets women (men’s attendance at antenatal clinics cannot be assumed). Statistics, needless to say, rarely tell the whole story in any given situation. In Australia, for example, the number of new HIV diagnoses has been on the increase since 2001 (Sydney Morning Herald 12 October 2006). In the United States, reports have highlighted rapidly increased rates of infection in Washington, D.C, with the capital now having the highest AIDS infection rate of any city in the United States. Such data would suggest a degree of impending crisis in the West and yet this is not currently the case. The difference, of course, resides in the availability of effective treatment. Of the lives claimed globally by AIDS since the epidemic was first documented, over 80 per cent have been in SSA. As Barnett explains, the implications of the HIV/AIDS epidemic on the politics of development are that, [I]n the absence of effective and available vaccines or economically feasible and effective treatments, AIDS may be expected to wipe out half a century of development gains as measured by life expectancy at birth. (2002: 393–394) As Barnett adds, the premature death of the adult population in developing countries has a radical effect on virtually every aspect of economic and social life (not least since a country’s young are dying most often at the age when they have become, economically, most productive). In many and various ways, the credibility and success of international development policy-making rests on countering the massive damage that HIV/AIDS inflicts on its key developmental indicators. Sub-Saharan Africa and the World Bank Although the countries with the highest aggregate levels of Bank borrowing are not located in Africa, in many ways SSA countries represent


the only consistently dependable investment for the World Bank. The point is less that, as a ‘development’ institution, the Bank is obliged to intervene on behalf of the world’s least wealthy: rather, the significance of the Bank’s relationship with, even dependence on, Africa lies in the institution’s, quite recent, shift to a discourse of ‘good governance’ (as noted in Chapter 3). As one senior member of the Bank staff commented, the idea of ‘shared growth’ has become something of a ‘buzz-word’ for the Bank in recent years (IvWB5 2005). That is, the kind of growth that comes, ‘not in spurts of a year or two at a time’, but that is, as Nankani (former Vice President of the Africa Region) claims, ‘sustained over time’ and ‘broadly shared’ across all sectors of society (2004). This ‘buzz-word’ is particularly true of the Bank’s approach to Africa, a region that, as my interviewee commented, has experienced quite abysmal overall growth, and, as overshadowed by poverty and inequality as it is, needs ‘shared growth’ more than anything (IvWB5 2005). The Bank’s concern for ‘reducing poverty’ is undoubtedly sincere, and most Bank staff are entirely committed to improving the living standards of the world’s poorest. The point is, however, that growth, ‘shared’ or not, cannot be disengaged from economic growth, and ‘equity’ and ‘social equality’ are thus reduced to the distribution of material wealth within a society. That is, ‘social’ wealth is about making a business case for including measurements of social inequality in Bank work. The economism of the Bank’s ‘governance’ discourse is, from this vantage point, quite clear, but the ‘good governance’ rhetoric of empowerment, partnership and knowledge-sharing obscures the ways in which the Bank has been able to sediment its neoliberalism, a macroeconomic rationality of economic growth above all else, into the fundamentals of every day, every level, development practice and planning. The Bank’s ‘Africa Region’ website offers an optimistic view of African, particularly Sub-Saharan African, development, heralded by the claim that higher economic growth ‘across the continent’ is lowering poverty levels, ‘despite persistent constraints arising from inadequate infrastructure, low investment, and limited skills’. [W]ith fewer conflicts, more democratic elections, and economic growth rates that gradually have begun to compete with those of other developing regions, Africa is proving itself again a continent of positive change. (World Bank 2007c)

184


Here, and in the Bank’s report ‘Doing Business 2008’, Ghana and Kenya are particularly praised as having ‘made the most significant advances in the aggregate ease of doing business’ (World Bank 2007c). One of the report’s authors, Sylvia Solf, suggests that the ‘benefits of regulatory reform are especially large for women’, since women ‘often face regulations that may be designed to protect them but that instead force them into the informal sector. There women have little job security and few social benefits’ (World Bank 2007d). In 2005 the Bank adopted an ‘Africa Action Plan’ (World Bank 2005d), [F]ocused on achieving development results in key sectors such as good governance, closing the infrastructure gap, building capable states, and ensuring that the benefits of development are shared more equitably. (World Bank 2008f) The Africa Plan focuses largely on encouraging regional integration in the hope that, by ‘helping to integrate Africa’s small, fragmented economies’ an ‘enlarged economic space for countries in the region’ will kick start investment, promote the ‘expansion of public-private partnerships’ and encourage ‘innovative financing approaches to address some of Africa’s most persistent development problems’. On 14 May 2008, the Bank also announced a new strategy on HIV/AIDS in Africa (accompanied by the report, ‘The World Bank’s Commitment to HIV/AIDS in Africa: Our Agenda for Action, 2007– 2011’). According to the Bank, more than 60 per cent of people living with HIV in Africa are women, with young women six times more likely to be HIV positive than young men. The Bank estimates that around 11.4 million children under the age of 18 have lost at least one parent. To date, most Bank publications fail to discuss in any great depth patterns of social hierarchy and young people’s ‘risk behaviours’: Ligiéro and Kostermans’ (2004) report and Barker and Ricardo’s (2005) special paper both explicitly call for the mainstreaming of gender into HIV/AIDS policy-making, as does the Bank’s Gender and Development Group, but Bank policy-making remains largely gender free. ‘Gender Inequalities’, the Bank and the prevalence of HIV/AIDS Unlike many who would consider ‘gender’ socially constructed while ‘sex’ is biologically given, my analysis echoes Butler’s concern to view the ‘fact’ of two, binarily opposed sexes as a regulatory fiction designed


(largely at the dictates of Western society) to medicate, universalise and control potentially unruly human bodies. Through dualistic and essentialist gender and sex assumptions, the World Bank continues to reproduce a discourse dependent on highly restrictive and heteronormatively regulatory conceptions of what women and men ‘are’, what they ‘do’ and what can be expected to happen to them, regardless of the diversity of human relations, norms and practices across the world. Articulating women as inherently vulnerable, the Bank states that ‘men are more likely to experiment with sex in unsafe ways, putting them at risk for HIV infection’ (World Bank 2008c), while ‘young girls’ (not young or adult men or, indeed, adult women) are ‘at risk of rape and sexual coercion’ (World Bank 2008a). Gender inequalities are a major driving force behind the AIDS epidemic. Women and adolescent girls are more vulnerable to HIV/AIDS than men and boys, not only because they are biologically more susceptible to sexually transmitted infections, including HIV, but also because they often lack power to negotiate the terms of sexual relations or economic independence. Adolescent girls, powerless to negotiate sexual terms or avert abuses such as forced marriage or trafficking, are at greatest risk. (United Nations Population Fund 2001) Despite a paucity of evidence to confirm that women are, indeed, more physically vulnerable to HIV/AIDS, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) goes on to suggest that ‘men must become motivated to help save women’s lives by changing their own risky behaviours and involving women in policy decisions’. This kind of statement is problematic, not because it is asking men to ‘involve themselves’ in women’s lives (although the request seems a slightly redundant one) but because ‘men’ seem to be assumed always to embody the choice and power that women without exception lack. Such a universalised vision of gender inequality, where women and men always sit in diametric opposition to each other in terms of power, access to resources and life choice, is troubling, not because violent relationships do not occur and do impact on women negatively (since they very clearly do) but because the reproduction of such a vision completely denies women any agency in their own lives, while reproducing a picture of ‘man’ as inherently damaging but also potentially liberating to ‘vulnerable’ women. Similarly to the UNFPA, the World Bank suggests that,

186


Studies have shown that young women and girls may be subjected to gender-based violence, abuse, coercion or contractual sex in exchange for money or goods. Other forms of genderbased violence include trafficking, forced/early marriage, sexual commercial exploitation and prostitution, and abuse of young women and girls in situations of conflict or in other humanitarian emergencies has also become common. Young men are also prone to gender-based violence coming from older men having sex with men. (World Bank 2008e) While the greater part of concern in Bank discourse lies with women’s vulnerability, men are described as ‘prone’ (not vulnerable) to genderbased violence. There are, not surprisingly, a myriad of ways in which people of all sexes are made more vulnerable to HIV infection, none of which, however, figure very highly in official development discourse. Attention to the problematic relationship between HIV/AIDS and, for example, disability is rare, as de Vries notes. At the International AIDS Conference in Bangkok (9–16 July 2004), for example, over 10,000 scientific papers were accepted. Only 20 of these papers (0.2 per cent) mentioned disability. However, about 10 per cent (WHO) of the world population is disabled, a percentage which is much higher amongst poorer people, and disabled persons are especially vulnerable to HIV infection . . . [D]isability and HIV/AIDS are surrounded by . . . myths and misconceptions: by stigma and discrimination. Children with disabilities are more vulnerable to sexual violence and HIV infection. (2004) In relation to HIV/AIDS and disability, the Bank states that, To many people it seems a contradiction in terms to work on the risk of HIV/AIDS infection within the disabled population and it is indeed an area filled with myths. One common misconception is that disabled people are not sexually active and therefore not at risk of being infected. Another that substance abuse, sexual abuse and violence, homosexuality and bisexuality [do] not exist among disabled people. These are all wrong assumptions that lead to exclusion from HIV/AIDS prevention and care services of a large group of individuals


that face all known risk factors for HIV/AIDS at equal to up to three times greater risk of infection than do non-disabled individuals. (World Bank 2008d) Yet there is little sign of Bank work evincing a concern for the ways in which gender might intersect with other crucial issues in development, such as disability, race, class and so on. Indeed, the Bank claims that a ‘detailed global picture on how gender and disability intersect is not yet possible’, since research has, according to the Bank, ‘been quite limited and often clouded by factors that resist quantification’, including, for example, ‘the feminization of poverty, cultural concepts of gender roles and sexual and reproductive rights, violence, abuse and other means of exploitation, such as child labour’ (World Bank 2008e). Following this statement, the Bank goes on to detail information resources ‘that clarify issues of importance to the estimated world population of 300 million women and girls with disabilities’ (ibid). Yet another articulation of gender analysis as entirely confined to studies of ‘women and girls’, the obvious lack of concern for the interaction of gender with other key development issues is not only disappointing but enormously damaging to the communities with which the Bank works. Sadly, this propensity to look beyond a narrowly market-preoccupied rationality is perhaps not surprising given the kinds of heteronormative (and predominantly able-bodied) assumptions reproduced in Bank discourse concerning who a person is and, therefore, what that person does or is able to do.

The Bank, HIV/AIDS and gender in Sub-Saharan Africa Bank discourse does not often explicitly name ‘sex’, ‘sexual activity’ and ‘sexual behaviour’. Where it does in reference to SSA and HIV/AIDS policy-making, it reproduces certain ethnocentric and gendered assumptions about ‘Africans’, predicating, prescribing and reproducing a picture of African sexualities as inherently problematic. In many ways, this practice echoes those of European colonisers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, their efforts to classify, medicate and regulate sexual practice part of a broader system of social control. Analysis of HIV/AIDS policy-making thus provides a rare opportunity for the analysis of the World Bank’s overt consideration of ‘sex’, authorising and regulating appropriately well-behaved bodies, while reproducing certain value hierarchies that mean that these bodies make sense only in relation to the neoliberal market that they must produce for.

188


The World Bank and African sexuality(ies) Neither the Bank nor its staff are intentionally or overtly racist in their approach to HIV/AIDS and SSA. For all those from societies where homosexuality is defined as ‘a unitary, predominantly sexual phenomenon with fixed internal motivations’, and where it has been ‘judged so harshly that even its leading social engineers and intellectuals are afraid to study or discuss the subject’, the diversity of African homo- (and hetero-) sexualities is likely to be highly confusing (Murray and Roscoe 1998: xv). African homosexuality is neither random nor incidental – it is a consistent and logical feature of African societies and belief systems. (ibid) This is not to say, of course, that African themselves have not been sensitised (by ongoing and endlessly invasive Western interventions) into denial of homosexual practice, defensiveness in the face of stereotypes of black hypersexuality or resentfulness at sexual exploitation in colonial and post-colonial institutions. But what may have started as denial or self-protection ‘has ended in a near taboo on the subject of African homosexualities’, a taboo ‘based on European, not African, morality’ (ibid: xvi). A discriminatory approach to African sexuality is not overtly evident in Bank policy-making. The assumptions that the Bank reproduces, however, in its engagements with the developing world (embodying deeply held Western beliefs and values concerning sexuality, love, personal relationships and marriage) do not necessarily conform to, or even approximate, non-Western social experiences and practices. The social sanctioning of multiple partners or the choices available to men and women in African societies are not always what might be expected in Western societies. In the Bank’s approach to gender, women are frequently portrayed as structurally disadvantaged, vulnerable and lacking ‘opportunity’ choice. The same is rarely true, however, in the Bank’s descriptions of men. Although, as Murray and Roscoe articulate, men and boys in Africa frequently lack the sorts of choices that ‘are taken for granted in contemporary Western societies’ (1998: xviii), the very different descriptions of women and men’s situation vis-à-vis HIV/AIDS in Bank discourse is striking. The Bank provides, for example, ‘determinants of female vulnerability’, including poverty, cultural and sexual norms, violence, legal issues, information, services and psychological factors. Although


‘youths’, male and female, are generally considered ‘vulnerable’ and ‘at risk’, men are never described as vulnerable per se: rather, they engage in ‘risky behaviour’, which is associated with poverty, long-distance employment, incarceration and cultural and sexual norms (World Bank 2004c: 2). Thus, ‘gender-based violence’ increases ‘female vulnerability’ to HIV/AIDS infection, but men are assumed to exert power over their sexual relations. The Bank’s ‘Multi-Country HIV/AIDS Program’ (MAP) for the Africa Region (initiated in 2000) entails a commitment to assisting specific country administrations in offering care and support services to all those affected. According to an Interim Review, In less than four years the MAP Program has initiated development of HIV/AIDS projects in every IDA-eligible country in Sub-Saharan Africa. By October 2004, projects had been approved in 28 countries and one sub-regional project (the Abidjan-Lagos Corridor Project) with a commitment of over $1 billion and disbursements of $300 million. Eight other projects are scheduled to be submitted to the Bank’s Board for approval in 2004. (World Bank 2004d: 2) The Bank is clear that it considers sexual transmission (and particularly ‘heterosexual transmission’) to play ‘a major role in HIV/AIDS infection’ (World Bank 2004c: 2). Not only this, but the Bank suggests that sexual transmission is heavily influenced by gender (not sexual) inequalities, so that women are invariably more vulnerable: a ‘feminization of HIV/AIDS’ that ‘not only reflects women’s greater physiological vulnerability to infection’ but also ‘their social and psychological vulnerability’, which is the result of ‘interrelated economic, socio-cultural and legal factors’ (ibid). This may certainly be true in many instances of infection. Discourses of sexual repression and the reproduction of gender inequalities in many African societies hinder HIV/AIDS prevention and resonate, in many cases, with ‘certain Christian and Western views which permit limited sexual expression for women and which blame women for the spread of disease’ (Bonthuys 2006: 392). Stereotypes that posit male promiscuity as an indication of virility abound in many Sub-Saharan African societies, as they do in the West. The key difference here is that ‘men in impoverished African communities who are unable to support their families tend to link masculinity with sexual virility’, with the ‘erosion of traditional male authority

190


within the family’ connected to ‘an increased assertion of dominance in sexual relationships and a belief that men who use condoms are less masculine’ (Silberschmidt 2004, summarised in ibid: 397). This is supported by several Southern African studies showing that many men believe that they need regular sexual intercourse with different women to maintain their health and that male sexual impulses are not easily controlled. Female partners in more permanent relationships who insist on condom use are often accused of sexual infidelity and young girls who have condoms with them are likely to be stigmatised. There is evidence to suggest that female sexuality, moral blameworthiness and disease are much more closely associated in South African society. HIVpositive women are also often stigmatised and blamed for passing the disease to their partners, rather than the other way around. Women whose HIV-positive status is disclosed to, but also beyond, their sexual partners thus may frequently face violence or abandonment. My daughter was raped when she was six because of my coming out and telling people about HIV. They were trying to shut my mouth. But they didn’t stop me. I was only happy that she was not infected, although she was young. It makes me angry but I’m working on that. It’s been three years but she’s fine and she’s a very clever child. (Joyce, an HIV-positive South African lesbian, describing the abuse she endured as punishment for her openness about her sexuality and serostatus. Human Rights Watch 2003) Homosexuality is often, but not always, stigmatised as a ‘Western phenomenon’ in African societies. This is in part a reaction to invasive colonial and Western influences, with descriptions of homosexuality as ‘a decadent, bourgeois, Western import’ having become particularly strong (Murray and Roscoe 1998: xv). Jolly points to Zimbabwean President Mugabe’s attack on homosexuality as ‘non-traditional’ and ‘un-African’ (2000: 82). Similarly, in December 1996, former Namibian President Sam Nujoma reportedly declared that ‘all necessary steps must be taken to combat [all that is] influencing us and our children in a negative way. Homosexuals must be condemned and rejected in our society’. Speaking at the 1985 Decade World Conference on Women in Nairobi, Third World lesbians released the following press statement. If it seems that lesbianism is confined to white western women, it is often because third world lesbians and lesbians of colour come up


against more obstacles to our visibility – but this silence has to be seen as one more aspect of women’s sexual repression and not as a conclusion that lesbianism doesn’t concern us . . . The struggle for lesbian rights is indispensable to any struggle for basic human rights. It’s part of the struggle for all women for control over our own lives. (Rosenbloom 1996, cited in Jolly 2000: 82). Women may very often be vulnerable and ‘at risk’ to HIV infection. They are not, however, intrinsically or naturally so, but are made so by virtue of their circumstance and relations with others in their society. The reproduction of a picture of women as sexually passive and ‘blameworthy’, however, only reinforces their future vulnerability, powerlessness and inability to protect themselves, their children and their partners from sexually transmitted diseases. The isolation of HIV transmission with sexual activity and the direct causal relationship identified between ‘gender norms’ as ‘intrinsically tied to sexual behaviour’ (ibid), however, sustains a link between sexual behaviour and the spread of disease that also equates ‘risk-taking behaviour’ specifically with men. Much as the South African Constitutional Court insisted, in 2002, on stereotyping female sexuality as ‘sexually passive, monogamous and ultimately responsible for controlling male sexuality’ (Bonthuys 2006: 397), the Bank’s approach to gender and HIV/AIDS reinforces again the stereotype of men as active, strong and virile while caricaturing women as passive, tied to the home, emotionally and physically weak and primarily heterosexual. The subject of homosexuality in SSA is undoubtedly a sensitive one, but, just as patterns of White, Western, heteronormative behaviour are only falsely generalised, it is a huge stretch to hypothesise the existence of any form of universal homosexual taboo across SSA. Although examples of the vilification of homosexuality certainly exist throughout African politics (Nujoma’s repressive castigation and stigmatisation of homosexuals is just one example), as in the West, AIDS in Africa is certainly not an unambiguously heterosexual or homosexual epidemic (see Lorway 2006). As Pattman argues, ‘sexuality is not something that becomes meaningful and significant only as we approach adulthood’, but it is ‘a key marker of adult identity in many societies’ (2005: 498). African societies are no less deserving of detailed and context-specific analysis than others, although colonising and racist myths of African hypersexuality have tended to outshine this endeavour. Pattman is clear that a key strategy to understanding and responding to HIV/AIDS in African countries involves a gender-sensitive form of life

192


skills education, where the ‘sexual and non-sexual cultures, pleasures and anxieties of girls and boys are discussed in some detail’ (ibid). A significant point here is that people are active participants in their own and others’ constructions of gender and sexual identities. Young people do not possess an inborn essence of masculinity or femininity which determines how they feel and behave, nor are they the passive dupes of ‘socialization’, as they have often been portrayed in studies of ‘sex roles’ . . . [Sexual desire is not] an instinct which preprogrammes feelings and behaviour, but [is] something which [is] often invoked and constructed in various ways – positively as well as negatively. (Pattman 2005: 498–499) Bank policy, on the other hand, assumes a level of fixity to men and women that, first, constrains them in a heterosexually reproductive relationship with each other, and then, secondly, surrounds these two fixed beings with the ‘risk’ and potential ‘vulnerability’ of sexual activity. The World Bank and HIV/AIDS policy-making in Sub-Saharan Africa The World Bank states that while ‘some countries in SSA have made progress in reversing the spread of the [HIV/AIDS] epidemic most have not, despite having national HIV/AIDS programs’. According to the Bank, their efforts have fallen short for five reasons. • They have been inadequately financed. • There has been inadequate government commitment and leadership. • Support from governments and the international community has been too slow, especially for scaling up programmes, often developed by NGOs, that have proven effective. • Not enough resources have reached communities. • Programmes have been too narrowly focused on the health sector. Ligiéro and Kosterman’s report, however, suggests different, but not incompatible reasons. Although they proffer that ‘many projects reviewed have already taken important steps toward integrating gender considerations’, there remains no comprehensive set of tools, guides and good practices that are incorporated in MAP [the Bank’s Multi-Country HIV/AIDS


Programme] operational manuals to assist task team in all aspects of the project cycle. More work needs to be done to assess how well gender issues and considerations manifest themselves during implementation and monitoring. (2004: 2–3) In particular, the authors argue that attention to gender must be strengthened by focusing on: performance indicators that specifically address ‘vulnerability/risk factors’ for men and women; public and private sector and civil society staff training on vulnerabilities and risk factors; incorporating gender-sensitive skill-based approaches to learning about HIV/AIDS at an early age; assessing the ‘differential impacts’ of HIV/AIDS projects on males and females and on existing vulnerability and risk factors and institutional reforms to decrease vulnerability/risk to HIV/AIDS for both men and women. In Soweto when you come out and say, ‘Hey, I’m a lesbian,’ . . . they’re always asking ‘Where are they from? They’re not from here, we don’t see people like this.’ Then you find out that it’s because of their sexuality why women are being raped. (Human Rights Watch 2003) They threw me into a cell and took off the handcuffs. There were other prisoners there, six of them. They said, ‘Here’s a homosexual. You can do whatever you want with him. You can have sex with him if you want.’ (Anonymous sixteen year-old Zimbabwean gay man, talking of how police abused him in November 2000, quoted in ibid) In 1999, Awusabo-Asarea and Anarfib wrote, [T]he socio-cultural, economic, environmental, political and other issues which operate through the proximate factors to either hinder or elevate the level of HIV infection in various parts of the region have not been [ . . . ] fully considered. In terms of the successful incorporation of a broadly based and inclusive social strategy, Bank HIV/AIDS policy is patchy, although a certain amount of Bank-sponsored work does exist to suggest the need for the incorporation of gender analysis in HIV/AIDS work. In 2003, for

194


example, the Gender and Development Group (PREM) released briefing notes stating that, HIV/AIDS is primarily a sexually-transmitted infection. In many societies, gender norms and gender dynamics influence people’s attitudes to sex, sexuality, risk-taking and fidelity. Gender inequality, and the role of power in sexual relations, especially women’s lack of economic empowerment, are important factors in the spread of HIV/AIDS. The spread of HIV/AIDS is also fuelled by key gender-based socio-cultural, legal, and physiological factors. (World Bank 2003e) Although many at the Bank are aware of the need not to segregate at any great length men from women in countering the pandemic and that it is essential that a gender-sensitive approach does not divide men, women and youth into ‘stand alone’ projects, Bank policy remains rather set on the essential differences between men and women. Perhaps more careful ‘to treat men as part of the solution’ (World Bank 2004c: 3), the lack of make involvement in community-based HIV/AIDS initiatives remains noticeable. In terms of ‘risk-taking behaviour’ and women, the Bank states that, A series of vulnerability factors (which vary by sex, age and context) influence the engagement in risky behaviours. Determinants of female vulnerability include poverty, cultural and sexual norms, violence, legal issues that impede women’s access to assets, information and services, and physiological factors. For males, risky behaviour is associated with poverty, long-distance employment, incarceration, and cultural and sexual norms. (World Bank 2004c: 2) The Bank is, at this point quite specific concerning particular ‘at risk’ males, identified as: men in the armed forces; teenage boys and young men (often orphans and street children); boys and men in prison; male street children; men who have sex with men (MSMs); truck drivers and migrant workers. The Bank points to a particularly promising approach as embodied in the 2001–2006 ‘Uganda: HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control Project’ (World Bank 2004c).2 Identifying ‘good practices’ as the ‘inclusion of social and gender issues’ in the terms of ‘reference for the technical support mission allowed the Project Coordination Team


(PCT) to clarify and take into account the vulnerability and risk factors that arise from the Ugandan legal, social and cultural contexts’ (2004c). The so-called ‘emerging challenges’ the Bank report identified, however, as: • ‘The project’s emphasis on supporting orphans and widows’ which poses the risk of ‘(a) reinforcing the gender division of labour; (b) imposing additional burdens on females in the care economy; and (c) perpetuating male and female gender stereotypes and labour divisions’; • ‘Men’s limited involvement in community-led HIV/AIDS initiatives (CHAIs), primarily because of inadequate information about HIV/AIDS interventions that specifically target males, represented a missed opportunity to fully incorporate the needs of males for the benefit of the community as a whole’; • ‘The need for the project to pay attention to the interconnections between male and female issues, sexual violence and the legal dimensions of HIV/AIDS’. The report therefore suggests the need to: focus more on ‘male involvement in MAP-funded activities at all age levels’; prepare a ‘gender mainstreaming situation assessment’; develop a ‘clear gender message’; strengthen the gender and social-responsiveness content of communityled HIV/AIDS initiatives (CHAI); and, review the ‘gender dimensions’ and ‘gender equality impacts’ of the project. According to a 2005 project performance assessment report for the ‘Uganda Sexually Transmitted Infections Project’,3 the indicators ‘on condom knowledge, availability and use showed significant, positive trends during the life of the project’ (World Bank 2005e: 17). Levels of condom use remain, however, ‘low’. In reference to the ‘behaviour change interventions’ that the project invested in, ‘aimed at some high risk and other target groups identified during project design’, the assessment found that, [I]nterventions were inadequate relative to the need, coverage was limited, and there was no systematic tracking of outcomes. The absence of data on trends in behaviours and in incidence or even prevalence rates within these different groups makes it impossible to evaluate project impact. (ibid: 19)

196


For the project performance assessment report of the ‘Kenya Sexually Transmitted Infections Project’, the assessment team found that ‘the lack of a strong monitoring and evaluation framework makes it difficult to assess the impact and even the output of some project activities’ (World Bank 2002d: 25). Overall, the outcome of the project was rated as ‘moderately satisfactory’ (ibid: 14). The project’s major contributions may have been at the policy level – both promoting reforms in financing for district-level HIV/AIDS activities, and strengthening the national policy framework for and political commitment to HIV/AIDS. (World Bank 2002d: 14) Weaknesses, however, in monitoring and evaluating, ‘make it difficult to assess whether the stated outcome targets’ were actually achieved (ibid). The project improved during its lifetime the quality and coverage of STI treatment, which may have reduced the prevalence of treatable STIs. The project may have made a modest contribution to reductions in risky behaviour – either through direct support for IEC or its broader contributions to strengthening political commitment and public discourse regarding HIV/AIDS. The project’s direct contribution to reducing HIV transmission cannot be documented. (ibid) Clearly, a rather large disparity exists between the good work that the Bank thinks it can do and the work that it has actually, thus far, achieved. Interestingly, the Bank’s 2005 Uganda STI Project fails to comment on the widespread reporting of violence towards women by their husbands, where spousal rape is not criminalised, homosexuality is illegal and domestic violence laws remain unenacted (see, e.g., Human Rights Watch 2003). Reports of homophobic intolerance and pervasive harassment and sexual violence in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe also suggest that sexual violence affects a multiplicity of ‘types’ of people, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsex and transgender people (ibid). A number of authors have identified violence as directly related to the increase in women’s ‘risk-taking behaviours’, with women who experience violence ‘more likely to have multiple partners, partners outside marriage or to engage in transactional sex’ (International Humanist and Ethical Union 2007). Violence as a consequence of HIV/AIDS is also


prevalent in Southern Africa, both against women and men, although women are reportedly far more frequently questioned about how they became infected. It is conceivable, of course, that if sexual violence impacts so negatively on the future prospects of women in developing countries, it will do the same for men, at whatever stage in their lives they might be. Neither the Ugandan nor the Kenyan project performance assessment reports mentioned African homosexualities. Where the Bank’s Operational Guide for Integrating Gender Issues into HIV/AIDS programmes mentions the need to reduce homophobia, it refers only to ‘community groups’, educators and health care professionals. No mention is made of the need to target development policy at the highest levels of design and implementation, or of the importance of pressuring the state and administrative infrastructures of the countries to which the Bank lends. In terms of empirical evidence for gender analysis actually having been implemented extensively and successfully in Bank policy, very little exists, suggesting that (as for policy-making more generally) the Bank has yet to mainstream gender in its HIV/AIDS policies and programmes. A 2004 review team for the Africa MAP programme, for example, considered eight elements of the programme that it considered ‘critical’ and which ‘should be explicitly reviewed in each country’. The eight consisted of: government commitment and governance; national HIV/AIDS strategies and frameworks; the multi-sectoral approach in the national response, including the health sector response; community engagement; monitoring and evaluation; donor collaboration and coordination; Bank instruments (‘the relation of MAP Projects to programmatic loans and health sector’); projects; and implementation experience (2004d: 4). None of the eight make explicit reference to gender, nor does the review suggest that gender is widely considered an important element of project evaluation. The review states that, In only one of the six countries visited was the issue of gender mentioned by the clients, despite the fact that in Africa, women and especially girls are among the most vulnerable to HIV/AIDS infection. While gender is an explicit focus of some project elements, it has not yet become an organizing principle of some governments. (ibid: 9) It is difficult to see how ‘gender’ might, however, feasibly be considered an ‘organising principle’ for state governments when it is not considered a ‘crucial element’ of the Bank’s own HIV/AIDS approach, nor does the

198


Bank insist that its policy is implemented and evaluated according to gender-based policy prescriptions. The review closes by suggesting that ‘future project designs ought to be developed in the context of the needs for a broad health sector response’, and developed ‘on the basis of evidence of the nature and stage of the epidemic in individual countries’ (World Bank 2004d: 10). Although this should include ‘the questions of gender’, the Bank makes no further mention of what, specifically, these questions might entail, nor where, how and to whom they might be asked.

Summary To analyse effectively a discourse as sexed is not to limit discussion purely to sex acts or sexual identities in the usual sense. It is, instead, to talk about ‘sex as it is mediated by publics’; that is, the sex of discourses that do not overtly talk about sex and some of whose obvious relation to sex may be obscure (Berlant and Warner 1998: 547). In this sense, the World Bank can be said to be producing a public discourse that instigates policy-making initiatives which can be read as sexed. The ‘public’ of the World Bank, and the policy-making initiatives it instigates, are thus sexed and gendered. The Bank does not often explicitly name ‘sex’, ‘sexual activity’ and ‘sexual behaviour’. Where it does, Bank discourse reproduces highly ethnocentric and gendered assumptions about who a person is and, therefore, what that person does (or is able to do). The Bank’s HIV/AIDS policy-making and its approach to SSA development link, in various and crucial ways, conceptualisations of ‘risk-taking behaviour’ with an interpretation of ‘effective’ policy that make of African sexualities and social practices problems to be classified, medicated against and regulated. For sure, violent and discriminatory behaviour is intolerable, in any society. The portrayal, however, of women’s passive vulnerability relative to men’s active and sexual power reproduces myths of African women’s victimhood and African men’s hypersexuality that entirely erases their social, political and economic conditions of possibility. Analysis of HIV/AIDS policy-making thus provides a rare opportunity for analysis of an influential international institution’s explicit consideration of and approach to sex, in terms of authorising and regulating appropriately well-behaved bodies, while reproducing certain value hierarchies that mean that these bodies make sense only in relation to the neoliberal market that they must produce for.


Gender’s dualism in Western economic discourses of productivity and capital expansion, embodied in the truth of ‘two’ sexes, ‘two’ genders and ‘two’ behaviours (productive and reproductive), is not necessarily shared by all cultures and societies across the world. Authorising and reproducing its own exclusive, heteronormative and ethnocentric discourse of neoliberal rationality, Bank discourse and the policies it reproduces ignore and eradicate the complexities of local relationships, rationalities, behaviours and activities. With varying degrees of influence over development policy-making and practice, Bank discourse sanctions (and thus formally organises) the indigenous and local relationships it encounters through assumptions about the world that are the result of its own culturally specific circumstances. To all intents and purposes, Bank discourse has substituted ‘gender’ for ‘sex’, justifying, through repressive and moralist discourse, the intervention of ethnocentric and heteronormative mechanisms and institutions in all aspects of non-Western social life.

Conclusion(s)

With this book I have sought to show that the discourse of the World Bank, as a structure of meaning and understanding centred on heteronormativity, is powerful and pervasive enough to oversee the formation and promulgation of human identity. This it does, I have argued, according to the reproduction of accepted norms of successful human behaviour reproduced through an ethnocentric and heteronormative neoliberal discourse. I contend that gender and development policy and practice would be greatly enhanced should they choose to embrace challenges to conventional definitions of sex and gender. All forms of human relationship have important physical, sexual, social, economic and legal dimensions: discrimination of any sort (overt or more tacitly located) merely disempowers the very people the Bank claims to be working for. To borrow Enloe’s argument, there are centres of power and there are also margins, silences and bottom rungs (1996: 186–201), but none exist without a certain conceptual reliance upon gendered dichotomies. Power operates at every level, structural and/or personal, in the words we use and the practices and habits we (knowingly or otherwise) submit ourselves to. It not only takes power and resources to create a centre away from the margins, it also takes specific discursive and rigorously gendered strategies to maintain and police it. Analysis that focuses specifically on the workings of centred structures exposes gender, or at least what is called ‘gender’ (defined in relation to the duality of ‘sex’) to be a product of relations of power.

The power of neoliberalism as discourse My analytical strategy throughout this research has been based on the assumption that every object is constituted as an object of 200

Conclusion(s) 201

discourse, that all objects and actions convey meaning and are themselves meaningful and that social practices articulate and contest the discourses that constitute social reality. These assumptions manifest themselves in consideration of discourse beyond language, such that language is far from a transparent medium for transmitting knowledge and is instead the contingent and context-specific product and producer of social, political and cultural formations. Neoliberal discourses are considered here dominant, heteronormative, and discursive structures. As products and producers of gendered meaning, knowledge and power, ‘sex’ in neoliberal discourses is true where it is asserted as reproductive, ‘gender’ where it is affirmed as heterosexual and rational Economic Man becomes the ‘bearer of humanity without distinctions’. Drawing clear boundaries around the appropriate human subject, neoliberal discourse delineates how a particular ‘reality’ can be known and acted upon through the kind of language that prescribes exactly what may, or may not, be signified. A crucial attribute of neoliberalism is its performativity. As Butler articulates, performative acts are forms of ‘authoritative speech’ that, in the uttering, also ‘perform a certain action and exercise a binding power’. The ‘power of discourse’ is thus ‘to produce that which it names’ (Butler 1993: 225). The ‘reality’ of neoliberalism (‘rational’ action centred on capital acquisition, private property rights and the socially distributive mechanism of the neoliberal market) is thus performed as an effect of the performance. The binding power of, for example, the necessity of market reform is not derived from the World Bank’s force of will or from its prior authority; power resides in the language produced through discourse, wherein the appropriate response (in this instance reforms of regulation) is immediately prescribed (e.g. World Bank 2006b). The World Bank’s discourse is thus performative because the (neoliberal) essence or identity that it otherwise purports to express is a ‘fabrication’, manufactured and sustained by discursive means (Butler 1990: 173). This performativity is both productive and reproductive, producing the identities required to initiate successful outcomes and then reproducing these identities while perpetuating the authority to govern. ‘The things that are said’ exist, of course, denotatively, as pronouncements of authority, and pre(pro)scriptively, as commands and prohibitions, but they exist, above all, as performative utterances, transforming identity through the words that are rendered. Much has been written on the subjects of neoliberalism, globalism and globalisation. Considerably less actually reviews both sex and gender’s constitutive relationship with these, nor seeks to locate the

202


gendered rationalisations on which such discourses depend. In contrast, I hope that this book has extended the possibility of thinking about neoliberalism as intrinsically power-laden and powerful and therefore, in Larner’s words, productive of spaces, states, subjects and identities. Neoliberalism has (more successfully than other discourses in the twentieth century) monopolised the politics of development in recent years, and is widely accepted as economic ‘common sense’ by many international development actors, agencies and mechanisms of governance. ‘Economics’, and those who theorise and practice it, have very successfully perpetuated a world of economic modelling and objective reasoning entirely abstract in formulation and execution. The ‘facts’ of economics (functionally similar individuals, objective models, goods in a state of exchange) speak for themselves, or so it seems. Such abstraction, however, belies the constructed realities on which the ‘science’ of economics depends. This is not to say that there are no ‘facts of life’, and no necessities accompanying humans’ primary and irrefutable experiences, but that, just because we think we know what the ‘facts’ are does not mean we know what they do. The ‘facts’ of neoliberal discourses are constructed according to historically and culturally specific systems of knowledge, and are never given by the world of experience and facts. Questions of truth and knowledge are always relative to the standards set down by particular systems of knowledge and are not determined by a theory-independent world of objects. The ‘facts’ of neoliberalism are constructed, but not made to appear so, and to know what they are, and to obey their dictates, is not necessarily to know what meanings they produce, what behaviours they make acceptable or prohibit, or what ‘economic’ identities they allow or deny. Neoliberalism is a centred structure, revolving around the pre/ proscriptive core assumptions of Economic Man, ‘nature’ and ‘science’. Predicating as ‘true’ the inherent efficiency of the neoliberal market, the objectivity and value neutrality of economic models, or the centrality of productive labour, neoliberalism thus prescribes appropriate responses, such as competitive behaviour, individualism, efficiency and so on, as desirable characteristics. Simultaneously proscribing other less desirable characteristics (effeminacy, weakness, cowardice, unemployment) through reference to its own wider organising principles (marketisation, flexibilisation, deregulation and privatisation), neoliberalism is able to conceal the (gendered) contingency and configuration of its key assumptions through apparently abstract, value-neutral economic ‘markers’. In centring Economic Man, neoliberal discourse constructs

Conclusion(s) 203

as legitimate acts, identities, behaviours and policies solely in relation to the sovereignty of the economically masculine, White and European individual. The ‘facts’ of neoliberal discourse are the things without which much contemporary economic theorising would not make sense: the single model of individual behaviour (the rational economic choice model); value neutrality (economic modelling as intrinsically objective); that actors in markets are functionally individualistic (responsible only for themselves); that a market is only considered fully functioning when it is said by economists to be ‘competitive’; that a well-functioning competitive system is ‘naturally’ efficient. These ‘facts’ depend on but also reproduce highly gendered assumptions of behaviour embodied in Economic Man (homo economicus), a category that is both universal and highly masculinised. An increasing number of inventive, challenging (in every sense) and provocative publications on gender in the global political economy have sought to centralise gender and its study. Contemporary gender scholarship has certainly thoroughly broadened gender’s reach, while remaining sensitive to the questions that ought to be asked by women’s consistent over-representation in the most-hungry, least-paid lists. Such scholarship, I hope mine included, has shown that ‘gender’ is everywhere, and no ‘economic’ value is socially untied or ‘value neutral’.

The gendered foundations of neoliberalism It remains the case, however, that, in spite of the consistently high quality and quantity of gender analysis, gender remains rather trivialised in the minds of the mainstream, as a category pertaining only to the lives of women, women’s labour rights and women’s social movements. Given that conventional, ‘objective’ analyses have a vested interest in not taking gender too seriously, it is unsurprising that analysis that challenges the very assumptions on which value neutrality is upheld should be so treated. I hope that, at the very least, my research exposes how intimately pervasive the power relations implicit in neoliberal discourse are and how much is at stake in taking gender seriously in the global political economy. Neoliberalism, as a powerful and pervasive discourse of economic development, has affected in some way most of, if not all, the world’s population. I have in this book argued that neoliberal discourses rest on assumptions of economic growth and stability, financial transactions and human behaviour that are deeply gendered whilst presented as

204


universal and neutral. Positivist, universalist and rationalist neoliberal discourses predicate, pre/proscribe and reproduce meanings, identities and behaviours in the global political economy through certain discursive binaries, ‘natural facts’ and gender/sex categories. Gender is certainly a substantial part of what it means to be ‘human’, but it is not my intention to suggest that people everywhere labour under the same signifying codes, cultural articulations or life experiences to make a universal ‘gender discourse’ probable, desirable or even possible. Gender constitutes the social norms on which depends, as Butler articulates, the viability of our individual personhood (Butler 2004: 2), but these social norms are highly context dependent and subject to enormous cultural variation. I choose instead to read ‘neoliberalism’ as a constellation of discursive practices and normative articulations that renders the individual intelligible in particular, culturally specific ways. Gender herein is a regulation operating as an implicit standard of normalisation, but its realisation is specific to the social environment and context in question. Gender is not something people ‘have’, nor is it something people ‘are’. It is rarely explicit in neoliberal discourses, and is often tacitly located, difficult to read and most clearly discernible only in the effects that it produces. My research has chosen a gender–discourse analysis that has, I hope, made gender’s role and function in neoliberalism a little easier to read. My aim has always been to analyse and understand the operations of power in neoliberalism by examining the gendered foundations upon which the hierarchies, centres and foundational assumptions of discursive structures have been built. Neoliberal discourses, as regulatory apparatuses governing the (re)production of labouring, productive human identities, are themselves gender specific. What the individual ‘is’ is always relative to the constructed relations in which it can be determined. The World Bank’s neoliberal discourse is sexually configured because it depends on gender hierarchies of successful human behaviour, fictively constructed within a cultural field of compulsory heterosexuality. Thus the Bank’s neoliberalism is entirely heteronormative, embodying and dependent on institutions, structures of understanding and practical orientations that privilege heterosexuality as a central organising principle of social membership. Neoliberal discourses normalise and naturalise their otherwise contingent foundations through discursive practices that simultaneously construct the appropriate ‘self’ and inappropriate ‘other’ according to presuppositional ‘truths’ (of rational, market behaviour, functional

Conclusion(s) 205

individualism, competitive interaction and the efficiency of the neoliberal market model). These become naturalised and sedimented in the subject’s mind as background knowledge of how the world works, and what the nature of that world’s inhabitants is. The combination of the reproduction of such prescribed ‘truths’ and the classificatory schemes that place human beings in the categories to which they most ‘naturally’ belong produces tacit but important hierarchies of identity. Such hierarchies inform and sustain, for example, the assumption of a substantive person, who bears ‘universal’ norms of behaviour and essential characteristics and attributes that have long been predicated on a signifying economy of ideal masculinity. That the abstractly masculine individual is deployed so widely in Western economic discourse as to be considered a natural fact in and of itself is not to say its discursive function is not worth commenting on. The function of Economic Man in a neoliberal discourse such as that of the World Bank is twofold. First, Bank discourse is better able to make sense of social relations as a whole by structuring the meanings we apply to types of endeavour, activity, modes of production according to the (limited and partial) experience of White, European, middle-class men’s actions. The Bank’s discourse, like the discipline of (Western) Economics, in this sense reflects a disciplinary ‘masculine hegemony’ to the extent that it is has predominantly been written by and influenced by male economists and, in this sense, reflects a world of men. Where, symbolically and materially, masculinity has strong links with power, neoliberal discourses centre their dominant representations directly in the world of men. Secondly, but linked to the above, Economic Man functions as a prediscursive norm, limiting all ‘imaginable domains of gender’ to a mimetic relationship with the natural fact of man, representative of human history in general. Thus the ‘definitively human’ activity of economic production has become a characteristically masculine activity, consigning both non-men and non-masculine persons to the spheres of non-productive or reproductive labour, where they are thus situated outside the society of male producers. The creation and perpetuation of Economic Man, and the gendered meanings that are pre/proscribed therein, depend upon regimes of power in which the masculinities and femininities that drive economics, trade, profit and production appear to follow ‘naturally’ from ‘the state of things’, the pre-ordained economic ‘reality’ prescribed by the discourse’s own parameters of intelligibility. An economic system may only ever be partially able to fix human identity, but, through a ‘hegemonic signifying economy of

206


the masculine’ (Butler 1990: 34), it has the power to manipulate the human body through the masculinities and femininities that oversee our functioning as humans, to transform the body through the social structure of gender into a profit-producing global resource. The practical transformation of the body through a social structure dominated by neoliberal discourses perpetuates the (hetero)sexual configuration of economic meaning. It is in this environment, this specifiable context, that the human body learns how to function correctly in the global marketplace. It is, at all times, a function of the World Bank’s neoliberal discourse that the gendered foundations from which it regulates the production and formation of the suitably neoliberal human subject remain concealed. The surface veneer of neutrality on which this depends is far from accidental. Neutrality, abstraction and universality have become discursive markers, signifying the authority to influence, in the most intimate ways, every aspect of human social meaning. The reliance on neutrality, abstraction and universality also functions to condone a formal/informal, public/domestic distinction that reduces ‘gender’ to the differences between two sexes. To separate categories of ‘gender’ and ‘sex’ is to miss the point that gender identities are located, not as offshoots of an economic structure, but as defining elements, legitimating certain relationships, behaviours rationalities and activities. They are categories that are only artificially separable, but their separation is in every way integral to neoliberalism’s authority to define, legitimate and reproduce individuals’ successful economic behaviour.

Gendering the World Bank Study of the World Bank tells us something about neoliberalism both as a wide-ranging and as a pervasive discursive structure, but it also tells us something more specific, as a particular and important instance where human viability is authorised, regulated and maintained. I have argued that the importance of the role that institutions play in the reception and transmittance of conventional wisdoms should not be underestimated. The Bank embodies neoliberal discourse, and is therefore considered neoliberal in this analysis, but its particular structures of understanding and practical orientations are peculiar to that institution alone. The Bank is less a passive reflector of social mores than it is actively engaged in promulgating its own, specific, model of neoliberal development.

Conclusion(s) 207

Neither monolithic nor unchanging, the World Bank deploys unspoken heteronormative standards of normalisation to regulate appropriate and successful economic behaviour, but these are certainly not set in stone, nor should analysis remove them from their historical conditions of possibility. Just as the coherence ascribed to heterosexuality is always provisional and therefore inherently subject to change, so too the Bank’s predominant position in the politics of development. It is this contingency that makes imperative the establishment of some semblance of coherence, unity and universality to the identities and social relations over which it presides. The World Bank, then, as a significant and powerful source of socalled ‘development knowledge’ and ‘expertise’, necessarily contributes to the promulgation of heterosexuality as the basis for, as Bedford articulates, a ‘two-partner model of love and labour wherein women work more and men care better’ (Bedford 2005: 295). The assertion of normative heterosexuality in Bank discourse predicates heterosexuality as essential to productive economic behaviour, circumscribing appropriate life narratives or social identities accordingly. It is important to bear in mind that the Bank’s authority to govern derives from its particular cultural project. The Bank only very rarely names ‘sex’, ‘sexual activity’ and ‘sexual behaviour’ in its work. Where it does, Bank discourse reproduces highly ethnocentric and gendered assumptions about who a person is and, therefore, what that person does (or is able to do), based on an ideal form of White, elite, masculine rationality. Neither overtly racist nor sexist, World Bank discourse is ethnocentrically gendered because it reproduces gendered identity, meaning and behaviour through the culturally specific and historically derived discourse with which it medicates the developing world. Bank discourse is predicated on the attainment of certain, entirely gendered, desirable behaviours, identifications and attributes: the attributes most required in appropriate, active but malleable and responsive market participants are not the abstract qualities of disembodied, raceless, sexless and cultureless individuals but are the result of years of Western hierarchy, regulation, colonisation and conquest. I use the Bank’s HIV/AIDS policymaking and its approach to Sub-Saharan African development as specific examples of this rationality. Bank policy-making in relation to HIV/AIDS and SSA links, in various and crucial ways, conceptualisations of risktaking behaviour with an interpretation of effective policy that make of African sexualities and social practices problems to be classified, medicated against and regulated.

208


World Bank discourse is, therefore, a power-laden and discursively regulatory framework of economic identity that reproduces the social reality that it defines, locating and bestowing economic value through a system of economic relations dependent on dominant, hierarchical and heterosexual formations of gender. The effect has been to associate successful human behaviour almost exclusively with a gender identity embodied in dominant forms of masculinity. It is in the places that the Bank does not, however, explicitly discuss or mention gender that gender identity(ies) most clearly reside, constituting the foundations of the Bank’s neoliberal economic logic and informing at every level the Bank’s processes of decision- and policy-making. The centring of Economic Man is a pervasive, but tacit, feature of neoliberal discourses, broadly speaking, and is certainly the case with Bank discourse. Thus ‘women’, where they appear in Bank work, are categorised as less educated and intrinsically more nurturing, vulnerable and domestically situated, but also more responsible, reliable and trustworthy, since, as nurturers and carers of the household, women are considered less likely to display men’s ‘risk-taking’ behaviour. The centring of certain gendered articulations of gender, based on the predication of an idealised form of White, European, middle–class, masculine identity, ensures a degree of stability, and predictability, to the social relations neoliberalism reproduces. Heterosexual Economic Man is an essential truth to neoliberal discourse, a ‘fact’ of economic interaction to which all subjects must modify themselves and their behaviour. I have also argued that the Bank’s gender strategy has failed in two significant ways. In the first instance, gender issues so far have been unable to gain ‘traction’ in Bank work. The Bank has been unable to situate and prioritise gender in the ‘economic sectors’ of its work, despite operating a gender mainstreaming strategy designed for this very purpose. Secondly, the Bank where it has managed to incorporate gendered analysis into policy and programmes bases its policy recommendations on a problematically essentialist, restrictive and ethnocentric articulation of the relationship between sex and gender, resulting in a narrowly economistic, essentialist and ethnocentric reading of ‘gender inequalities’ as entirely defined by women’s so-called ‘vulnerability’ and economic ‘invisibility’. In the sense that Bank discourse is performative, its articulations perform certain actions and exercise a binding power, such that narrowly economistic, essentialist and ethnocentric articulations of human identities are reproduced by those governed because of the authority and power that Bank policy-making exercises. The Bank cannot, no matter

Conclusion(s) 209

how hard it tries to extend its developmental agenda, initiate and operate a broad and inclusive gender strategy, since its neoliberal rationality is neither broad nor inclusive. Thus it might push at the limits of neoliberal acceptability (remedying ‘market imperfections’ and calculating ‘social capital’) but the Bank’s ‘alternatives’ will always be shaped by the parameters of its economic rationality, which is currently quite firmly anchored in a faith in the neoliberal market. This may change: one would hope that it does, since a single ‘reality’ (economic or otherwise) does not, and will never, serve all those that the Bank seeks to help. My research recognises that the Bank and its staff are located in an organisational culture that may only conceive of development success in terms of increased economic growth, which is achievable only through the successful sedimentation of the neoliberal market in developing economies. They work to achieve this within the parameters of their bureaucratic culture, which necessarily limits how they conceive of the individual policy-recipient (currently, in terms of their ability to interact successfully with the market) and policy ‘problems’, such as gender inequalities (which can be understood in Bank discourse insofar as they are seen to impact on the processes of economic reproduction that dictate economic growth). Analysis of the World Bank and its discourse of global governance are intended to provide an opportunity for analysis of an influential and powerful institution’s consideration of and approach to appropriate, successful and effective human behaviour. Sanctioning and regulating suitably well-behaved bodies, Bank discourse simultaneously reproduces the value hierarchies that mean that these bodies make sense only in relation to the neoliberal market that they must produce for. It is in this sense that gender is not incidental, but absolutely central, to understanding and engaging with the global political economy. The Bank, as a neoliberal organisation committed to policies designed to sediment the position of the Western ‘free’ market and private capital in developing countries, has struggled (and, I argue, failed) to make the ‘business case’ for including gender analysis in its work. As I hope I have shown, the discursive predication, prescription and reproduction of heterosexuality are fundamental to the successful neoliberalisation of the human subject. My point is that we fail to understand the trajectory and the impact of development policy-making as long as we accept certain foundational, but contingent, assumptions as ‘the way it is’ (or, indeed, ‘the way it will be’). Our attempts to appreciate the effects of neoliberal discourses will always be curtailed unless we question the very basic assumptions of the discourses that are so pervasive and widely accepted as ‘common sense’ in the contemporary

210


politics and practices of global governance and economic development. I do not situate myself as a women’s or gender ‘advocate’, in the way that the Bank might understand advocacy, because I do not believe that any policy that sees women and men as fixed, binary and essentially differently located has the capacity to improve their well-being. The Bank’s articulation of women and men remains an ethnocentric, and essentially Western, understanding of where women and men ‘naturally’ belong, how they behave and what they do (and what they are capable of doing). To inquire into how a discourse locates and bestows value, we must take seriously as categories of analysis both gender and sexuality. A much more nuanced and complex analysis of the specificity of country relationships than the Bank currently offers is called for and I hope that this book contributes to such an undertaking. Without a broad, inclusive and non-ethnocentric policy on gender, the Bank runs the danger of contributing to the stereotypes that have posited non-Western sexualities, practices and behaviours as primarily ‘risky’, problematic and in need of (Western) intervention. The Bank’s inability to engage with power in its broadest (productive, reproductive and repressive) sense, its lack of focus on integrating gender more thoroughly into all stages of its work, its reading of sex and gender identities as binary, fixed and incredibly narrow and its exclusion of non-heterosexual behaviours and identities in by far the majority of its work will mean that its work and the policies it produces and recommends will remain ultimately flawed, partial and unresponsive to the multiple and varied needs of those living in the countries with which it works.

Appendix 1. Interviewee Codes (Anonymised) Personal data used for research purposes complies with the UK’s Data Protection Act (1998). Such data consists of information relating to a living individual who can be identified by that information (or from that and other information in the possession of the data user) including any expression of opinion about the individual and any indication of the intentions of the data user/controller in respect of that individual. Since those interviewed for research purposes herein may potentially be identified through the provision of specific job descriptions and/or titles, I have, in compliance with the Data Protection Act and also the University of Bristol’s Code of Practice on Research Ethics, chosen to anonymise all interviewees, referring only, where possible, to the department or sector of the organisation within which they work. For one interviewee, the provision of any form of sectoral description would render them identifiable, and therefore in this instance no details have been given. Prior to its commencement, this research fieldwork (approved and funded by the Economics and Social Research Council, UK) was approved and certified by the Research Ethics Committee (REC) of the Department of Politics, University of Bristol’s as meeting acceptable ethical standards.

Code

Organisation

Department

Date Interviewed

IvWB1

World Bank

Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development

9 Aug 05

IvWB2

World Bank

Social Development Department

10 Aug 05

IvWB3

World Bank

Conflict Prevention and Reconstruction

17 Aug 05

IvWB4

World Bank

Gender Unit (PREM)

18 Aug 05

IvWB5

World Bank

Africa Region

24 Aug 05

IvWB6

World Bank

Gender Unit (PREM)

30 Aug 05

IvIMF7

IMF

Cannot be given

2 Sept 05

IvWB8

World Bank

Social Protection Unit, Human Development Network

13 Sept 05

IvIADB9

IADB

State, Governance and Civil Society Division

15 Sept 05

IvIADB10

IADB

Gender Equality in Development Unit; Sustainable Development Department

15 Sept 05

211


The following provides a detailed overview of the questions I asked at interview with World Bank, IMF and Inter-American Development Bank staff. The content of the different interviews obviously depended on the characters of the individuals in question, their areas of expertise and their personal and professional interests, and so interviews, and the exact questions I chose to ask during interview, frequently varied. This appendix is intended as indicative of my questioning only. The interviews were not recorded, but taken in note form, which was transcribed immediately after each interview. In many cases interviewees broached subjects without having been explicitly asked to discuss them, or indeed raised their own questions in response to mine. I have tried, where I think it appropriate, to include more background detail to the discussion in the hope that the reader acquires a general sense of how certain points were reached or from where particular comments in this book might have sprung. Below I have provided an overview of the topics of interests and questions noted prior to and discussed during the interviews. These provided the basis of my preparation for and approach to each interview, although the actual interviews themselves varied in terms of content. I tended, for example, to concentrate during interviews with those working specifically on gender on more detailed discussion of gender as an area of concern, importance and interest in the work of the Bank, broadly, and for the individuals themselves. Where interviewees were not explicitly gender specialists, however, I often chose to dwell less explicitly on the content of gender analysis and policies, inquiring more broadly as to how interviewees approached the question of gender and to what extent they believed the Bank’s gender policy to have been successfully implemented.

Overview of interview questions 1. Institutional and Bureaucratic Culture of the Bank a) Would it be fair to argue that the Bank lacks a unitary set of policies (is the Bank too complex and disparate an entity to be described as a singular unit)? For example, the 2004 OED Annual Report suggests that the Bank possesses ‘too many groupings (e.g., sectors/networks/sectoral boards), which makes cross-sectoral work difficult’. Do you agree with this statement, and if so, where do you think real divergence between groupings lies, and is it, in your opinion a good or bad thing? b) Would you argue the same for a unitary set of intentions? Would it be wrong, for example, to use documents from a variety of sources (Wolfensohn’s speeches, e.g., OED evaluations, or the Bank’s official 212

Appendix 2. Schedule of Questions for Interview 213

c) d) e)

f)

g)

h)

i) j)

k)

gender mainstreaming strategy) as equivalent indicators of the Bank’s policies and intent? Are there significantly strong differences between Bank units, policies and procedures that would make these documents incommensurable? Where do you think the most important internal tensions and conflicts lie for the Bank (if any)? How would you isolate and describe a particular ‘bureaucratic culture’ within the World Bank (if you think that one exists)? What crucial differences are there, do you think, between public rhetoric and actual policy-making? Do actual processes of decisionmaking vary much from the Bank’s own mission statements, articles and guidelines? How would you describe the relationship between the Bank’s country offices and the work carried out from the Washington headquarters? For example, the 2004 Annual Review of Development Effectiveness suggested that there is real disparity between the effectiveness of global, country and poverty levels of Bank work. Might this gap be borne out of the physical divisions between sectors? Does the Bank, in your eyes, have a ‘grand vision’ (this could perhaps be argued to be a vision of ‘good governance’, or the radical reinvention of the state as working for the good of the rational, autonomous individual)? The Bank’s OED documents, for example, are often critical of the Bank’s apparent inability to develop and maintain a ‘sustained’ vision, and of its ‘sectoral fragmentation’. Would you agree with either of these two positions? Would it be fair, in your view, to conceptualise the Bank as a ‘neoliberal’ institution (neoliberal as in committed to the kind of reforms that sediment policies/theories of marketisation, deregulation, privatisation and/or flexibilisation)? How would you describe the Bank’s approach to ‘good governance’, and how important is ‘good governance’, in your view, for development? Would you say that there is a divide within the Bank between the macroeconomists and those working on more ‘social’ issues, such as gender, the environment and/or sustainable development? How would you describe the relationship between social equality and market efficiency?

2. Influences (External and Internal) on the World Bank a) Is the Bank, in your view, heavily influenced by American (government or otherwise) thinking? For example, some critics have argued that the US Treasury exerts an excessive influence on World Bank decision-making procedures and that, in turn, the World Bank is manipulated to serve the national interests of the United States (e.g. the Bank’s shift in environmental policy in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s as a response to pressure from US Congress). Would you agree or disagree with these kinds of conclusions? Is it, for example, American thinking on the role of government and markets that provides the ‘conceptual centre of gravity for World Bank debates’ (Bøås and McNeill 2003: 25)? If yes, is this a positive

214


or negative in World Bank operations, and if not, how would you describe the major cultural influences on the World Bank? b) Would you argue that the professional orientation of the World Bank’s staff is more of an influence (than, e.g., cultural and/or US influences) on the World Bank’s day-to-day functioning? c) How, in your eyes, do you categorise responses to the World Bank and are there any responses in particular that make you feel uncomfortable with your role, or with popular perception of the Bank? d) What further, institutional, changes do you believe might be made to better defend the Bank against criticism, for example, that is merely a tool of Western capitalism, or that it is an instrument of US Congress? 3. The Role of the President a) Would it be wrong to say that the President’s speeches, and the words he uses as President, are interchangeable with actual Bank policy? For example, would it be fair to argue, in your opinion, that Wolfensohn and the World Bank’s decision to mainstream gender into its policy-making are synonymous? As institutional entities how different are President and Bank, and are these differences important? 4. Staff Training a) How have instances of formal training influenced your use of knowledge and skills? b) As a work environment how conducive would you say the World Bank is to innovation, exploration and support? The 2004 OED Report, for example, pointed to overloaded staff as a particular problem for the Bank and a real obstacle to effective policy-making. Would you agree with this? c) Ought there to be a ‘Bank standard for an acceptable level of use of knowledge and skills acquired from formal training’ (World Bank 2003d: ix)? At what level would you set this general standard? 5. Gender in/at the World Bank a) Would you disagree with the statement that the World Bank is gendered (in structure, approach and outcome), and, if so, in what ways would you describe your disagreement? b) How would you describe your own approach to and conceptualisation of gender identity? Is ‘gender’ a useful term to you in terms of conceiving of people’s identities (why/why not?)? c) How would you describe the Bank’s gender mainstreaming policy? d) Do you think the relative lateness of the Bank’s uptake of gender mainstreaming has any particular effects on policy-making and outcomes? e) How do you believe the separation of ‘sectors’ impacts on the Bank’s operations and decision-making processes, if at all? For example, that under the Social Development’s ‘Policies’ section, the Bank’s operational policies were separated into those involving ‘vulnerable groups’, such as displaced and indigenous populations; policies involving ‘conflict’; and, with regards to ‘gender’, policies concerning poverty reduction and

Appendix 2. Schedule of Questions for Interview 215 enhanced economic growth. I wondered if there was not something that the Bank might be missing in not embedding ‘vulnerable groups’ or conflict societies with a sense of gendered identity, and whether you agreed or disagreed with the Bank’s own categorisations (or, if it is an issue for you at all)? f) Is there for you any danger that a gender policy that targets women in many instances contradicts the Bank’s wider Community Driven Development (CDD) aims and objectives (these are that all poor people be treated as assets and partners in the development process)? g) How integrated is the Bank’s gender mainstreaming strategy into other departments, for example, the Social Development Department? Do you think that the Bank has been successful in mainstreaming its gender policy? h) Where do you think the advantages lie in separating a ‘gender’ sector from a Social Development, or Poverty Reduction one, for example? 6. Questions specifically for Gender Unit Staff a) How many staff work in the Bank’s Gender Unit? Is this in your opinion too few? b) How does the Bank’s Gender Board work? c) How would you describe the structure and work of the Bank’s gender unit? d) What are the reasons, in your opinion, for the Gender Group’s positioning in PREM? e) How would you describe the differences between ‘advocacy’ and ‘policymaking’ (see ‘Engendering Development’)? f) I read with interest, on the Bank’s ‘Regional and Thematic Gender Web Sites’, that there are ‘significant gender issues in more than 100 developing countries’ (http://www.worldbank.org). How would you describe a ‘significant gender issue’, and would you locate them only in developing countries? g) How would you rate the Bank’s success at informing policy dialogue and decisions on projects and programmes in a gender-aware manner? h) How successfully would you rate the Bank’s efforts to incorporate gender into social assessments? i) How would you describe the Bank’s position today in relation to WID, WAD, GAD and beyond? j) To what extent does the Bank work with other institutions/organisations on gender issues (e.g. the International Center for Research on Women, the Inter-American Development Bank)? k) Could you explain the role and importance of sources of external funding, such as the Trustfund for Gender Mainstreaming (GENFUND)? 7. Questions for Non-World Bank Staff a) How would you describe the work, mandate and operations of your organisation? How ‘transparent’ do you believe this organisation to be? b) How would you describe the working environment and bureaucratic culture of your organisation (diversity, hierarchy, structure)?

216


c) How would you describe the size, scope of organisation, decentralisation, position nationally and internationally of your organisation? d) Who are the key shareholders, how is voting power calculated and what is its relations to capital inputs? e) Is there a distinction between ‘borrowing members’ and ‘members at wide’? f) How has your organisation changed since inauguration (e.g. changes in remit and perspective)? g) What do you think the links are, if any, between an increase in capital for the organisation and the development of a more ‘integrated’ view of development (leading to a modern approach based far more on a broader understanding of the need for ‘good institutions’ in order to facilitate development)? h) How would you define ‘governance’ and its relationship with economic growth? What would you identify as the main problems your organisation encounters in improving its members’ governance credentials (e.g. the difficulties implicit in measuring improvements and effectiveness in some areas, the long-term quality of ‘results’, and the need for assessment of several ongoing projects over a longer-term period, which can take time to feed back)? i) Results-wise, what areas have experienced better results? j) How important is it to exhibit cultural sensitivity in the institution’s dealings? k) How does the struggle to remain competitive affect the organisation’s work? l) Conflicts of interest with other similar (regionally or policy-wise) organisations? m) What obstacles and/or difficulties are involved in the governance of the states your organisation deals with in particular? n) How can organisational policy be made more attractive to the region? o) How important is it that international institutions, such as the UN, or the OAS for example, come to agreement on standards of governance? p) What are the practical differences (in cause and effect) of high-cost versus low-cost projects? Does one type tend to experience more success? q) How might ‘technical co-operations’ present a way of bypassing costly state legislatures? r) How would you describe the staff at this organisation (where do they come from, how are they trained, etc.)? s) Is the recruitment of women an issue? Staff selection? Can diversity be conceived of as any sort of threat to the quality of organisation’s ‘core’ work (e.g. the lag between the thinking of senior staff and the organisation’s diversity needs, leading to a gap between organisation policy and how managers actually think)? t) Does the diversity of staff have any affect on the type of policy or project design produced at an institution, that is, that the more diverse the staff, the greater the variety of policy-types we might see instigated? u) To what extent do the members of staff of such an institution adjust to and absorb the culture of the institution before they achieve more senior, influential, positions? To what extent does an institution’s staff represent only

Appendix 2. Schedule of Questions for Interview 217

v) w)

x) y)

z)

the cultural mode of that institution? What is the role of the organisation’s President/Managing Director? Would you attribute any specific ‘image’ to the organisation? What do ‘incentives’ consist of and how they might be operationalised at this organisation? What are the differences between formal and informal incentives for the promotion of institutional diversity (policy and staffbased)? How crucial in this is accountability, or the lack thereof? How do levels of competition impact on the institution’s staff? Is competitiveness a factor among and characteristic of organisation staff? Guidelines on gender mainstreaming and gender strategy at the organisation in question? What are the significant issues for gender analysis and the organisation’s Gender Unit (if applicable)? What is gender analysis at this organisation primarily concerned with? To what extent does approaching gender more broadly than women’s empowerment mean a ‘difference in emphasis’ for the organisation’s gender policy? How do differences between gender ‘rhetoric’ and actual policy affect your work, how might this present difficulties for grasping a broader gender picture, and how might this affect the processes of building a new gender strategy at your organisation? Has the Women’s Movement failed, and if so, how?

Notes Introduction 1. Although I use ‘global political economy’ to refer to the global space of politico-economic action, practice and effect, I use the term ‘International Political Economy’ (IPE) to refer to the actual studying of the GPE. Not a good description of the entirety of its scholarly and practical content, IPE is more often employed to reference the academic discipline behind inquiry into the GPE. Sometimes referred to as a discipline in its own right, IPE is also frequently referred to as a sub-discipline of International Relations (IR). I tend to describe IPE as its own discipline, if only to avoid irking those who might take offence. 2. There exists an extensive body of literature examining neoliberalism and global restructuring from multiple perspectives, including state- and nonstate-led sources of neoliberal discourse, for example Agnew and Corbridge (1995); Green (1995); Bourdieu (1998); Peck (2001); Rankin (2001); Touraine (2001); Wichterich (2000); Colloredo-Mansfield (2002); Benería (2003a); Hay (2004); Elias (2004); Larner and Le Heron (2005); Larner and Craig (2005), among (many) others.

1 Discourse, sex and gender in global governance 1. This is also true in the case of descriptions of the ‘feminisation’ of poverty, a term widely used to denote not the quality of poverty itself but to designate the ‘sex’ of those bodies most affected by growing poverty. I look at the feminisation of poverty more closely in Chapter 2.

2 Analysing ‘The Economy’ 1. By ‘Economics’ I refer primarily to a Western social science, based in analysis of the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services, most often learnt, taught and practised in the organisations and institutions (including universities and governments) of Western societies (i.e., Northern Europe, including the UK, the US and Australasia). 2. ‘Mainstream’ Economics refers to those analyses retaining the neoclassical viewpoint as dominant. Like all hegemonic disciplinary voices, mainstream Economics has, of course, experienced some significant challenges and reconfigurations. Economics incorporates elements of once-subversive economic theories in the same way that IR exhibits a ‘coloniser and colonised’ rationality, admitting those marginal modes of inquiry that can be ‘presented in compatible terms and can be absorbed into reigning research agendas with minimal disturbance’ (Jacobsen 2003: 39–40). Thus mainstream Economics has occasionally been influenced by so-called ‘heterodox’ 218

Notes 219

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

ideas, for example, from Austrian economics, ‘evolutionary’ economics, supply-side economics and, in particular, institutional economics. Feminist economics has not been so successfully absorbed and I do not include it in my definition of the mainstream. The mainstream’s neglect of feminism(s) has meant that Feminist Economics has become, especially since the early 1990s, a field of economic inquiry in its own right, with many of its practitioners offering quite radical, sustained critiques of mainstream Economics (e.g. Barker and Kuiper 2003; Benería 2003a; Ferber and Nelson 2003). Not all feminist economists are, of course, necessarily dismissive and/or overtly critical of the methodologies and assumptions of the mainstream: like the broader feminist body to which it belongs, feminist economics suffers from attempts to define it in the singular. Levitt and Dubner (2005), for example, borrow heavily from the neoclassical model to articulate a form of analysis where certain assumptions are foundational, for example, regarding actors’ preferences as exogenous to economic models (p. 77 and pp. 156–176) or that ‘rational actors’ respond to incentives (p. 7). ‘Total factor productivity’ refers, according to Helpman, to a ‘single measure of how efficiently all inputs combined are utilized in a production process (2004: 152)’. Helpman dismisses the Human Development Index because it constructs a measurement of income that rises ‘less than proportionately with actual income’ (2004: 153), but misses the point that in the HDI per capita GNP (GDP) is not the centrifugal point from which all other indicators radiate, but is one measurement among many (or, at least, one among five: life expectancy at birth; adult literacy rate; combined gross enrolment ratio for primary, secondary and tertiary schools; GDP per capita in US dollars; and life expectancy). Numerous and detailed criticisms, many of them feminist, admonish Economics and its approach to the family. England’s work particularly stands out here (1993 and 2003), not least where she discusses economist Gary S. Becker’s Treatise on the Family (often credited as starting a ‘new home economics’). Becker, she argues, posits selfishness in markets but altruism in the family, where a single ‘family utility function’ is assumed and where the family’s ‘head’ is an altruist. Becker, England notices, only ever refers to the ‘head’ as male, whereas the beneficiaries are women and children, although he claims ‘that he used masculine and feminine pronouns only to distinguish the altruist from the beneficiary’ (1993, summarised in England 2003: Becker, 45–47). I am thinking particularly in this instance of Wolfensohn’s comments, made in his ‘Challenge of Inclusion’ speech (1997). Here, the Bank’s former (and arguably most popular) President speaks of talking to some of the women of the favelas around Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. These women ‘proudly showed me their running water and flushed their toilets and told me how the [Bankfunded] project had transformed their lives’. Wolfensohn describes these meetings as if his presence in these local communities were entirely normal to the women he speaks with, as if no great fuss has been made on his account. That is, as if he had no effect on the participants of these communities whatsoever and simply arrived to absorb the ‘truth’ of these

220

Notes

women’s situations, which he might objectively relay to his audience in Hong Kong. 8. The Gini coefficient is a measure of statistical dispersion, defined in a ratio between zero and one. The closer to zero the coefficient, the more equal income or wealth distribution, while a high Gini coefficient indicates a more unequal distribution of wealth. The Thiel index is a statistical index used to measure economic inequality. 9. In referring to the West here I am not intending to underestimate the extent to which other parts of the world have absorbed the neoliberal market model into their politico-economic culture. Latin American countries, such as Bolivia, Chile and Argentina, in particular, confirm the extent of the embeddedness of the market in contemporary politics, having proved some of the most committed and enthusiastic testing grounds for the neoliberal market model. Examples of Latin American neoliberal ‘transformations’ also highlight particularly well the extent to which marketisation lies at the heart of the neoliberal agenda. Duncan Green’s work is particularly effective in analysing this history (1995). 10. With regards to Milton Friedman’s use of the term ‘market’, it is important to highlight, as Carrier notes, that ‘the market’ is used as a technically simplified, predictive model carrying, in Friedman’s writing if not my own, no interpretive element or assumed cultural link between the model and the real world of people’s motivations and understandings (Carrier 1997: 15–16).

3 Analysing the World Bank 1. The Bank was only presented in ‘blueprint stage’ at Bretton Woods in 1944, whereas plans for the IMF were far more advanced (Peet 2003: 38–44). 2. Paul Wolfowitz, often described as the ‘architect’ of the Bush administration’s Iraq invasion, remained a resoundingly unpopular president until his forced departure in 2007. Taking over as President from the beginning of July 2007, Robert B. Zoellick has been described by President Bush as a ‘committed internationalist’ who is ‘deeply devoted to the mission’ of the World Bank. Zoellick, however, a former Chief US Trade Representative, US Deputy Secretary of State and vice chairman of international operations at Goldman Sachs, enjoys the dubious distinction of, like his predecessor Wolfowitz, having supported the ‘Project for the New American Century’ (PNAC) campaign of intervention in Iraq.

4 World Bank policy-making (1): gender in/and the World Bank 1. Boserup (1970) concluded that in sparsely populated regions where shifting agriculture is practised, women tend to do the majority of agricultural work; in more densely populated regions, where ploughs and other simple technologies are used, men tend to do more of the agricultural work. In areas of intensive, irrigation-based cultivation, both men and women share in agricultural tasks. 2. Several World Bank interviewees conceptualised ‘advocacy’ as a problem, or discussed the weaknesses of gender analysis as approached from a position

Notes 221 of advocacy, particularly IvWB3, IvWB5 and IvWB6. The question of advocacy proves an important but highly contested subject through which to analyse the Bank, not least since the labelling of an issue as one of ‘advocacy’ effectively delegitimises its inclusion in Bank work. 3. These ‘focus countries’ (which at writing are only provisional) include Afghanistan, Mozambique, Liberia, Armenia, Cambodia, Niger, Sierra Leone, Chile, Ethiopia, Papua New Guinea, Sudan, China, Ghana, Senegal, Egypt, Honduras, Tajikistan, Guatemala, Kenya, Tanzania, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Timor-Leste, Morocco, Malawi, Uganda, Nicaragua, Mauritania, Vietnam, Philippines, Mongolia, Yemen, Uruguay.

5 World Bank policy-making (2): reproducing (economically viable) gender norms 1. See, for example, the Bank’s cover illustration for their report ‘Doing Business 2007: Reforms Make a Difference’ (World Bank 2006b), which depicts two suited African men discussing a report, a mobile phone and a set of ‘executive’ car keys between them. The assumed association between ‘business’, maleness and masculinity is clearly depicted here and the standard that African men are expected to strive to meet I find quite striking.

6 World Bank policy-making (3): gender, HIV/AIDS and Sub-Saharan Africa 1. Robert Gallo, once credited with discovering the HIV virus, was, in 1993, found guilty of ‘scientific misconduct’, having concealed experiments revealing that French scientists had discovered HIV a year earlier than his claim (British Medical Journal 1993: 161). 2. The HIV/AIDS Control Project for Uganda was approved on 28 December 2000 and effective from 14 May 2001. Its total cost was US$47.5 million (http://go.worldbank.org/M6RP8G7EF0). 3. Project Performance Assessment Reports (PPARs) are produced by the Bank’s Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) (the Bank’s Operations Evaluation Department having been renamed in December 2005). The reports assess the ‘development effectiveness’ of projects based on a review of project documents, interviews with relevant actors and field visits, rating each project accordingly. The rating of project outcome is based on the extent to which the project’s major relevant objectives were achieved, or are expected to be achieved, ‘efficiently’, with ratings also provided on ‘sustainability’, ‘institutional development impact’, ‘World Bank performance’ and ‘Borrower performance’ (http://go.worldbank.org/TQMCE2L5G0). The Uganda Sexually Transmitted Infections Project was given PPAR ratings of: • • • • •

Outcome: ‘moderately unsatisfactory’; Sustainability: ‘likely’; Institutional development impact: ‘substantial’; Bank performance: ‘satisfactory’; Borrower performance: ‘satisfactory’ (World Bank 2005k: v).

References Agnew, J. and Corbridge, S. (1995), Mastering Space: Hegemony, Territory and International Political Economy. London and New York: Routledge. Allen, T. and Heald, S. (2004), ‘HIV/AIDS Policy in Africa: What has Worked in Uganda and What has Failed in Botswana?’, Journal of International Development, 16, pp. 1141–1154. Annan, K. (2005), ‘In Larger Freedom: Towards Development, Security and Human Rights for All’, Report of the United Nations Secretary-General to the General Assembly, 59th Session, accessed January–September 2008 http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N05/270/78/PDF/N0527078.pdf? OpenElement. Asian Development Bank. (2003), Policy on Gender and Development. Manila, Philippines: Asian Development Bank. Awusabo-Asarea, K. and Anarfib, J. K. (1999), ‘Rethinking the Circumstances Surrounding the First Sexual Experience in the Era of AIDS in Ghana’, in Orubuloye, I. O., Caldwell, J. C. and Ntozi, P. M. (eds), The Continuing HIV/AIDS Epidemic in Africa: Responses and Coping Strategies. Canberra: Health Transition Centre, National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health pp. 9–18. Bakhtin, M. M. (2004), ‘The Problem of Speech Genres’, in Jaworski, A. and Coupland, N. (eds), The Discourse Reader. London: Routledge, pp. 121–132. Barker, D. and Kuiper, E. (2003) (eds), Toward a Feminist Philosophy of Economics. London and New York: Routledge. Barker, G. and Ricardo, C. (2005), ‘Young Men and the Construction of Masculinity in Sub-Saharan Africa: Implications for HIV/AIDS, Conflict and Violence’, Paper No.26, Social Development Papers. Washington, D.C.: The World Bank. Barnett, T. (2002), ‘The Social and Economic Impact of HIV/AIDS on Development’, in Desai, V. and Potter, R. B. (eds), The Companion to Development Studies. London: Hodder Arnold, pp. 391–395. Barnett, M. and Duvall, R. (2005) (eds), Power in Global Governance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Barnett, M. and Finnemore, M. (2005), ‘The Power of Liberal International Organizations’, in Barnett, M. and Duvall, R. (eds), Power in Global Governance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 161–184. Barthes, R. (2000), Mythologies. Selected and translated by Lavers, A. London: Vintage. Becker, G. S. (1993), ‘The Economic Way of Looking at Behaviour’, Journal of Political Economy, 101(3), pp. 385–409. Bedford, K. (2005), ‘Loving to Straighten Out Development: Sexuality and “Ethnodevelopment” in the World Bank’s Ecuadorian Lending’, Feminist Legal Studies, 13(3), pp. 295–322. Benería, L. (2003a), Gender, Development and Globalization: Economics as if all People Mattered. London and New York: Routledge. 222

References 223 Benería, L. (2003b), ‘Economic Rationality and Globalization: A Feminist Perspective’, in Ferber, M. A. and Nelson, J. A. (eds), Feminist Economics Today: Beyond Economic Man. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, pp. 115–133. Bergeron, S. (2001), ‘Political Economy Discourses of Globalization and Society’, Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 26, pp. 983–1006. Bergeron, S. (2003), ‘The Post-Washington Consensus and Economic Representations of Women in Development at the World Bank’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 5(3), pp. 397–419. Berlant, L. and Warner, L. (1998), ‘Sex in Public’, Critical Inquiry, 24(2), pp. 547–566. Best, J. (2003), ‘From the Top-Down: The New Financial Architecture and the Re-Embedding of Global Finance’, New Political Economy, 8(3), pp. 363–384. Beyrer, C., Gauri, V. and Vaillancourt, D. (2005), Evaluation of the World Bank’s Assistance in Responding to the AIDS Epidemic: Brazil Case Study. Washington, D.C.: World Bank. Blank, R. M. (1993), ‘What Should Mainstream Economics Learn from Feminist Theory?’, in Ferber, M. A. and Nelson, J. A. (eds), Beyond Economic Man: Feminist Theory and Economics. London and Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, pp. 133–143. Bøås, M. and McNeill, D. (2003), Multilateral Institutions: A Critical Introduction. London: Pluto. Bonthuys, E. (2006), ‘Women’s Sexuality in the South African Constitutional Court’, Feminist Legal Studies, 14(3), pp. 391–406. Boserup, E. (1970), Women’s Role in Economic Development. London: Allen and Unwin. Boulding, E. (1976), The Underside of History: A View of Women Through Time. Boulder: Westview Press. Bourdieu, P. (1998), ‘The Essence of Neoliberalism’, Le Monde Diplomatique, December, www. http://mondediplo.com/1998/12/08bourdieu. Bouta, T., Frerks, G. and Bannon, I. (2005), Gender, Conflict and Development. Washington, D.C.: The World Bank. British Medical Journal. (1993), ‘Gallo Guilty of AIDS Misconduct’, 306(6871), pp. 161–166. Butler, J. (1990), Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London and New York: Routledge. Butler, J. (1993), Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. London and New York: Routledge. Butler, J. (2004), Undoing Gender. London and New York: Routledge. Cameron, A. and Palan, R. (2004), The Imagined Economies of Globalization. London: Sage. Carrier, J. G. (1997), Meanings of the Market: The Free Market in Western Culture. Oxford and New York: Berg. Carver, T. (2002), ‘Discourse Analysis and the “Linguistic Turn” ’, European Political Science, 2(1), pp. 50–53. Carver, T., Cochran, M. and Squires, J. (1998), ‘Gendering Jones: Feminisms, IRs, Masculinities’, Review of International Studies, 24(2), pp. 283–297. Cerny, P. G. (2000), ‘Structuring the Political Arena: Public Goods, States and Governance in a Globalizing World’, in Palan, R. (ed.), Global Political Economy: Contemporary Theories. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 21–35.

224

References

Charlesworth, D. (2003), ‘Transmitters, Caregivers, and Flowerpots: Rhetorical Constructions of Women’s Early Identities in the AIDS Pandemic’, Women’s Studies in Communication, 26(1), pp. 60–87. Colloredo-Mansfield, R. (2002), ‘An Ethnography of Neoliberalism: Understanding Competition in Artisan Economies’, Current Anthropology, 43(1), pp. 113–137. Cox, R. W. (1992), ‘Global Perestroika’, Social Register, 28, pp. 26–43, http:// www.socialistregister.com. de Vries, C. (2004), ‘Disabled Persons are More Vulnerable to HIV’, 1 November, http://www.dcdd.nl/default.asp?2503. Denis, A. (2004), ‘Two Rhetorical Strategies of Laissez-Faire’, Journal of Economic Methodology, 11(3), pp. 341–357. Derrida, J. (2001), Writing and Difference. Translated by Bass, A. London and New York: Routledge. Doty, R. L. (1996), Imperial Encounters: The Politics of Representation in North-South Relations. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Elias, J. (2004), Fashioning Inequality: The Multinational Company and Gendered Employment In A Globalized World. Ashgate: Aldershot. Elson, D. (1996), ‘Gender-Aware Analysis and Development Economics’, in Jameson, K. P. and Wilber, C. K. (eds), The Political Economy of Development and Underdevelopment, 6th edition. New York: McGraw-Hill, pp. 70–80. England, P. (1993), ‘The Separative Self: Androcentric Bias in Neoclassical Assumptions’, in Ferber, M. A. and Nelson, J. A. (eds), Beyond Economic Man: Feminist Theory and Economics. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, pp. 37–53. England, P. (2003), ‘Separative and Soluble Selves: Dichotomous Thinking in Economics’, in Ferber, M. A. and Nelson, J. A. (eds), Feminist Economics Today: Beyond Economic Man. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, pp. 33–59. Enloe, C. (1996), ‘Margins, Silences and Bottom Rungs: How to Overcome the Underestimation of Power in the Study of International Relations’, in Booth, K., Zalewski, M. and Smith, S. (eds), International Theory: Positivism and Beyond. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 186–201. Enloe, C. (2007) ‘Forward’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 9(2), pp. 183–184. Fairclough, N. (1999), ‘Linguistic and Intertextual Analysis Within Discourse Analysis’, in Jaworski, A. and Coupland, N. (eds), The Discourse Reader. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 203–211. Ferber, M. A. and Nelson, J. A. (1993) (eds), Feminist Economics Today: Beyond Economic Man. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Ferber, M. A. and Nelson, J. A. (2003) (eds), Feminist Economics Today: Beyond Economic Man. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Fine, B. (2001), ‘Neither the Washington Nor the Post-Washington Consensus: An Introduction’, in Fine, B., Lapavitsas, C. and Pincus, J. (eds), Neither Washington Nor Post-Washington Consensus: Challenging Development Policy in the TwentyFirst Century. London: Routledge, pp. 1–27. Flax, J. (1997), ‘Postmodernism and Gender Relations in Feminist Theory’, in Kemp, S. and Squires, J. (eds), Feminisms. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 170–178.

References 225 Foucault, M. (1998), The Will to Knowledge: The History of Sexuality, Volume I. Translated by Hurley, R. London: Penguin. Foucault, M. (2003), Archaeology of Knowledge. Translated by Sheridan-Smith, A. M. London and New York: Routledge. Foucault, M. (2004), ‘The Incitement to Discourse’, in Jaworski, A. and Coupland, N. (eds), The Discourse Reader. London and New York: Routledge, pp.514–522. Fowler, R. (1981), Literature As Social Discourse: The Practice of Linguistic Criticism. London: Batsford Academic. Fox, J. A. (2002), ‘The World Bank Inspection Panel and the Limits of Accountability’, in Pincus, J. R. and Winters, J. A. (eds), Reinventing the World Bank. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, pp. 131–163. Friedman, M. (1962), Capitalism and Freedom. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Friedman, M. (1991), ‘Economic Freedom, Human Freedom, Political Freedom’, Speech Delivered to the Smith Center at Cal State Hayward, 1 November, http://www.sbe.csuhayward.edu/∼sbesc/frelect.html. Friedman, T. (1999), The Lexus and the Olive Tree. London: HarperCollins. Geshekter, C. L. (1994), ‘Myths of AIDS and Sex’, New African, http://www. virusmyth.com/aids/hiv/cgafrica.htm. Giddens, A. (2002), Runaway World: How Globalisation is Reshaping Our Lives, 2nd edition. London: Profile Books. Gray, J. (2002), False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism. London: Granta. Green, D. (1995), Silent Revolution: The Rise of Market Economics in Latin America. London: Cassell. Griffin, P. (2006), ‘The World Bank’, New Political Economy, 11(4), pp. 571–581. Griffin, P. (2007a), ‘Refashioning IPE: What and How Gender Analysis Teaches International (Global) Political Economy’, Review of International Political Economy, 14(4), pp. 719–736. Griffin, P. (2007b), ‘Sexing the Economy in a Neoliberal World Order: Neo-Liberal Discourse and the (Re)Production of Heteronormative Heterosexuality’, British Journal of International Relations, 9(2), pp. 220–238. Gumperz, J. J. (2004), ‘Sociocultural Knowledge in Conversational Inference’, in Jaworski, A. and Coupland, N. (eds), The Discourse Reader. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 98–106. Harrison, G. (2004), The World Bank and Africa: The Construction of Governance States. London and New York: Routledge. Harrison-Chirimuuta, R. (1997), ‘AIDS from Africa: Western Science or Racists Mythology’, in Cunnigham, A. and Andrews, B. (eds), Western Medicine As Contested Knowledge edited. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Available at http://www.virusmyth.com/aids/hiv/rcracism.htm. Hay, C. (2004), ‘The Normalizing Role of Rationalist Assumptions in the Institutional Embedding of Neoliberalism’, Economy and Society, 33(4), pp. 500–527. Helpman, E. (2004), The Mystery of Economic Growth. Cambridge, MA and London: Belknap Press. Hettne, B. (1999), ‘Globalization and the New Regionalism: The Second Great Transformation’, in Hettne, B., Inotai, A. and Sunkel, O. (eds), Globalism and the New Regionalism. New York: St. Martin’s Press, pp. 1–24.

226

References

Hooper, C. (2000), ‘The Case of Globalisation’, in Marchand, M. H. and Sisson Runyan, A. (eds), Gender and Global Restructuring: Sightings, Sites and Resistances. London: Routledge, pp. 59–73. Hooper, C. (2001), Manly States: Masculinities, International Relations and Gender Politics. New York: Colombia University Press. Hoskyns, C. and Rai, S. (2007), ‘Recasting the Global Political Economy: Counting Women’s Unpaid Work’, New Political Economy, 12(3), pp. 297–317. Howarth, D. (2000), Discourse. Buckingham, Philadelphia: Open University Press. Howarth, D., Norval, A. J. and Stavrakakis, Y. (2000) (eds), Discourse Theory and Political Analysis: Identities, Hegemonies and Social Change. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press. Human Rights Watch. (2003), ‘State-Sponsored Homophobia in Southern Africa’, 14 May, http://hrw.org/english/docs/2003/05/14/safric6049.htm. Ibhaze, L. and Sholola, F. (2008), ‘Marriage to the Grave and Other Forms of Marriage’, Interview with Epprecht, M., Sexuality in Africa Magazine, 5(1), http://www.arsrc.org/publications/sia/mar08/viewpoint.htm. International Finance Corporation (IFC). (2008) World Bank Group, site accessed April–September, http://www.ifc.org. International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU), (2007), ‘Violence and HIV in Africa’, 7 August, http://www.iheu.org/node/2777. International Labour Organization (ILO), (2004), ‘Women, Girls, HIV/AIDS and the World of Work’, December, http://www.ilo.org/public/english/protection/ trav/aids/publ/women-iloaids-brief.pdf. IvIADB9, Interviewed (15 September 2005), IADB Headquarters, Washington, D.C. IvIADB10, Interviewed (15 September 2005), IADB Headquarters, Washington, D.C. IvIM7, Interviewed (2 September 2005), IMF Headquarters, Washington, D.C. IvWB1, Interviewed (9 August 2005), World Bank Headquarters, Washington, D.C. IvWB2, Interviewed (10 August 2005), World Bank Headquarters, Washington, D.C. IvWB3, Interviewed (17 August 2005), World Bank Headquaters, Washington, D.C. IvWB4, Interviewed (18 August 2005), World Bank Headquarters, Washington, D.C. IvWB5, Interviewed (24 August 2005), World Bank Headquarters, Washington, D.C. IvWB6, Interviewed (30 August 2005), World Bank Headquarters, Washington, D.C. IvWB8, Interviewed (13 September 2005), World Bank Headquarters, Washington, D.C. Jacobsen, J. K. (2003), ‘Duelling Constructivisms: A Post-Mortem on the Ideas Debate in Mainstream IR/IPE’, Review of International Studies, 29, pp. 39–60. Jolly, S. (2000), ‘ “Queering” Development: Exploring the Links Between SameSex Sexualities, Gender and Development’, Gender and Development, 8(1), pp. 78–88.

References 227 Kabeer, N. (2001), Reversed Realities: Gender Hierarchies in Development Thought. London and New York: Verso. Kapur, D. (2002), ‘The Changing Anatomy of Governance of the World Bank’, in Pincus, J. R. and Winters, J. A. (eds), Reinventing the World Bank. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, pp. 54–75. Kay, C. (1997) (ed.), Globalisation, Competitiveness and Human Security. London and New York: Routledge. Kiama, W. (1999), ‘Men who Have Sex with Men in Kenya’, in Foreman, M. (ed.), AIDS and Men Taking Risks or Taking Responsibility? London and New York: Zed Books. Kimmel, M. S. (2001), A Man’s World: Changing Men’s Practices in a Globalized World. London and New York: Zed Books. King, A. D. and Mason, E. M. (2001), Engendering Development Through Gender Equality in Rights, Resources and Voice. Washington, D.C.: World Bank. Kubálková, V. (2000), ‘Towards an International Political Theology’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 29(3), pp. 675–704. Laclau, E. and Mouffe, C. (2001), Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics, 2nd edition. London and New York: Verso. Larner, W. (2003), ‘Neoliberalism?’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 21(5), pp. 509–512. Larner, W. and Craig, D. (2005), ‘After Neoliberalism? Community Activism and Local Partnerships in Aotearoa New Zealand’, Antipode, 37(3), pp. 402–424. Larner, W. and Le Heron, R. (2005), ‘Neo-Liberalizing Spaces and Subjectivities: Reinventing New Zealand Universities’, Organization, 12(6), pp. 843–862. Levitt, S. D. and Dubner, S. J. (2005), Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. London: Allen Lane. Ligiéro, D. P. and Kostermans, K. (2004), Integration of Gender Issues in Selected HIV/AIDS Projects in the Africa Region: A Baseline Assessment. Washington, D.C.: World Bank. Lim, L. (1981), ‘Women’s Work in Multinational Electronic Factories’, in Dauber, R. and Cain, M. L. (eds), Women and Technological Change in Developing Countries. Boulder, CO: Westview, pp. 181–190. Ling, L. H. M. (2000), ‘Global Passions Within Global Interests: Race, Gender, and Culture in Our Postcolonial Order’, in Palan, R. (ed.), Global Political Economy: Contemporary Theories. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 242–255. Lorway, R. (2006), ‘Dispelling “heterosexual African AIDS” in Namibia: SameSex Sexuality in the Township of Katutura’, Culture, Health & Sexuality, 8(5), pp. 435–449. Marchand, M. H. and Parpart, J. L. (1995), Feminism/Postmodernism/Development. London and New York: Routledge. Matin, K. (2007), ‘Obstacles on the Road to Prosperity’, Bangkok Post, February, http://go.worldbank.org/NXYIC0AKZ0. Mbali, M. (2004), ‘AIDS Discourses and the South African State: Government Denialism and Post-apartheid’, Transformation, 54, pp. 104–122. Available at http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/transformation/v054/54.1mbali.pdf. McClintock, A. (1995), Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. London and New York: Routledge.

228

References

Mies, M. (2001), ‘Woman, Nature and the International Division of Labour’, in Bernholdt-Thomsen, V., Faraclas, N. and Von Werlhof, C. (eds), There is an Alternative: Subsistence and Worldwide Resistance to Corporate Globalization. London and New York: Zed Books, pp. 3–14. Mohanty, C. T., Russo, A. and Torres, L. (1991) (eds), Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Morgan, D., Brandth, B. and Kvande, E. (2005) (eds), Gender, Bodies and Work. Aldershot: Ashgate. Munck, R. (2003), ‘Neoliberalism, Necessitarianism and Alternatives in Latin America: There is no Alternative (TINA)?’, Third World Quarterly, 24(3), pp. 495–511. Murphy, C. and Tooze, R. (1991) (eds), The New International Political Economy. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Murray, S. O. and Roscoe, W. (1998) (eds), Boy-Wives and Female Husbands: Studies of African Homosexualities. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Nagel, J. (2006), ‘Ethnicity, Sexuality and Globalization’, Theory, Culture and Society, 23, pp. 545–547. Nankani, G. (2004), ‘Creating Shared Growth in Africa’, Public Lecture, Nairobi Kenya, 6 December, http://go.worldbank.org/OR0UE8SGT0. Nsouli, S. M. (2007), ‘What is the IMF Doing to Help Countries Maximize the Benefits of Globalization?’, Crans Monatana Forum, 18th Annual Session, Monaco, 29 June, http://www.imf.org/external/np/speeches/2007/ 062907.htm. O’Brien, R. (2000), ‘Labour and IPE’, in Palan, R. (ed.), Global Political Economy: Contemporary Theories. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 89–99. O’Brien, R., Goetz, A. M., Scholte, J. A. and Williams, M. (2000), Contesting Global Governance. Multilateral Economic Institutions and Global Social Movements. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ohmae, K. (1995), The End of the Nation State: The Rise of Regional Economies. How New Engines of Prosperity are Reshaping Global Markets. New York and London: The Free Press. Ohmae, K. (2002), The Borderless World: Power and Strategy in the Global Marketplace. London: Profile Books. Olters, J. P. (2007), ‘Balancing Flexibility and Security’, Monitor, 897(8), http:// go.worldbank.org/8CW7D0MQJ0. Overbeek, H. (2000), ‘Transnational Historical Materialism: Theories of Transnational Class Formation and World Order’, in Palan, R. (ed.), Global Political Economy: Contemporary Theories. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 168–183. Owens, C. (1983), ‘The Discourse of Others: Feminists and Postmodernism’, in Foster, H. (ed.), Postmodern Culture. London: Pluto Press, pp. 57–82. Park, S. (2005), ‘Norm Diffusion Within International Organizations: A Case Study of the World Bank’, Journal of International Relations and Development, 8(2), pp. 111–141. Parpart, J. (2007), ‘Gender and Global Governance’, in McGrew, A. and Poku, N. K. (eds), Globalization, Development and Human Security. Cambridge: Polity, pp. 207–219. Pattman, R. (2005), ‘Boys and Girls Should Not Be Too Close: Sexuality, the Identities of African Boys and Girls and HIV/AIDS Education’, Sexualities, 8(4), pp. 497–516.

References 229 Pearson, R. (2005), ‘The Rise and Rise of Gender and Development’, in Kothari, U. (ed.), A Radical History of Development Studies. London and New York: Zed Books, pp. 157–179. Peck, J. (2001), ‘Neoliberalizing States: Thin Policies/Hard Outcomes’, Progress in Human Geography, 25(3), pp. 445–455. Peet, R. (2003), Unholy Trinity: The IMF, the World Bank and the WTO. London: Zed Books. Perkins, J. (2005), Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. London and New York: Penguin. Peterson, V. S. (2002), ‘Rewriting (Global) Political Economy as Reproductive, Productive, and Virtual (Foucauldian) Economies’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 4(1), pp. 1–30. Peterson, V. S. (2005) ‘How (The Meaning of) Gender Matters in Political Economy’, New Political Economy, 10(4), pp. 499–521. Poku, N. K. (2007), ‘HIV/AIDS in a Globalized World: An Uneven Pandemic in an Unequal World’, in McGrew, A. and Poku, N. K. (eds), Globalization, Development and Human Security. Cambridge: Polity, pp. 152–170. Polanyi, K. (1944), The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Boston: Beacon Press. Rahnema, M. (1997), ‘Development and the People’s Immune System: The Story of Another Variety of AIDS’, in Rahnema, M. and Bawtree, V. (eds), The PostDevelopment Reader. London and New York: Zed Books, pp. 111–131. Rankin, K. N. (2001), ‘Governing Development: Neoliberalism, Microcredit and Rational Economic Woman’, Economy and Society, 30(1), pp. 18–37. Rao Gupta, G. (2000), ‘Gender, Sexuality and HIV/AIDS: The What, the Why, and the How’, Plenary Address, XIIIth International AIDS Conference, Durban, South Africa, 12 July, www.icrw.org/docs/Durban_HIVAIDS_ speech700.pdf. Ravenhill, J. (2004) (ed.), Global Political Economy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Razavi, S. and Miller, C. (1995), ‘From WID to GAD: Conceptual Shifts in the Women and Development Discourse’, United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, UNDP, http://www.undp.org. Robb, C. (2002), Can the Poor Influence Policy? Participatory Poverty Assessments in the Developing World. Washington, D.C.: The World Bank. Robison, R. (2004), ‘Neo-Liberalism and the Future World’, Critical Asian Studies, 36(3), pp. 405–423. Rosenberg, N. and Birdzell, L. E. (1986), How the West Grew Rich: The Economic Transformation of the Industrial World. Basic: London. Rupert, M. (2003), ‘Globalising Common Sense: A Marxian-Gramscian (Re-) Vision of the Politics of Governance/Resistance’, Review of International Studies, 29, pp. 181–198. Rupert, M. and Solomon, S. (2006), Globalization and International Political Economy. Oxford and New York: Rowman and Littlefield. Rüstow, A. (1980), Freedom and Domination: A Historical Critique of Civilization. Translated by Attanasio, S. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Sindzingre, A. (2004), ‘ “Truth”, “Efficiency” and Multilateral Institutions: A Political Economy of Development Economics’, New Political Economy, 9(2): 233–249.

230

References

Silberschmidt, M. (2004), ‘Masculinities, Sexuality and Socio-Economic Change in Rural and Urban East Africa’, in Arnfred, S. (ed.), Re-Thinking Sexualities in Africa. Sweden: Almqvist and Wiksell Tryckeri, pp. 233–248. Smith, A. (2003), The Wealth of Nations. New York: Bantam. Soenser Breen, M. and Blumenfeld, W. J. (2001), ‘ “There Is a Person Here”: An Interview with Judith Butler’, International Journal of Sexuality and Gender Studies, 6(1/2), pp. 7–23. Sontag, S. (1988), Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and its Metaphors. New York: Picador. St Vincent and the Grenadines. (2008), ‘St Vincent and the Grenadines UNGASS Report’, January, http://data.unaids.org/pub/Report/2008/st_vincent_ and_the_grenadines_2008_country_progress_repor_en.pdf. Steger, M. B. (2004), Rethinking Globalism. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield. Stern, N. H. (2001), Engendering Development: A Comment. Washington, D.C.: World Bank. Stiglitz, J. (2002), Globalization and Its Discontents. New York: W.W. Norton. Stiglitz, J. (2003), The Roaring Nineties. London and New York: Penguin. Storper, M. (1994), ‘Flexible Specialisation in the US Film Industry’, in Amin, A. (ed.), Post-Fordism: A Reader. Oxford: Blackwell. Strassmann, D. (1993), ‘Not a Free Market: The Rhetoric of Disciplinary Authority in Economics’, in Ferber, M. A. and Nelson, J. A. (eds), Beyond Economic Man: Feminist Theory and Economics. London and Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 54–68. Sydney Morning Herald. (2006), ‘Unsafe Sex Drives HIV Infection Rate to 10-year High’, 12 October, http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/unsafe-sex-driveshiv-infection-rate-to-10year-high/2006/10/11/1160246197898.html. Sylvester, C. (1999), ‘Development Studies and Postcolonial Studies: Disparate Tales of the “Third World” ’, Third World Quarterly, 20(4), pp. 709–721. Tinker, I. (1990) (ed.), Persistent Inequalities: Women and World Development. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Tinker, I. and Bramson, M. B. (1976), Women and Development. Washington, D.C.: Overseas Development Council. Touraine, A. (2001), Beyond Neoliberalism. Cambridge: Polity. True, J. (2003), ‘Mainstreaming Gender in Global Public Policy’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 5(3), pp. 368–396. Underhill, G. R. D. (2003), ‘State, Market, and Global Political Economy: Genealogy of an (Inter-?) Discipline’, International Affairs, 76(4), pp. 805–824. United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) (2008), ‘Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS and Political Declaration on HIV/AIDS: Midway to the Millennium Development Goals’, Report of the Secretary-General, 1 April, http://data.unaids.org/pub/Report/2008/20080429_sg_progress_report_ en.pdf. United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) (2001), ‘Women and HIV/ AIDS’, http://www.genderandaids.org/downloads/materials/UNFPA%20fact% 20sheet.pdf. Verloo, M. (2001), ‘Another Velvet Revolution? Gender Mainstreaming and the Politics of Implementation’, Working Paper No. 5/2001, ßInstitut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen, Vienna.

References 231 Veseth, M. (2005), Globaloney: Unravelling the Myths of Globalization. Oxford and New York: Rowman and Littlefield. Von Hayek, F. A. (1937), ‘Economics and Knowledge’, ‘Presidential Address Delivered Before the London Economic Club, 10 November 1936’, Economica IV, New Series, 4(13–16), pp. 33–54. Von Hayek, F. A. (1944), The Road to Serfdom. London and New York: Routledge. Von Hayek, F. A. (1945), ‘The Use of Knowledge in Society’, American Economic Review, XXXV, 4, pp. 519–530. Wade, R. W. (2004), ‘Is Globalization Reducing Poverty and Inequality?’, World Development, 32(4), pp. 567–589. Wichterich, C. (2000), The Globalized Woman: Reports from a Future of Inequality. London, New York: Zed Books. Williams, R. M. (1993), ‘Race, Deconstruction, and the Emergent Agenda of Feminist Economic Theory’, in Ferber, M. A. and Nelson, J. A. (eds), Beyond Economic Man: Feminist Theory and Economics. London and Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, pp. 144–152. Williamson, J. (1990), ‘What Washington Means by Policy Reform’, in Wiliamson, J. (ed.), Latin American Adjustment: How Much Has Happened? Washington, D.C.: Institute for International Economics. Wittig, M. (1997), ‘One is Not Born a Woman’, in Kemp, S. and Squires, J. (eds), Feminisms. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 220–226. Wodak, R. (1997) (ed.), Gender and Discourse. London: Sage. Wolfensohn, J. (1997), ‘The Challenge of Inclusion: 1997 Annual Meetings Address’, 23 September, Hong Kong, China, http://web.worldbank.org. World Bank. (1982), Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Agenda for Action. Washington, D.C.: World Bank. World Bank. (1989), IBRD Articles of Agreement, amended 16 February, http://go.worldbank.org/KUDIF8K5M0. World Bank. (1999a), ‘Gender Equality: The Right Thing for Business’, A Dialogue with J. Michael Cook Chairman and CEO, Deloitte & Touche and James D. Wolfensohn, President, World Bank Group, 31 March, http://web. worldbank.org. World Bank. (1999b), ‘Does Gender Inequality Reduce Growth and Development? Evidence from Cross-Country Regressions’, Policy Research Report on Gender and Development, Working Paper Series, No. 7, http://web. worldbank.org. World Bank. (2001a), ‘Integrating Gender in World Bank Assistance’, Report No. 23035, 25 October, http://web.worldbank.org. World Bank. (2001b), ‘Development Outreach Special Report: Women and Power’, http://web.worldbank.org. World Bank. (2001c), ‘Development Outreach Special Report: Engendering Development through Gender Equality’, http://web.worldbank.org. World Bank. (2001d), ‘Development Outreach Special Report: Gender and Growth, Africa’s Missed Potential’, http://web.worldbank.org. World Bank. (2001e), ‘Countries with Smaller Gender Gaps Have Less Povery,’ News Release No.2001/253/S, 8 March, http://web.worldbank.org. World Bank. (2002a), Integrating Gender into the World Bank’s Work: A Strategy for Action. Washington, D.C.: World Bank.

232

References

World Bank. (2002b), ‘The Gender Dimension of Bank Assistance: An Evaluation of Results’, Report No. 23119, http://worldbank.org. World Bank. (2002c), Policy on Disclosure of Information. Washington, D.C.: The World Bank. World Bank. (2002d), ‘Project Performance Assessment Report: Kenya Sexually Trasnmitted Infections Project’, Report No. 25016, 15 October, http://web.worldbank.org. World Bank. (2003a), World Bank Operations Evaluation Department: The First Thirty Years. Washington, D.C.: The World Bank. World Bank. (2003b), ‘Implementation of the Gender Mainstreaming Strategy: First Annual Monitoring Report, FY02’, 23 April, http://web. worldbank.org. World Bank. (2003c), ‘Gender and Development’, World Bank Operational Manual, BP 4.20, March, http://web.worldbank.org. World Bank. (2003d), ‘PREM Network Staff Training Programs: Impact Evaluation Study’, World Bank Institute Evaluation Studies, No. EG03–64. Washington, D.C.: World Bank. World Bank. (2003e), ‘HIV/AIDS and Gender Equality’, Gender and Development Briefing Notes, PREM Gender and Development Group, July, http://www.worldbank.org/gender. World Bank. (2004a), The World Bank Annual Report 2004. Washington, D.C.: World Bank. http://web.worldbank.org. World Bank. (2004b), ‘World Development Report 2006: Equity and Development, Report Outline’, http://worldbank.org. World Bank. (2004c), Integrating Gender Issues into HIV/AIDS Programs: An Operational Guide. Washington, D.C.: World Bank. World Bank. (2004d), Interim Review of the Multi-Country HIV/AIDS Program for Africa. Washington, D.C.: World Bank. World Bank. (2005a), ‘Review of World Bank Conditionality’, World Bank Development Committee, Operations Policy and Country Services, 9 September, http://web.worldbank.org. World Bank. (2005b), ‘Review of World Bank Conditionality: Recent Trends and Practices’, Operations Policy and Country Services, 30 June, http://web.worldbank.org. World Bank. (2005c), ‘World Development Report 2006: About the Report’, http://worldbank.org. World Bank. (2005d), Meeting the Challenge of Africa’s Development: A World Bank Group Action Plan. Washington, D.C.: World Bank. World Bank. (2005e), ‘Project Performance Assessment Report: Uganda Sexually Transmitted Infections Project’, Report No. 32600 (CR. 2603-UG), 14 June, http://web.worldbank.org. World Bank. (2006a), ‘What About Men and Gender? World Bank Publication Calls For “Menstreaming” Development’, News Release 2007/113/SDN, 24 October, http://worldbank.org. World Bank. (2006b), ‘Doing Business 2007: Reforms Make a Difference’, 6 September, http://worldbank.org. World Bank. (2006c), Gender Equality as Smart Economics: A World Bank Group Gender Action Plan (Fiscal years 2007–10). Washington, D.C.: World Bank. World Bank. (2006d), ‘HIV/AIDS in Bhutan’, August, www.worldbank.org/saraids.

References 233 World Bank. (2007a), ‘Record Funding for World’s Poorest Countries’, Press Release No. 2007/155/IDA, 14 December, http://go.worldbank.org/ LVH7WQPNS0. World Bank. (2007b), The World Bank Annual Report 2007. Washington, D.C.: World Bank. World Bank. (2007c), Doing Business 2008. Washington, D.C.: World Bank. http://www.doingbusiness.org/features/DB2008Report.aspx. World Bank. (2007d), ‘Doing Business 2008: Ghana and Kenya Set Pace of Reform in Africa, Mauritius Is Region’s Easiest Place to Do Business’, 26 September, http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/NEWS/0,content MDK: 21486436∼pagePK:64257043∼piPK:437376∼theSitePK:4607,00.html. World Bank. (2007e), ‘Obstacles on the Road to Prosperity’, 2 July, http://go.worldbank.org/NXYIC0AKZ0. World Bank. (2008a), ‘Risk and Vulnerability Factors/Considerations for Women’, accessed July 2008, http://go.worldbank.org/5JT9SM5UN0. World Bank. (2008b), ‘Risk and Vulnerability Factors/Considerations for Youth’, accessed July 2008, http://go.worldbank.org/Z6YQ31XE20. World Bank. (2008c), ‘Risk and Vulnerability Factors/Considerations for Men’, accessed July 2008, http://go.worldbank.org/3YN00I9W40. World Bank. (2008d), ‘HIV/AIDS and Disability’, accessed July 2008, http:// go.worldbank.org/J96Z9R3CA0. World Bank. (2008e), ‘Gender and Disability’, http://go.worldbank.org/ O14DRFLK90. World Bank. (2008f), ‘Africa Regional Brief’, http://go.worldbank.org/ 3IGKDWFTG1. World Health Organisation. (2003), ‘Gender and HIV/AIDS’, November, http://www.who.int/gender/documents/en/HIV_AIDS.pdf. World Health Organisation. (2007), ‘Global HIV Prevalence Has Levelled Off’, News Release, 20 November, www.who.int/mediacentre/releases/2007/en/.

Index advocacy environmental advocacy, see environmentalism gender and, 111, 126–7, 136–7, 143, 210 human rights, 139 see also women’s movements; World Bank (the) Africa, 12 ‘Africa Action Plan’ (World Bank, 2005), 184 sexualities and, 157–9, 171–5, 176, 178–80, 188–92, 207 Western assumptions about, 172–5, 179–80 World Bank and, 90, 92, 93, 103–4, 182–4, 188–99 see also ethnocentricity; gender; heteronormativity; HIV/AIDS; Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) African Development Bank (AfDB), 14, 81, 142 AIDS, see HIV/AIDS ‘alternative development’, 83–4, 102–5, 130 Annan (Kofi), 12, 13, 63 Arun III project (Nepal), see environmentalism Asian Development Bank (ADB), 14, 81, 123, 142 behaviour, human discourse and, 24, 32 neoliberal regulation of, 17, 18, 21, 22, 29, 30–50, 61–8, 83, 99–109, 111, 113–14, 127–30, 132–6, 137–44, 146–70, 172–99, 200–1 ‘queer’ behaviour, 33 Berlant (Louise) and Warner (Michael), 17, 31, 35, 36, 46, 49 binaries, see discursive binaries

bisexuality, see homosexuality (in World Bank work) bodies (human), 1–2, 6, 33–4, 59–60, 112 as economic resource, 5, 16–17, 187, 198–9, 205–6, 209 gender and, 31–7, 39–45, 59–60 see also gender; men; norms; productivity; sex; women Boserup (Ester), 114, 123, 124, 127 Bretton Woods, see United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference (1944) Butler (Judith), 10, 31, 33–5, 36, 40–1, 42, 45, 47, 50, 76–7, 131, 160, 184–5 see also gender; norms capitalism, 3, 7–8, 11, 12, 18, 39, 41, 57, 60, 61, 68, 69, 72, 74–5, 77, 117, 136, 199 Carver (Terrell), 26, 30, 38 competition, 21, 61, 72–3, 81 as key neoliberal assumption, 30, 64, 67, 70, 72–4, 81, 109, 150–1, 168–9 perfect competition (theory of), 74–5 compulsory heterosexuality, see heteronormativity conditionality good governance and, 14, 15, 79 see also World Bank Group, post-conditionality discourse Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), 27–8 see also Discourse Analysis (DA), types of debt crisis, the, 86–7, 93, 109, 116–17, 120 deregulation, 4, 5, 9, 44, 63, 79, 80–1, 81–2, 84, 116, 152, 202

234

Index 235 World Bank and, 102–3, 105, 109, 146 see also Economics; flexibilisation; marketisation; neoliberalism; privatisation development, see economic growth; Economics; Gender and Development (GAD); governance; HIV/AIDS; neoliberalism; ‘straightening’ development; Women and Development (WAD); Women in Development (WID); World Bank (the) Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN), 120 disability, 121, 177, 186–7 discourse economics and, 2–3, 17–19, 49–82 gender and, 5, 9–10, 13–14, 15–19, 23–48, 111–12, 113–14, 146–7, 153–69, 184–98, 203–10 language and, 20–1, 23–4, 27, 28–9, 38, 41–2, 43–4, 44–5 neoliberalism and, 4–12, 13–20, 49–82, 200–10 value hierarchies and, 1–4, 39–45, 75–81, 102–8, 111–12, 113–14, 117–25, 137–44, 172–5 see also Discourse Analysis (DA); value neutrality Discourse Analysis (DA), 23–48 as an approach to research, 23–5, 26–30 as language communication, 27 meaning and, 23–6, 28–30 methodology and, 23–8 poststructural discourse analysis, 24, 27, 28–30, 38–48 types of, 23–4, 27–31 discourse theory, see Discourse Analysis (DA) discrimination, 3–4, 32–3, 200 discursive binaries, 31, 112, 131, 142, 146, 153–7, 159 see also discourse; Discourse Analysis (DA)

discursive practices, 23, 24, 30, 39–45, 81–2, 111–12, 144–5, 147–8, 187, 203–6, 209–10 predication, 4–5, 24–5, 38, 39–3, 58, 69, 73, 76, 81–2, 84, 102, 111–12, 113, 131, 132, 138, 139, 147–8, 153–6, 160–3, 203–6, 209–10 pre(pro)scription, 4–5, 38, 39–41, 43–4, 81–2, 84, 111–12, 131, 132, 147–8, 153–6, 163–5, 203–6, 209–10 reproduction, 4–5, 23, 24–5, 38, 39–41, 44–5, 111–12, 131, 132, 147–8, 153–6, 165–6, 203–6, 209–10 Doty (Roxanne Lynn), 18, 39–40, 45, 46, 61, 164, 166 economic growth, 1, 12, 14–15, 20, 30, 39, 43, 53, 56, 59, 65, 67, 68, 76, 81, 203–4 Helpman (Elias), on, 53–4 ‘trickle down’ theory of, 118–19, 123 ‘women’ and, 123–5, 127–30, 142, 153–6, 160–3, 166–9 World Bank and, 59, 101–6, 108–9, 111, 113, 131–6, 138, 139, 141–4, 146, 147–8, 149, 150–6, 160–6, 166–70, 182–4, 208–9 see also deregulation; Economics; efficiency; flexibilisation; ‘free trade’; GAD; marketisation; neoliberalism; privatisation; ‘shared growth’; Women and Development (WAD); Women in Development (WID); World Bank (the) economic liberalism, 8, 49, 55–6, 60–1, 64–75 see also competition; Economic Man; Economics, orthodox; mainstream Economics; neoliberalism Economic Man, 40–3, 47, 52, 64, 68–72, 73–4, 75–8, 81–2, 142, 153–4, 156–7, 169, 201, 202–9

236

Index

Economic Man – continued see also Economics; gender; heteronormativity; neoliberalism; norms; ‘rational economic woman’; sex Economics econometrics, 51–2 ‘facts’ of, 41, 49–82, 119–20, 163–5, 202, 208 feminist, 56–60, 68, 218–19 (n2) macroeconomics, 51, 55, 66, 80–1, 139–40 mainstream, 18–19, 49–54, 56–7, 60–1, 64–75, 203, 218–19 (n2) microeconomics, 51, 52, 55, 66, 80–1, 140 (neo)classical, 12, 49, 55, 57, 60–1, 61–3, 64–75, 108–9, 134, 148, 151–2 orthodox Economics, see mainstream Economics role of modelling in (the), 18–19, 49–53, 57, 62, 64–7, 76, 82 social organisation and, xiv–xv trivialisation of gender and, 6, 16, 57–8, 73–4, 75–81 see also competition; discourse; economic growth; efficiency; ‘free market’; gender; global political economy (GPE); International Political Economy (IPE); liberalism (as political philosophy); neoliberalism; norms; Smith (Adam); value neutrality efficiency and gender, 14, 20, 26, 122–5, 127–30 as key neoliberal assumption, 9, 13, 14, 21–2, 44, 57, 62, 64, 67, 69, 70, 73, 74–5, 76, 79, 81–2 Elias (Juanita), 55, 57, 59–60, 150 embodiment (politics of), 2, 39–3, 44, 113–14, 150, 154, 157, 160–6, 169 see also bodies (human); feminism(s); gender; norms; sex

empowerment, 59, 114, 177 of women, 12, 14, 114, 115, 122–3, 128–9, 137, 143, 154, 159, 166–8, 169, 170, 194 World Bank and, 102–3, 104, 105, 128–30, 133, 138, 154, 159, 161, 166–8, 169, 170, 183, 194, 200 Enlightenment rationality, 8, 47, 55, 119 environmentalism, 94, 98–9, 125, 126–7 equity gender, 14, 114–15, 117–21, 126–7, 132–3, 135, 136–7 World Bank and, 91, 103–6, 125–7, 130–9, 141–4, 154, 160–3, 167–8, 183 ethnocentricity neoliberalism and, 5, 16–19, 69, 70–1 World Bank and, 30, 129–30, 149, 159, 170, 172–5, 187–92, 198, 200, 207–8, 210 see also norms; race; Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) evaluation and accountability, 93–6 femininity(ies), see gender feminisation of labour (the), 78–9 feminism(s), 58, 59–60, 68, 76, 112, 115, 127, 129, 219 (n2) liberal feminism, 118–19, 121, 123 see also gender; Gender and Development (GAD); Women in Development (WID); Women and Development (WAD) flexibilisation, 5, 9, 63, 78–9, 81–2, 150–3 of labour, 78–9 World Bank and, 102–3, 105, 146 see also deregulation; Economics; ‘free trade’; marketisation; neoliberalism; privatisation formal economy (the), 81, 124 Foucault (Michel), 10, 28, 35–7, 36, 37, 43 ‘free market’, 8, 22, 29, 54, 55, 57, 61, 63, 64, 68–70, 72, 74, 117, 142, 164, 170, 211

Index 237 ‘free trade’, 11, 12, 46, 53, 59, 63, 66, 83, 85, 87, 105, 109, 113, 117, 147, 152, 205–6 see also competition; economic liberalism; Economics; efficiency; neoliberal development strategy; neoliberalism; World Bank (the) Friedman (Milton), 60–1, 63, 65, 70, 72–3, 151 Friedman (Thomas), 11, 68, 72, 73–4, 79 gender as analytical ‘variable’, 15, 81, 127, 166–7 ‘business case’ (the) for gender analysis, 20, 22, 125–44, 167, 209 as cultural meaning, 6, 8–9 discourse and, see discourse as female/male distinction, 17, 31–5, 37, 76–7, 137–9, 141–2, 156–7, 194–5, 198–9, 205–6 femininity(ies), 30, 31–5, 76–9, 158–9, 160, 205–6 feminisation of labour (the) and, 78–9 masculinity(ies), 19, 30, 31–5, 68, 70–2, 73–4, 77, 78–9, 81–2, 153, 157–9, 160, 205–6, 208 as performative, 28, 30, 35–7, 44–6, 201, 208–9 and power, 1, 4–5, 10, 14, 16–17, 18, 21, 23, 24, 28, 30–5, 35–7, 35–6, 38, 39–5, 46–7, 106, 111–12, 114–15, 119–22, 130–2, 131–2, 137, 140, 142, 144–5, 155–7, 160–6, 169–70, 179–80, 185, 188–9, 191, 194, 198, 200–1 sex and, 1, 6, 8–9, 10, 16–17, 22, 30–48, 59–60, 80, 111–12, 113–14, 130–44, 147, 153–6, 156–7, 160–1, 162, 167–8, 170, 172, 175, 178, 184–7, 188–92, 193–9, 200–1

sexuality(ies) and, see heteronormativity trivialisation of, see Economics see also feminism(s); gender analysis; gender essentialism; gender inequalities; gender movements; heteronormativity; norms; sex; ‘straightening’ development; World Bank (the) gender analysis, 15–20, 30–48, 56–7, 59, 68, 75–81, 143–4 efficiency argument for, 122–5 and ‘women’, 59–60 Gender and Development (GAD), 114, 121–5 gender equality, see gender inequalities gender essentialism, 122–3, 133, 137–9 gender inequalities, 114–15, 132–3, 134, 135–6, 139, 141–2, 161, 175, 184–7 gender mainstreaming, 122, 126, 132–6 see also World Bank (the) gender movements, 122, 129–30 gender norms, see norms globalisation, 3, 13, 61, 65, 79, 80, 201–2 gender scholarship and, 75–81, 114–16, 135–6 and globalism, 10–12, 13–15, 53, 201–2 neoliberal, 10–15, 29, 63, 75–8, 79, 114, 135–6, 201–2 global political economy (GPE), 1–2, 4–5, 9, 10, 15–19, 20–1, 56–60, 82, 153 governance global governance, 1, 2–3, 6–10, 20–2, 23–5, 29, 30, 31, 38–48, 57, 63, 70, 83, 106–8, 112, 114–25, 209–10 ‘good governance’, 14–15, 21, 59, 71–2, 80–1, 83–4, 86, 103–4, 106–8, 109, 114, 144–5, 148, 164, 182–4

238

Index

governance – continued see also gender; gender analysis; globalisation; global political economy (GPE); heteronormativity; neoliberalism; norms; ‘straightening’ development; World Bank (the) Harrison (Graham), 60, 63, 106 Hayek, see Von Hayek (Friedrich A.) heteronormativity, 5, 17, 21, 23, 25, 31–5, 36–7, 39–3, 46, 47–8, 49, 77, 112, 113–14, 130–2, 134, 139–44, 145, 146–8, 153–6, 156–9, 160–3, 163–5, 169, 185, 188–92, 191, 199, 200–1, 204, 206–10 compulsory heterosexuality and, 5, 8–9, 25–6, 36, 141, 159, 173, 188, 204 see also Berlant (Louise) and Warner (Michael); discourse; discursive practices; gender; gender analysis; norms; sex; ‘straightening’ development; World Bank (the) HIV/AIDS, 22, 143, 157–9, 170, 171–99, 207 racism and, 173–5 statistics (problems with), 181–2 World Bank policy and, 34, 171–99, 207–10 homo economicus, see Economic Man homosexuality (in World Bank work), 157–60 identity(ies), see disability; discourse; ethnocentricity; gender; heteronormativity; neoliberalism; norms; race; sex inclusion (‘challenge of’), 126, 135–6, 149 see also Wolfensohn (James) (former World Bank President) individualism individual preferences, 16, 52 as key neoliberal assumption, 12, 21, 44, 45, 47, 50, 51, 55, 61–2,

64–5, 68–72, 76, 105, 109, 151–2, 160–3, 168, 202–3, 204–5 liberal philosophy and, 6–8, 142–4, 148 see also Economics; gender; neoliberalism; norms; World Bank (the) ‘informal economy’ (the), 14, 76, 81, 112, 147, 167, 184, 206 see also heteronormativity; labour; men; neoliberalism; productivity; women Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), 15, 81, 107 intergovernmental organisations (IGOs), see neoliberalism International Monetary Fund (IMF), 4, 7, 12, 13, 53–4, 63, 80–1, 85, 99–100, 101, 109, 116–17, 120, 125, 142, 148 International Political Economy (IPE), 1–2, 19, 54–60 critical approaches to, 52, 56–60 gender and, 16–17, 56–60 mainstream approaches to, 1–2, 6, 52, 54–6, 56–7, 59–60 intersexuality, 33 see also gender; gender norms; heteronormativity; sex interviews (role of in research), 25–6 Keynesianism, 56, 61, 72 labour, 84, 101–2, 116, 125, 129, 135, 142, 150–3, 167, 195, 204 productive, 16, 19, 69, 77, 79, 118–20, 124, 139–40, 153–5, 202 reproductive labour, 14, 16, 19, 68, 118–20, 141, 153–5, 161, 205, 207 see also feminisation of labour(the); ‘heteronormativity; informal economy’ (the); neoliberalism; productivity

Index 239 Larner (Wendy), 11, 62, 202 liberalism (as political philosophy), 7–8, 18, 54, 55–6, 69–72, 75, 108–9, 133, 142, 151–2 mainstream Economics, see Economics market (the) as key neoliberal assumption, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11–12, 13, 14–15, 17, 19, 22, 29, 39, 43, 54, 55, 56, 59, 61–3, 64, 68–5, 79–81, 84, 102, 109, 115, 117, 119, 126, 128–9, 131, 132–6, 139, 142, 144, 147, 148, 150–3, 160–3, 165–9, 187, 198, 201–9 social embedding of, 12, 14, 20, 37, 57, 63, 72, 75–6, 86, 102–3 see also deregulation; flexibilisation; ‘free trade’; market imperfections; marketisation; neoliberal development strategy; neoliberalism; privatisation; Washington Consensus; World Bank (the) market imperfections, 10, 80, 109, 138 marketisation, 3, 5–6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 44, 55–6, 59, 63, 64, 67, 79, 81–2, 146, 150, 164, 167 of gender, 132–6 World Bank and, 102–3, 105, 109, 146 see also deregulation; Economics; flexibilisation; market (the); neoliberalism; privatisation masculinity(ies), see gender McNamara (Robert) (former World Bank President), 86, 91, 108 men dominance of, 74, 100, 114, 180, 205 economic rationality and, 5, 41–2, 71–2, 73–4, 76, 77–8, 137, 153 gender and, see gender male-as-norm androcentricity, 58, 68, 123–4, 128–9, 158, 204–5 ‘manly ideal’, the, 77, 79 as models for humanity, 18, 43, 64–5, 71–2, 123–4, 129 as vulnerable, 115, 188–9

see also Economic Man; feminism(s); gender; heteronormativity; neoliberalism; norms; ‘rational economic woman’; sex; women modernisation, 11–12, 119, 123–4, 169 neoliberal globalisation, see globalisation neoliberalism assumptions of, 8, 9, 12, 13, 15–17, 49, 51–4, 62, 64–75, 146–7, 150–7 development strategy and, 2–4, 8–10, 12–15, 18, 19–20, 75–6, 79–81, 84, 85–7, 114–17, 120–1, 129–30, 149, 150–3, 203–10 First Generation Reform (FGR), 10, 63, 106 global embedding of, 49, 51, 102–6 in international organisations, 4, 9–10, 14–15, 19–20, 61–3, 79–81, 83–109, 142 Second Generation Reform (SGR), 10, 63, 106, 143–4 varieties of, 17–19, 60–3 World Bank and, 2–6, 53–4, 83–4, 85–7, 99–109, 111–12, 113, 130–45, 159, 160, 163–5, 165–6, 168–9, 183, 187, 198–9, 200–1 see also deregulation; discourse; Economics; ethnocentricity; flexibilisation; ‘free trade’; gender; globalisation; governance; heteronormativity; HIV/AIDS; market (the); marketisation; norms; privatisation; sex; Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA); United Nations system; value neutrality; World Bank (the) neutrality, see value neutrality norms gender and, 1, 31–5, 40, 46, 111–12, 123–4, 146–70, 180, 185, 189–90, 191, 194, 200, 204–6 neoliberalism and, 51–4, 63–5, 106 sexual, 32–5, 175, 178, 180, 188–9, 194

240

Index

norms – continued as standards of normalisation, 32–3, 42, 46–7, 204, 207 see also discourse; Discourse Analysis (DA); Economics; ethnocentricity; gender; gender analysis; governance; heteronormativity; neoliberalism; sex; World Bank (the) ‘Oil Crisis’, the, 86–7, 116–17 Parpart (Jane), 14, 81, 114–15, 119 Peet (Richard), 3, 69, 84, 85–8, 97, 98–9 performativity, see gender Peterson (V. Spike), 38, 59, 68, 78, 150 Polanyi (Karl), 57, 79, 152 ‘double movement’, 79 ‘economic sociology’ and, 57 policy-making, see Economics; gender; globalisation; governance; neoliberalism; World Bank (the) Polonoroeste project (Brazil), see environmentalism postmodernity (contemporary condition of), 17 poststructuralism, see Discourse Analysis (DA) Post-Washington Consensus, 10, 14, 75, 79–81, 126 Poverty Reduction and Growth Facilities (PRGFs), 80, 87 power, see gender predication, see discursive practices prescription, see discursive practices privatisation, 5, 9, 44, 62, 63, 67, 79, 81–2, 150–3, 202 World Bank and, 102–3, 105, 109, 146 see also Economics; deregulation; flexibilisation; ‘free trade’; marketisation; neoliberalism productivity, 13, 17, 37, 38, 39, 46–7, 53, 54, 66, 67, 74, 77, 81, 85, 112, 114–15, 121–2, 124–5, 124–5, 127,

129, 132–4, 137–9, 140–2, 151, 153–7, 160–3, 164, 167, 168, 169 of discourse, 24, 32–3, 44–5, 165–6, 201–2, 207, 210 total factor productivity, 53, 219 (n4) see also Economics; gender; heteronormativity; ‘informal economy’ (the); labour; men; neoliberalism; sex; women Queer Theory, 35–7 see also Discourse Analysis (DA); gender; gender analysis; heteronormativity; ‘straightening’ development race, 13, 17, 38, 47, 64, 70, 113, 121, 176–7, 187, 207 see also ethnocentricity; norms; Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) racism, see ethnocentricity; HIV/AIDS; Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) Rankin (Katherine), see ‘rational economic woman’ ‘rational economic woman’, 76, 137, 154–5, 169 reproduction, see discursive practices Second World War, 7–8 sex discourse and, 1, 5, 6, 12, 30–48, 49, 111–12, 113–14, 128, 130–45, 146, 156–9, 172, 175–6, 180, 187–92, 198–9, 200–1 gender and, 1, 6, 8–9, 10, 16–17, 22, 30–48, 59–60, 80, 111–12, 113–14, 130–44, 147, 153–6, 160–1, 162, 167–8, 169, 170, 175, 178, 184–7, 188–92, 193–9, 200–1 human bodies and, 6, 8–9, 16, 32–5, 66, 77, 132, 153–4, 184–5 see also discourse; Discourse Analysis (DA); Economics; feminism(s); gender; gender analysis; heteronormativity; men; norms; ‘straightening’ development; women

Index 241 sexual difference, 32–4, 74–5, 112, 132, 184–5 sexual inequality, 19, 32–3 sexuality(ies), see heteronormativity sexual practice, 80, 172–5, 177, 178, 179, 181, 185–7 sexual violence, 193, 195, 196–7 ‘shared growth’, 103–4, 183–4 see also ‘alternative development’; economic growth; neoliberalism Smith (Adam), 60–1, 65, 69–71 social equity, see equity state (the nation-) as apparatus of social regulation, 37 mainstream IPE and, 55–6 the role of in development, 7–8, 10, 55–6, 58, 60–1, 62, 63, 69–71, 72–3, 80, 85, 86–7, 116, 119–20, 126, 135, 148, 150–3, 176–7, 184, 197 Stern (Nicholas), 13, 137, 143, 154, 163, 164 Stiglitz (Joseph), 61, 65, 72 ‘straightening’ development, 22, 146–70 see also gender; heteronormativity; men; neoliberalism; norms; sex; women Structural Adjustment Policy-making, 10, 87, 104, 115–17, 117–19, 119–20 Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), 22, 171–99 development policy-making and, 5, 82–4, 176–80, 192–8 racism and, 172–5, 176, 178–80, 187–8 sexuality(ies) and, 173–4, 175, 178–9, 187, 188–92, 193 ‘shared growth’ in, 183–4 ‘structural adjustment’ policy-making and, 117 World Bank and, 107–8, 157, 171–99, 207 see also ethnocentricity; gender; HIV/AIDS; norms; race

trade liberalisation, see ‘free trade’ United Nations (UN) conferences on women, 117, 118, 119–20, 125 Decade for Women, 118 United Nations General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS (UNGASS), 177–8 United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference (1944), 83, 84, 85 United Nations system, 6–8 United States (US), see World Bank (the) United States Agency for International Development (USAID), 99 United States Congress, see World Bank (the) United States Treasury Department, see World Bank (the) value neutrality economic theory and, 64, 65–6, 66–8, 75, 76, 112, 139–44, 146–7, 150–3, 202–3 World Bank discourse and, 5, 13–15, 17–19, 111–12, 113–14, 122–5, 126–30, 136–45 Von Hayek (Friedrich A.), 51, 61, 65, 72–3 Washington Consensus, 10, 105, 108–9, 116–17, 126, 148, 151 see also Post-Washington Consensus Williamson (John), 116–17 Wolfensohn (James) (former World Bank President), 65, 80, 86, 91–3, 99, 125–6, 137 social inclusion and, 126, 135, 149 women’s empowerment and, 125–6, 137, 161–2 women, 114–16, 117–22, 123–4, 131, 153–6, 160–70 and economic rationality, see ‘rational economic woman’ efficiency and, 123–5 and the flexibilisation of labour, 78–9

242

Index

women – continued gender and, see gender as inherently vulnerable, 47, 115, 143, 155–6, 159, 166, 169, 185, 186, 187–9, 191, 193–4, 197 international labour statistics and, 77 micro-credit schemes and, 76, 137 as more responsible, 76, 137, 143, 162, 164, 169–70, 191, 208 as targets of international policy-making, 76, 117–22, 137, 138, 153–6 violence against, 196–7 see also Economic Man; feminism(s); gender; heteronormativity; men; neoliberalism; ‘rational economic woman’; sex; World Bank (the) Women and Development (WAD), 119–22 Women in Development (WID), 112, 114, 117–19, 121, 122, 123–5, 127, 137–8 women’s movements, 114–22, 123–5, 126–7, 129, 136–7 see also gender movements Woods (George) (former World Bank President), 86 World Bank (the), 2–6, 13, 14–15, 20–2, 23, 83–109 accountability, see evaluation and accountability Articles of Agreement, 85, 128 Board of Directors, 90, 95–6, 126, 132 Board of Governors, 90 changes in lending policy, 106–8, 120 civil society and, 116–22, 125 country offices, 92–3, 130 discourse of, 3–6, 32, 40, 45–7, 49, 59, 61, 83–109, 111–12, 113–14, 132–6, 136–9, 139–44, 146–70, 200, 207–8 ‘economist mindset’ in, 99–102, 142–3 evaluation and accountability, 93–6 function and purpose, 85–7

funding, 84, 87–90, 107 ‘Gender Action Plan’ (2006), 129–30, 166–9 gender in Bank discourse, 45–7, 113–14, 123–45, 146–70, 172, 177, 184–92, 193–9, 200, 201, 204, 206, 208–10 Gender Board, 126 gender mainstreaming and, 130–1, 132–6, 154–6 Gender Mainstreaming Strategy of (2001), 108, 126, 131, 132–6, 170 gender policy (Operational Policy on Gender, 1994), 115, 125, 126, 131, 170 Gender Unit, 127, 130, 144, 175 history of, 2–3, 83, 84, 85–8 HIV/AIDS and, see HIV/AIDS inauguration of, 2, 83, 85 Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) (formerly OED), 94–5 Inspection Panel, 94, see also environmentalism International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), see World Bank Group International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Dispute (ICSID), see World Bank Group International Development Association (IDA), see World Bank Group International Finance Corporation (IFC), see World Bank Group investing activities, 88 mandate, 66, 85–7 member countries of, 87–9, 94 Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), see World Bank Group organisational culture of, 3–4, 99–102 Policy on Disclosure of Information, 95–6 post-conditionality discourse, 106–9, 144–5

Index 243 post-conflict reconstruction and, 85, 86 President, role of, 91–2 Sector Units, 92, 101–2, 128–9 and social development, 79–80, 101–2, 103–4, 130–1 staff of, 25–6, 99–101, 136–7, 140–1 structure of, 83, 84–99, 100–1, 102 United States Congress and Treasury (role and influence of), 85, 97–9, 125 Vice-Presidential Units, 91–3 see also Africa; deregulation; discourse; Discourse Analysis (DA); discursive practices; Economic Man; Economics;

empowerment; ethnocentricity; gender; globalisation; governance; flexibilisation; heteronormativity; HIV/AIDS; marketisation; men; neoliberalism; norms; privatisation; sex; ‘straightening’ development; Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA); women; World Bank Group World Bank Group, 7, 84, 87–9, 106–7 World Conference of the International Women’s Year (Mexico City), 118 World Health Organisation (WHO), 127, 171, 181–2, 186 World War Two, see Second World War

Gendering the World Bank: Neoliberalism and the Gendered Foundations of Global Governance

The Gendering of Global Finance

The World Bank and Africa: The Construction of Governance States

The Fundamentals of Global Governance

World Rule: Accountability, Legitimacy, and the Design of Global Governance

The Role of the World Trade Organization in Global Governance

The World Bank and irrigation

World Bank Atlas (Atlas of Global Development)

Gendering World Politics

Gendering World Politics

Trade, Global Policy, and the Environment (World Bank Discussion Paper)

The World Bank: Structure and Policies (Global Economic Institutions)

The Crisis of Neoliberalism

Gendering World Politics

Ruling the World?: Constitutionalism, International Law, and Global Governance

Global Instability: The Political Economy of World Economic Governance

Development and Global Governance

Bank Governance Contracts: Establishing Goals and Accountability in Bank Restructuring (World Bank Discussion Papers ; 308)

Limits of Global Governance

Governance after Neoliberalism in Latin America (Studies of the Americas)

Confronting Global Neoliberalism: Third World Resistance and Development Strategies

The World Bank and Global Managerialism (Routledge Studies in International Business and the World Economy)

The World Bank and Africa: The Construction of Governance States (Routledge Advances in International Political Economy)

Global Governance and Japan: The Institutional Architecture

Wto and Global Governance The: Future Directions

Global Governance And The Quest For Justice: Corporate Governance

World Bank Atlas 2003 (World Bank Atlas)

A New Green Order?: The World Bank and the Politics of the Global Environment Facility

Enhancing Global Governance: Towards a New Diplomacy? (Foundations of Peace)

The World Bank participation sourcebook

Gendering the World Bank: Neoliberalism and the Gendered Foundations of Global Governance

The Gendering of Global Finance

The World Bank and Africa: The Construction of Governance States

The Fundamentals of Global Governance

World Rule: Accountability, Legitimacy, and the Design of Global Governance

The Role of the World Trade Organization in Global Governance

The World Bank and irrigation

World Bank Atlas (Atlas of Global Development)

Gendering World Politics

Gendering World Politics

Trade, Global Policy, and the Environment (World Bank Discussion Paper)

The World Bank: Structure and Policies (Global Economic Institutions)

The Crisis of Neoliberalism

Gendering World Politics

Ruling the World?: Constitutionalism, International Law, and Global Governance

Global Instability: The Political Economy of World Economic Governance

Development and Global Governance

Bank Governance Contracts: Establishing Goals and Accountability in Bank Restructuring (World Bank Discussion Papers ; 308)

Limits of Global Governance

Governance after Neoliberalism in Latin America (Studies of the Americas)

Confronting Global Neoliberalism: Third World Resistance and Development Strategies

The World Bank and Global Managerialism (Routledge Studies in International Business and the World Economy)

The World Bank and Africa: The Construction of Governance States (Routledge Advances in International Political Economy)

Global Governance and Japan: The Institutional Architecture

Wto and Global Governance The: Future Directions

Global Governance And The Quest For Justice: Corporate Governance

World Bank Atlas 2003 (World Bank Atlas)

A New Green Order?: The World Bank and the Politics of the Global Environment Facility

Enhancing Global Governance: Towards a New Diplomacy? (Foundations of Peace)

The World Bank participation sourcebook

Recommend Documents