Foreign Aid
In 1963 The Wretched of The Earth was published. In this Fanon provides a framework for understanding how the West exploits Africa for its own advantage.
Fanon explains how when a country becomes independent, colonisers encircle 'the young nation with an apparatus of economic pressure' (1961 pg. 54.)
To understand the 'apparatus of economic pressure' (Fanon 1961 pg. 54) we must look at economics from a postcolonial perspective.
Postcolonialism meets economics
These authors use the postcolonial filter to critic the field of economics (Eiman Zein-Elabdin et al 2004). They claim that economics so far hasn't faced the critical transformation that other fields have since the rise of postcolonialism (Eiman Zein-Elabdin and Charusheela, 2004).
Zein-Elabdin and Charusheela base their arguments on many sources. One key work they cite is Said's Orientalism. The authors use this to highlight how capitalism is based on a prejudice of the global South (Zein-Elabdin and Charusheela 2004).
Moreover, the authors highlight the importance of the Bretton Woods system (Zein-Elabdin and Charusheela 2004). Especially how the IMF and World Bank enforce the economic policies which keep the West in a superior economic position through neo-liberal capitalist policies (Zein-Elabdin and Charusheela 2004).
Other postcolonial thinkers have highlighted the role of the World Bank in assisting the capitalist agenda. Husain (2017) has used his 6 years at the World Bank to reflect using a postcolonial lens on the manipulations of aid (Husain 2017).
Husain (2017) demonstrates how the World Bank and other institutions force a relationship between states and globalisation. One way in which this is enforced is foreign aid (Husain 2017). This is a tool with which dominant states can control the economic policies is with conditional aid (Husain 2017).
The concept that Fanon (1963) presents is one that former colonies have been constructed to serve the colonisers interests. One way in which they can do this is through economic
Fanon (1963) shows how former colonies can't escape their colonisers and vice versa. Europe will always be linked to their colonies because it was built on the backs of the slaves it captured. Without the resources they stole from Africa, Europe would not be in the state that it is in. Therefore it will continue to manipulate these states to maintain its position (1963).
Both authors note the importance of globalisation has had in shaping Western aid policies (Hoogvelt, 1997 and Husain 2017).
Said's Orientalism
Both Tester and Said use a postcolonial lens to describe how the West can use culture to perpetuate the image of a superior Western culture. This is taken to the extent that Westerners feel the need to either defend themselves against the global South or to protect it from itself through aid and humanitarian intervention (Tester 2010 and Said 1978).
Said's (1978) work is based on an ontological and epistemological distinction between the East 'the Orient' and the West 'the Occident' (p. 2). In addition he uses Foucault's notion of a discourse to identify Orientalism (Said 1978). By using these frameworks he examines how the Orient is not a 'free subject of thought or action' due to European manipulation (Said 1978 p. 3).
Said states that there is a one-sided relationship between the West and the Orient (1978). Moreover, that the West uses Hollywood culture to construct a false image of the Arab (Said 1978). This paints the image of a barbaric man that is vastly inferior to the Western man and therefore invokes both fear and sympathy from Western audiences (Said 1978).
Said highlights that now the 'Arab and Islamic world... is hooked into the Western market system.' (1978 p.324) Meaning the the Occident has absorbed the East into its capitalist agenda in order to further control and dominate the global South.
We can therefore argue that foreign aid is part of the capitalist agenda to hook the Orient into the Western market system.
Said Orientalism is a key work in postcolonialism. His ideas were formed in his time in Palestine, Egypt and Lebanon and later America. He uses these experiences to raise questions of culture, the differences between them and how one influences the other (Said 1994).
Hoogvelt (1997) states that economic structures were put in place before decolonisation occurred in order to maintain the domination of states without the direct presence of 'political overlordship and administration' (p. 30).
Hoogvelt (1997) stresses the importance of the division of labour that maintain former colonies as primary producers. This is necessary for the continued economic dominance of the West.
Moreover, that the dominant capitalist states have manipulated the economic system to exploit former colonies financially. Similarly, how they also used this to to push 'them into anarchy and civil wars.' (Hoogvelt 1997 p.163).
It is possible to use Hoodvelt's (1997) argument to see how dominant capitalist states can use foreign aid as a tool to push them towards the anarchy. By doing this they can keep states in a position that they cannot prevent the manipulation of capitalist states.
Both authors emphasis that aid is simply a way to contain and manage the symptoms of capitalist hypocrisy rather than deal with its core problems (Hoogvelt 1997 and Kapoor 2013). Capitalism uses globalisation to enforce inequalities that force it to seek foreign aid.
Hoogvelt uses Fanon's work to highlight how cultural studies can be used to understand the relationship between dominant and subordinate groups (1997 pp. 157-158). Moreover, how this relationship is a two way street, in which the subordinate group can be complicit and subversive to the dominant state (Hoogvelt 1997).
Hoogvelt (1997) uses the postcolonial lens in the third part of her book to examine the impact globalisation has had on areas of the Third World. Although the author herself does not subscribe to postcolonialism, she argues it helps to emphasis the complex nature of development studies (Hoogvelt 1997).
In the chapter 'Economics and the postcolonial other' Callari (2004) also shows how the division of labour is used by the West. Callari (2004) demonstrates the epistemology of economics as it presents Western thought as superior and has therefore shaped the division of labour to favour its own capitalist system.
This is taken to the extent to which foreign aid is presented as a solution to all states economic problems. Therefore, when receivers of aid do not succeed in the same way, it is presented as the fault of the inferior division of labour.
Ilan Kapoor Post colonial politics of development (2008).
In this book Kapoor uses a postcolonial lens to explore the dominant practices and possible ways to change postcolonial politics.
Kapoor (2008) compares development to postcolonialism to 'examine ways of decolonising development' (p. XV). He does this to question the dominant economic and scientific processes and the 'relative amnesia about (neo)colonialism' (Kapoor 2008 pg. XV)
Dirlik, A (1997). The postcolonial aura: Third World criticism in the age of global capitalism.
Dirlik (1997) uses the filter of postcolonialism to stress the importance of historical context of postcolonial studies. He argues that the 'legacy of colonialism' (p. xii) is still at work today. Moreover former empires still control states today (Dirlik 1997). Dirlik argues that without understand the historical context, we cannot understand the role of capitalism in the Third World (Dirlik 1997).
Dirlik (1997) highlights the bias of western postcolonialists. First world academics are assuming a position on power by claiming to represent the powerless and therefore shaping their discourse with their own concerns (Dirlik 1997).
It is therefore necessary for me to evaluate the bias that I am bringing into this project. As a British student I have already been socialised by the former largest colonial empire. Although I am aware of these prejudices that I have been brought up around, I am still influenced by them.
This research project must reflect on the relationships these sources present. Postcolonialism has shown that capitalism has influenced the discourse of foreign aid (Kapoor 2008). Not only has it shaped the economic policies which the World Bank and IMF use, it has shaped the cultural view of states (Hoogvelt 1997). It has painted the West as superior in all aspects (Said 1978). It has limited the progress of the global South in order to maintain its position as the hegemonic global power (1963). Foreign aid and humanitarian action in general are a tool that the powerful capitalist institutions use to perpetrate this.
Kapoor (2008) also reflects on the problems of a postcolonial lens. The author demonstrates that the postcolonial discourse sometimes lacks emphasis on some 'material and institutional practices' (Kapoor 2008 p. XV). Meaning, postcolonialism under represents the socioeconomic ramifications of agency in subaltern groups (Kapoor 2008).
Both Tester (2010) and Kapoor explain how celebrities are used to cover up (2013) facts that compete with the image capitalism is presenting. Tester (2010) and Kapoor (2013) use the example of Live Aid. In 1985 and 2004 an Ethopian famine victim Birhan Woldu was paraded in front of Western society. She was used to prove that humanitarian action does work and that the West can save the East (Tester 2010). Kapoor (2013) explains how the presentation of celebrities is a cover up the complicit role of the West in the crisis.
This use of celebrity as a cover is further supported by Brockington (2014). This is meant to preoccupy the masses so that the powerful forces controlling development and aid are hidden (Brockington 2014).
Brockington (2014) uses a qualitative study to identify the seriousness of celebrity in development studies. He argues that ***