RESHAPING THE WORLD FOR THE 21ST CENTURY
ContentsChapter One: A Revolting Development
"What a revolting development this is!" -- a line made famous by the 1950s TV series "The Life of Riley" -- was one my mother's favourite sayings during the 1950s and 1960s when I was growing up in Long Island, New York. The revolting development that most annoyed my mother was the exponentially increasing traffic on the Long Island Expressway. What revolted me was the development scenario that made New York a megacity populated to a large extent by poor people of colour and at the same time moved white families out to the suburbs, where they eked out ways of life dominated by long weekday commutes and weekend drives to shopping malls.
Chapter One depicts how post World War II economic development operated in Toronto, Canada, and in urban Brazil, as well as in Long Island, New York. It looks at the transportation fiascos spawned by Canada's and Brazil's chief highways (the 401 in Canada and the trans-Amazonian highway in Brazil.) The chapter also looks at the housing situation in the three countries, and at how economically unsuccessful groups fared in each country.
Chapter Two: Treadmill to Takeoff: Development Theory at Mid-Century
Economic policies pursued after World War II were based on self-perpetuating development theories that continued to be advocated by their proponents even when they failed to produced fairly evenly distributed prosperity in the societies where they were practiced. The chapter opens with a presentation of two chief development theories promulgated throughout the world during the 20th century, that is the growth oriented, market driven model espoused by capitalist economists, and the communist ideology propounded by V.I. Lenin and his followers. It then shows how growth oriented capitalist development theory evolved during the postwar years in the United States and Canada, and chronicles the rise of dependency theory, a newer, 1960s based development perspective that was focused on the needs of less developed third world countries. The chapter concludes that today "is a good time to re-examine dependency theory to see what of value it might still impart."
Chapter Three: Debacle at Ipamena Beach: How Did Development Fail?
This chapters starts with a brief meditation on the 1960s hit song "The Girl from Ipanema"; how could it be that the most advanced industrial powers were like "the girl" in the sense that they "just didn't see" that the poverty suffered by most people in Latin American countries was worsening even during the 1960s and 1970s, an era of relative prosperity? The consequences of growth oriented development's failures were much generally more severe in Latin America and other parts of the third world than in the United States and Canada.
This chapter bases its evaluation of those failures in Brazil and Mexico on two kinds of information, i.e., the author's account of daily life in the megacities Sao Paulo and Mexico City, and a review of other development analysts' conclusions about what went wrong with development programs in Latin America. The author reports that, despite the frustrating and often dangerous problems of daily life in Sao Paulo and Mexico City, many of these cities' residents "are stubbornly bullish about the prospects for themselves and their cities as a whole."
Chapter Four: The Era of Globalization
This chapter shows how the drastic reshaping of our world in the 1990s -- especially the radical downsizing of governments and regional integration through agreements such as NAFTA -- is both a cause and a consequence of the downfall of world development efforts. The chapter depicts the impact of globalization on people in the U.S., Canada, and the third world. In the third world category, particular attention is paid to the situations of Brazil and Mexico. The conclusion is drawn that the recent slide in Canada and the U.S. toward greater poverty and income inequality is occurring also in the third world. A song for our difficult times written by the Latin American singer-songwriter Victor Jara is cited: "Give us this day a world where no man is master/Our Kingdom come on earth, let our will be done."
Chapter Five: Remaking Development: Critical Thinking and Deeds
Despite the fact that postwar development failed even on its own terms - i.e., it failed to promote steady growth in both the developed and less developed worlds, it is still not too late to promote and realize authentic development for all people. This chapter stresses the importance of human agency in effecting positive social change; this emphasis stands in sharp contrast with globalization's insistence on the need to bow to impersonal market forces. A new social development theory based on the human desire for caring and community is advocated. The author concludes that "what is needed now in our postmodern, post-Marxist age is a critique of capitalism that takes into account the needs of the third world as well as those of the most developed industrial countries, and also draws on the experience of numerous social movements - e.g. third world centered, feminist, anti-racist, environmentalist - that have burgeoned since the mid-20th century."
Chapter Six: Remaking Development: International Institutions
To be successful, plans for community and national development will have to include a sizable international component. This chapter provides an account of how our post-World War II multilateral institutions operate and of how Canada, third world nations, and the world's greatest powers (especially the U.S.) have responded to calls for multilateral reform. The chapter concludes with an ambitious but achievable program for multilateral reform. The rehousing of the World Bank's International Development Association within the United Nations is advocated. The author also calls for democratization of and the development of a new role for the International Monetary Fund. (This stance is quite different from the position of many social change advocates who are currently calling for the IMF's dissolution.) A specifically Canadian initiative for multilateral reform is also advanced, i.e., the proposal is made that Canada should distance itself from the G7 and start to promote a new group of "middle powers" that would meet periodically to discuss global issues.
Chapter Seven: Bringing it all back home
This chapter finds the author back at her home in Toronto, thinking about postwar development in Long Island and elsewhere. Was it really all that bad, she asks herself, or was I just suffering from adolescent angst? Her conclusion is that is was really as bad as she thought; there can be no turning back to old models and old ways of coping. The chapter ends with a summary of the Society and Growth's proposed initiatives for remaking development. The list of initiatives needed just to get started is necessarily long, because there are no simple answers in our complex, postmodern universe.