Interrogating the “Developing” vs “Developed” Country dichotomy: Assumptions, technologies, and Americanism - VOTE FOR OPTION B!

When speaking with others about my work, I do not use the word “developing” as a label for the countries I work in - China and Mexico (or India, where I was last year).
But it’s difficult when everyone else insists on calling all places outside of the US and Europe “developing” (or even under-developed).

Who has the power to define when a country is “developing” or developed”? What do we mean by development?

Is a country labeled “developing” if it is considered to be at poverty level according to the UN Human Poverty Index or World Bank poverty index? Just because a country has poor people does not mean the people are in poverty or an impoverished group. (I will write a separate post about this statement later)

Labeling a country developing or developed is a dichotomy that places the West (Europe, US, sometimes Japan, Canda and Australia) to be the First World—models for all aspiring nation-states. And then everywhere else outside of the “developed world” are black holes of underdevelopment or regions in the process of developing into a “First World” nation. This dichotomy assumes a linear trajectory with all “non-developed” or “developing” nations aiming to become more “developed.”
The word is a politically correct post-colonial stand-in for concepts around civilizing the “other,” the “savages”, the “indians.”

• So what are developing countries developing into? Is a country considered developed when it starts acting like other “First World” nations? Starts moving all its citizens into wage-labor? Pushes for people to buy on credit? Pushing countries to participate in global capitalism?
• Is a “developed” country one that looks like the United States? When it start exploiting neighboring countries or engages them in neo-liberal agreements that clearly provide more benefit to the “developed” nation and in the long run actually harms the ‘developing” nation?

So I work in Mexico - let’s use this as an example.

• Would Mexico, an OECD and NAFTA, partner become more “developed” if it transitioned from being an export economy to an import economy?
• Would it be more “developed” if it learned how to out-source it’s economic activities to its neighbors?
• Would Mexico be developed if it learned how to jail 40% of a historically discriminated group? (US has the highest incarceration rate in the world! 2 million in prison, 4.9 million under supervision, 40% of black males at any given time in the US are in jail).
• Would Mexico be developed if they legalized the sale of hand guns?
• Would Mexico be developed if they started unstabilizing neighboring economies, and then proceed to on one hand offer lots of low-wage labor jobs that other Mexicans won’t perform and then on the other hand tell neighboring countries that it is illegal to enter Mexico to take these jobs?
• Would Mexico be developed if it copied the US’s Patriot Act and spied on a group of citizens without due process?

I ask these questions to point out the shaky definition of “developed.” In comparing the US and Mexico, the US in many ways is more progressive than Mexico, but in many other ways Mexico is way more progressive and forward thinking than the US. So we should question what we mean by “developed” and ask if that has affected our ideas about American exceptionalism.

Can we find an alternative from “developing”? Certainly a general label with sweeping assumptions of Western superiority does not work.

Here are some alternatives that I have seen being used elsewhere. I am not a fan of them.

Marginalized
I don’t like the world marginalized because many of times Western nations have created the very situation of marginalization in many of these countries. We complain X country is marginalized, but we don’t take responsibility for how our policies may have marginalized them in the first place! When I hear this term being applied to Africa I think of two old ladies chatting and saying, ” oh dear - those Africans are so marginalized from us, let’s donate money to the Help Rwanda with Water Fund for Every HIV Maleria Baby.”
Also there is too much power for the signifier to deem the other as marginalized - which is practically the same as using the word “alienated.” How does it sound if I were to say, “India is an alienated country?” Alienated from what and by who? No. So out with “marginalized.”

Emerging
So what are these countries emerging from? Who are they emerging to? It sounds like we—the West—JUST noticed and discovered these “emerging” regions. It’s as if these countries were laying dormant and all of sudden they are growing! building! working! emerging! It also has too much of a capitalistic overtone that treats people like consumers - the “emerging markets” theme. When I hear emerging, I imagine a circle, where the US is in the middle and it sees the whole world beyond its circle and then choses to deem areas that are “emerging.” Then it sets off on a ship and says I will talk to these people in these “emerging areas.” (and then I will take their things! ahhh) Well hey - that’s what the Europeans did back then but they had God on their side. Now we have things - lots of things - instead of taking resources we “help” them turn their resources into commodities to “help” these “emerging” regions come out of poverty. AHHH so no to emerging!

First World, Second World?
by now this should sound obviously wrong! hello POWER problems? who has the power to define who is in First place - sounds like rigged game to me. so definitely a NO!

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OPTION B! So here are a few words that I am using as an alternative for now (as suggested by the picture in this post).

transitioning or transforming
These two words connote change and dynamism! like yah things are moving! These words paint a more circular, holistic and cyclical image than the linear, 1-D images I think of when I hear marginalized or emerging.
Transitioning is already used quite often to refer to the Chinese economy - a quasi socialist-capitalist market, hence a transitioning economy.
Transforming and transitioning are both words that could leave the power in the hands of the people and the outsider. So a region can be transforming to us (the outsider), but also transforming to the villagers in everyday life. For example, a village could be transitioning from one type of economic model to another, and it could just as well at the same time be under economic, social or cultural transition to the villagers themselves.

I also like these terms because it takes a more relative approach to regions - so that a so called “developed” area could contain several regions that are undergoing a lot of transformation. Or a “developed” country could be relatively stable and not experiencing a lot of transitions. It allows us to look at countries like China with more precise terms - where one province could be experiencing a lot of economic transitioning while another is experiencing more social transitioning. Or in Mexico we could say some states are undergoing a lot of political transformation while other states are less politically active.

Under-served
I also use the term under-served in the context that WE - I - AMERICA - have literally under-served a group. Therefore, when I work in the projects of the South Bronx I call it an under-served area because it has been under-served by the city, the state of NYC and etc. I refer to the rural areas of Oaxaca where I work as under-served because in some areas, such as education, have been under-served by the state government, the federal government, corporations and etc.

I would love to find out if you have any ideas of other words!

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So what is at stake in defining a region as developing or as something else?
Why it is such a big deal to me? What’s at stake for me are my analyses, my ideas, and my research conclusions. The way a researcher sees, frames or defines a country or region, affects the analysis that comes out of the investigation. For this reason, it is critical for researchers who work with global issues to be self-reflective of how they label a country.

If you think a group of people LACK something, then your research will only see what they lack and not what they have. And this could color the researcher’s proposals for policy or program proposals for a region. What I’m trying to argue is that the term “developing” implies the notion that a group is lacking information, knowledge, resources and etc. It implies that developing areas need to be fixed. I refuse to use the term “developing” on any of my groups because I just don’t see them in that way!

The label of “developing” contains a whole lot of assumptions about modernity, capitalism and power. When a researcher goes into a region to study power relations and then proceeds to label the region as developing, then the analysis runs the danger of reifying the very power imbalance that is being studied in the first place. And this happens quite often and new academic fields are born out of “development” minded research and new projects are born out of “development” frameworks.

For example,  many  “development-based” projects have emerged out of development minded research that aim to economically “develop” a country. A field that seems close to the work I do is Information Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D). I have an inherent discomfort with the entire field of ICT4D. As a young field, it is still developing its theories and models. But at the end of the day, there is an assumption that technology does good - technology is for “development.” (will write more posts later on this faulty assumption)

Well anyone in or going into ICT4D should read William Easterly’s The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good (thanks David Jacobs for bringing this to my attention!). Easterly carefully documents how World Bank or UN projects over time have actually worked to under-develop a region. My counter to the ICT4D world is that it needs to have a sister field if they want to legitimize their normative field - called ICT4UD - which stands for Information Communication Technology for Under-Development. This field would look at all the ways technology has under-developed a region. And this field would avoid showing repetitive pictures of 30 impoverished Pakistani or South African kids around one laptop. please - no more.

At the end of the day, as my colleague Jesus says, these are all different for referring to those who are different from yourself. It’s important to be aware of the assumptions and connotations that these terms bring with them.

my friend Donna also tells me that Bolivian sociologist, Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, says that the new Bolivian constitution rejects the inclusion of the words “development” or “growth” as they are loaded terms associated with international agencies coming in to “change” Bolivia. Rather, the want want sustainability, distribution, reciprocity and cooperation as they were used by Bolivians traditionally.

So I say Vote for OPTION B!

Suggested Readings:

Easterly W. The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good. Penguin Press; 2006:436.

Redclift MR. Sustainable development (1987-2005) – an oxymoron comes of age. Sustainable Development. 2005:65-84.