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Jason Hickel, Don Kalb, Maria Dyveke Styve, and Federico Tomasone: Reorganize Production to Serve Life, Not Profit

Image 1: Jason Hickel’s research focuses on political economy, inequality, and ecological economics

On 15 May 2025, Jason Hickel – economic anthropologist, leading degrowth theorist and author of popular works such as The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions and Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World – delivered a provocative lectio magistralis as the Third Annual Global Research Programme on Inequality (GRIP) Lecture at the University of Bergen, sponsored by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation’s Brussels Office (RFL). In his lecture, “The Struggle for Development in the Twenty-First Century”, Hickel rejected the idea that the development of the Global South can take place within the logic of extractive capitalism and economic imperialism. Only through movements for economic sovereignty and eco-socialist transition will it be possible to escape the traps of neo-colonial exploitation.

After the conference, he spoke with Don Kalb, GRIP director, Maria Dyveke Styve, GRIP affiliate, and Federico Tomasone of the RLF about the struggle for climate and redistributive justice, reflecting on the contradictions of liberalism, the ecological and social crises of global capitalism, and the possibilities for a democratic socialist future. In the discussion, Hickel shared his evolving perspective on Marxist theory, critiqued the limits of horizontalist politics, and underscored the urgency of building new political vehicles capable of responding to the planetary emergency.

DK: Yesterday, you argued that it’s essential to rethink the Russian Revolution and China’s history – not only for international politics, but also for working-class politics and global freedom. It struck me that your narrative has evolved into a more explicit anti-liberal reading of recent history. That wasn’t so clear in The Divide, but it was evident in your lecture. Have you shifted toward a more Marxist interpretation?

Yes, I think that’s fair. Two things are happening. First, my analysis has sharpened over time. Second, when I wrote The Divide, I was addressing an audience largely unfamiliar – and often uncomfortable – with Marxist or socialist language. I wanted to communicate effectively with people working in international development, many of whom are wary of what they think are ideological labels.

That strategic decision had a cost: The Divide largely bypasses the question of socialism, even though many of the countries I discuss were socialist or engaged in Communist revolutions. That absence weakens the analysis. You can’t fully understand the history of global inequality without addressing the attempts of socialist revolutions and the Non-Aligned Movement to break from capitalist imperialism and implement alternative development models, followed by the violent Western backlash that took the form of the Cold War.

Since then, I’ve increasingly used concepts like the capitalist law of value, which I now see as central to explaining our ecological and social crises. We live in a world of immense productive potential, and yet we face deprivation and ecological breakdown. Why? Because under capitalism, production only happens when and where it’s profitable. Social and ecological needs are secondary to the returns to capital.

DK: That’s precisely what struck me. I compared your work with that of David Graeber. You both start from anthropology and expand into politics, but the crucial difference, I think, is that you grasp the law of value – whereas Graeber, as an anarchist, tends to evade it. Would you agree that contemporary conditions compel us to reclaim key Marxist concepts and communicate them to a younger public?

Absolutely. As scholars, we should use the best tools available to explain material reality – and Marxist concepts remain analytically powerful. We’re in a moment where those tools can be reintroduced and popularized in new ways.

David Graeber was a brilliant and wildly creative thinker, and I learned a lot from him – both as a friend and a scholar. But you’re right, he approached political economy differently. In his later work, especially The Dawn of Everything, he began to acknowledge the limitations of anarchist organizing models like horizontalism. He saw the need for functional hierarchies – structures that can actually get things done without betraying egalitarian principles.

DK: That connects to another question. In 2011, the populist left failed to anticipate what I would call a global counter-revolution. What we’re seeing today isn’t just a resurgence of fascism – it’s a broader anti-liberal and anti-neoliberal insurgency. Some forces are anti-woke, others anti-globalist, and they don’t always share a coherent ideology, but some of the undertow is anti-liberal and potentially anti-capitalist, too. How does your work engage with this complex reaction?

It’s paradoxical. In one sense, this seems like the worst moment to talk about socialism. But in another, it’s precisely the right moment – because liberalism is visibly collapsing, and the rise of far-right populism is a symptom of that failure.

Liberalism claims to champion universal rights, equality, and environmentalism, but it also clings to a model of production dominated by capital and profit maximization. Every time those two commitments clash, liberal leaders choose capital – and everyone sees the hypocrisy. That’s why liberalism is losing legitimacy. The danger is that, in the absence of a compelling left alternative, disaffected workers gravitate toward right-wing narratives – xenophobic conspiracy theories, scapegoating immigrants, and so on. Fascists don’t offer real solutions, but they’re filling a void left by liberal and even social democratic parties, which have abandoned any structural critique of capitalism.

We need a democratic socialist alternative that addresses the root contradictions of capitalism, including its ecological irrationality. But building that alternative will require real political vehicles – not just protest movements, but mass-based parties with deep roots in the working class.

DK: Let’s return to the idea of the law of value. You touched on it earlier, but can you explain why it’s so essential to understanding the crises we face today?

The law of value explains why we experience shortages of socially and ecologically essential goods, even in an age of unprecedented productive capacity. Under capitalism, production is guided not by human or ecological needs, but by profitability. If something isn’t profitable, it doesn’t get made – no matter how necessary it is.

Take the green transition. We have the knowledge, the labour, and the resources to rapidly build renewable energy infrastructure, retrofit buildings, and expand public transit. But these aren’t profitable investments, so capital doesn’t fund them. Meanwhile, we continue producing luxury goods, fossil fuels, and weapons – things that actively harm people and the planet – because they are profitable. This contradiction is at the core of our ecological breakdown.

It’s funny, when people talk about shortages, they often refer to the socialist world, ignoring the sanctions and blockades those economies faced, even while their social outcomes were better than capitalist ones. Today, capitalism itself produces chronic shortages – of affordable housing, healthcare, education, and green technologies. This is a direct result of the law of value. We must overcome it if we are to survive.

FT: That brings me to Europe. The European Union tried to push a green capitalist agenda in recent years, but now we’re seeing a major shift towards militarization. What’s striking is that this agenda is being led by self-described liberals. Starmer in the UK, for instance, is at the forefront. The same is true in the European Parliament. How do you interpret this development?

It’s deeply disturbing. For years, European leaders told us there was no money to invest in decarbonization, public services, or social protections – because we had to uphold deficit and debt-to-GDP ratios to ensure price stability. But suddenly, when it comes to militarization, those rules are tossed aside. They’re ready to spend trillions on weapons and defence.

This reveals something critical: the deficit rules were never about economics. They were political tools used to block investment in social and ecological goals while maintaining an artificial scarcity of public goods. Now that military spending is politically expedient and profitable, the limits disappear. It’s a betrayal of the working class and future generations.

Moreover, their analysis is flawed. They seem to think that militarization will bring sovereignty and security to Europe, but true sovereignty would require a complete rethink of Europe’s geopolitical role. It would mean distancing from the United States and pursuing integration and peaceful cooperation with the rest of the Eurasian continent – including China – and the Global South. Instead, European elites remain trapped in the logic of US hegemony. Western Europe has been treated as a forward base for US military strategy for decades. Germany, for example, is filled with American bases. The US wants Europe to antagonize the East – but this is in the US interest, not in Europe’s. We must reject this. Europe’s true interests lie in peace and cooperation with its neighbours.

FT: That’s a perfect segue to my second question: the historical burden of European imperialism. Europe’s ruling classes have inflicted enormous harm over the past few centuries. How do we move beyond that legacy? Is there a real contradiction between the interests of the European working class and those of capital when it comes to foreign policy?

It’s an important question. First of all, yes – policies like the current wave of militarization are clearly aligned with the interests of European capital. That’s why they’re happening. But they run directly counter to the needs of ordinary people and to the stability of the planet. This reveals a deeper truth: there is a fundamental conflict between the interests of working people and those of capital. It forces us to confront the myth of European democracy. We are told that Europe is a beacon of democratic values, but in reality, the interests of capital dominate our institutions.

Democracy was never a gift from the ruling class – it was fought for by working people. Even then, we only got a shallow version of it. The original democratic demands – decommodification of essential goods, workplace democracy, control over finance – were abandoned. Instead, we get elections every few years between parties that all serve capital, in a media environment dominated by billionaires. If we want real democracy, we need to extend it to the economy. That means overcoming the capitalist law of value and redirecting production toward social and ecological needs. That means democratizing the creation of money.

DK: Let’s pick up that thread – money. One of the more original aspects of your work is the focus on the production of money itself. Could you explain how monetary sovereignty fits into your broader critique of capitalism?

Under capitalism, the state holds the legal monopoly over currency issuance, but in practice, it franchises that power out to commercial banks. Banks create the big majority of money in the economy through the process of issuing loans. But they only issue loans when they expect them to be redeemable and therefore profitable – when they serve the accumulation of capital. This means that the power to create money, and thereby mobilize labour and resources, is subordinated to capitalist profitability. It’s a direct expression of the capitalist law of value. Productive capacities are only activated if they yield returns to capital. That’s how banks steer the economy: not toward what we need, but toward what is profitable.

To change that, we need two things. First, a credit guidance framework – a set of rules that direct bank lending away from destructive sectors like fossil fuels and luxury emissions, and toward socially necessary investments. Second, we need to expand the role of public finance. The state must directly create money to fund essential goods and services – renewable energy, housing, public transit – even if these aren’t directly profitable to private capital.

There’s a myth that we can only produce what is profitable. But in reality, as long as we have the labour and resources, we can produce anything we collectively decide to. The only barrier is political. Once we democratize money creation, we can liberate production from the profit imperative and organize it according to human and ecological needs.

DK: That’s compelling. Many of my left-wing friends in Europe argue that the euro is the main obstacle. They advocate for returning to national currencies to regain sovereignty. I take a different position: we should democratize the euro itself. These are small, interdependent states. Returning to national currencies risks division and renewed dependence on external powers like the US, who will play us off against each other. What do you think?

I’m very sympathetic to that argument. I understand the appeal of monetary sovereignty through national currencies – it offers more direct control over production and spending. But it also fragments the struggle. If every Eurozone country must independently wage its own class battle for economic transformation, progress will be at best uneven and vulnerable. A more strategic route is to reform the rules of the European Central Bank. That could be done quickly, at the institutional level. We could enable member states to expand public investment immediately by suspending austerity constraints.

Critics will say this risks inflation, and yes, if you simply inject public finance without adjusting the rest of the economy, you may drive up demand for limited labour and resources. But eco-socialist degrowth offers a solution: scale down harmful and unnecessary production – SUVs, cruise ships, private jets – and reallocate labour and resources toward socially beneficial activities. This stabilizes prices while transforming the structure of the economy.

Inflation isn’t a technical obstacle – it’s a political one. The real reason austerity rules exist is to preserve space for capital to accumulate unchallenged. If we shift productive resources toward public goods, we threaten the dominance of capital in the system. That’s what elites are trying to prevent when they invoke debt ratios and deficit limits.

DK: There was a strange moment recently. Trump said, in reference to inflation, something like: “Instead of 18 Barbie dolls, your kids will have two.” His argument was that economic sovereignty is more important than material abundance. I found it thrilling – in a way, he’s articulating a kind of anti-consumerist message. Isn’t that part of the danger of fascism today? It sounds anti-neoliberal, but it’s not anti-capitalist.

That’s exactly right, and I found that moment interesting, too. Some people even claimed Trump was embracing degrowth, which is completely false. Degrowth is a fundamentally anti-capitalist idea. It means scaling down ecologically destructive and unnecessary production while scaling up public goods, ecological regeneration, and social equity. Trump is doing none of that.

But there’s something we can learn from this moment. He managed to sell the idea of material sacrifice – “fewer Barbie dolls” – in the name of sovereignty and national pride. That tells us something important: people are willing to accept limits to consumption if they’re framed within a broader, meaningful vision. Too often, we on the Left assume that people won’t accept any kind of material constraint. But that’s not true. What matters is the narrative. If we offer people a coherent vision of freedom, dignity, economic democracy, and a habitable planet, we can make the case for transformation. The challenge is crafting that narrative in a way that’s emotionally and morally compelling.

Of course, for degrowth to be just, we must ensure that basic needs are met. That’s where a public job guarantee comes in. It would allow us to redirect labour from harmful sectors to beneficial ones, with dignified wages and workplace democracy. That’s the difference between an eco-socialist transition and authoritarian austerity.

MDS: That makes me think about how to build a truly democratic socialist alternative. Especially in the Global North, how do we convince the working class that this future – based on global solidarity, limits, and justice – is like you said, better than what they have now?

It’s a critical question. We must help people understand that consumer abundance in the North is built on unequal exchange – on exploitation of the Global South’s labour and resources. The fast fashion, the cheap electronics, the frequent product replacement – all of it depends on a global system of appropriation. But more importantly, we must show that the working class in the North doesn’t actually win under this system. What they’ve gained in cheap consumer goods, they’ve lost in political agency, autonomy, and collective freedom. Their demands for decommodification, workplace democracy, and control over production have been abandoned.

Capital has used cheap imports to pacify working-class dissent, while consolidating its own power. So, the real prize for workers isn’t another iPhone – it’s democracy, dignity, and a liveable future. We need to reignite that vision, grounded in shared interests with the Global South. The key is to frame eco-socialist transformation not as a loss, but as a liberation – from exploitation, precarity, and ecological collapse. And that’s where solidarity becomes real: not charity, not development aid, but shared struggle for a better world.

MDS: Exactly. That’s the tension I see. Western elites are clearly the main culprits of imperialism and ecological destruction. But in countries like Norway, working-class people also materially benefit from unequal exchange – our welfare state is funded by oil rents, cheap imports, and global extractivism. How do we build anti-imperialist solidarity under those conditions? How do we support revolutionary change in the South while mobilizing the North?

It’s an essential and complex challenge. First, we have to recognize that the landscape has changed since the 1960s. Back then, many leaders in the Global South came to power through mass-based anti-colonial movements. They had mandates for socialist transformation. But over time, those movements were repressed, co-opted, or overthrown – often with Western backing – and replaced by comprador elites who benefit from the current imperial arrangement. These elites are not interested in liberation. They’re aligned with global capital, even if their own populations suffer. That’s why today’s emancipatory movements in the South must confront not only Western imperialism but also their own domestic ruling classes.

This is where national liberation comes in. It’s not a matter of aid or development; it’s about political sovereignty and collective power. Western progressives must support these movements – not through charity, but through solidarity. That means breaking with the logic of the development-industrial complex and backing grassroots revolutions that seek to reclaim control over resources, production, and governance. You’re right: workers in the North do benefit in some material ways. But they are also deeplydisempowered. They’ve cheap consumer goods but not democratic control of production. Capital has used unequal exchange to buy off demands for autonomy and dignity. So, the working class doesn’t really win. They’re offered illusions of prosperity, while their fundamental rights and freedoms erode.

We need a double-front strategy. In the Global South: national liberation movements that dismantle neo-colonial dependency. In the Global North: movements that demand democratic control over production and finance. Together, that’s the path to ending capitalism. It’s not optional – it’s an existential necessity.

DK: That makes sense, but it raises a real problem of political timing. If national liberation in the South cuts off value flows to the core, that would trigger inflation, shortages, and political backlash. Will working-class movements in the North be ready to respond fast enough – with public investment, social protections, and a new vision? Or will the far right get there first?

That’s the critical danger. If we don’t prepare, we could see a very grim outcome. Imagine a scenario where the Global South begins to successfully delink – whether through China’s Belt and Road Initiative, regional trade blocs, or other means. That cuts off flows of cheap labour, resources, and profits to the imperial core. Suddenly, consumption in the North contracts. If the Left hasn’t built a coherent post-capitalist plan, capital will act to preserve its dominance. And what does that look like? Fascism. Crushing labour at home, cheapening domestic wages, repressing dissent. That’s the path I think Trump is preparing for – not because he has a clear plan, but because the logic of empire’s decline demands it.

That’s why we must present a real alternative path. The good news is, we have the data. Research shows that we can maintain or even improve living standards in the North with much lower levelsof energy and resource use. But that requires decommodifying key services – housing, transit, health, education – to shield people from inflation and secure well-being outside of market dependencies. This is the Left’s task: to make sure the collapse of imperial consumption doesn’t become a gateway to authoritarianism, but a springboard to democracy and liberation.

DK: That brings us to a key issue: political organization. I think we all agree that protest alone is no longer sufficient. We saw enormous mobilizations over the past decade – Fridays for Future, Extinction Rebellion – but they didn’t result in real change. What comes next?

Exactly. The protest culture of the past decade, while incredibly energizing, has hit a wall. Massive climate demonstrations brought millions into the streets. For a moment, it felt like the political class would have to respond. But they didn’t. Nothing substantial changed.

We’re now in a moment of reckoning. People feel disillusioned because they realize these actions weren’t enough. The energy dissipates, and the system remains intact. That’s why I believe we need to return to something that many have been reluctant to talk about: the party. Not the traditional parties that operate within the confines of liberal institutions, but mass-based, working-class parties – vehicles for building real power. These must be rooted in unions, communities, and popular organizations. They must operate with internal democracy but also with strategic coherence. That may mean a return to something like democratic centralism, which proved more effective than horizontalism in achieving structural change.

FT: That resonates deeply. Many of us from our generation saw the rise and fall of the “movement of movements.” We believed in horizontalism – in assemblies, autonomy, consensus. But over time, it became clear that these forms were not durable or effective enough to confront capital. They were easily neutralized or repressed. Now we’re facing a crisis of mass demobilization, especially among the working class. After decades of neoliberal attacks, unions and labour organizations have been hollowed out or co-opted. But at the same time, the promises of social democracy are clearly dead. Capital no longer shares anything with workers. So, the old bargain is over, and the big question is: how do we rebuild?

That’s the question of the century, and it begins with clarity about what the working-class movement should be fighting for. Right now, many unions are trapped in a defensive posture – trying to preserve jobs by aligning with capital, hoping that growth will trickle down and keep their members afloat. But this logic is a trap. It’s embarrassing, frankly, that unions in 2025 still see capitalist growth as the solution to working-class precarity.

We need to move beyond shop-floor struggles for wages and conditions and reclaim the transformative ambitions of the labour movement. That means fighting for public job guarantees, for universal public services, for democratic control over production. Unions should be at the forefront of the ecological transition, not an obstacle to it. They must break from the logic of capital and align with the broader interests of humanity and the planet. Imagine: we can bring hundreds of thousands of people into the streets for wage demands. But why not go further? Why not demand the decommodification of higher education, or worker control over industry? We have the numbers. We have the power. What we need is the political vision.

MDS: I want to build on that. If we’re serious about rebuilding mass parties, how do we ensure that they’re internationalist in outlook? The far right has no problem organizing across borders. They collaborate. They strategize globally. But the left often retreats into national frameworks — especially in places like Norway, where people tend to focus on just protecting the welfare state. How do we organize transnationally, especially across global supply chains, where most of the world’s labour exploitation actually happens?

That’s such a crucial point. The Left’s political imagination is still largely confined by the nation-state, but capital is global. Supply chains are global. Fascism is increasingly global. Our response must be, too.

We should be organizing along supply chain lines – coordinating strikes and campaigns not just within countries, but across them. Global South workers, especially women in factories and agricultural sectors, are the backbone of the world economy. If we build solidarity between them and workers in the North – based on shared struggles rather than pity or charity – we can disrupt the system at its core. Imagine the power of coordinated actions across production nodes – from Bangladesh to Germany, from Mexico to Norway. That’s the level of strategic vision we need to develop. It’s not just possible – it’s necessary, and it begins with rebuilding internationalist institutions of working-class power.

FT: Yes, and to bring this home – our movements are facing a major generational question. We’ve seen waves of mobilization crash, time and again. The old forms don’t work anymore. But how do we reconstitute organization under current conditions, when the working class seems demobilized, and the Left’s institutions are still captured by liberalism?

It’s true. We’ve been through a long process of disorientation. The neoliberal assault dismantled the organizational infrastructure of the working class – its parties, its unions, its media platforms. So, we’re not starting from zero, but we are starting from a much weaker place, and you’re right: many institutions that still exist are stuck in a defensive mind-set. They’re clinging to social-democratic promises that no longer hold. Capital no longer needs to compromise. It’s offering nothing to the working class – not even stability.

The challenge is to rebuild —-not just react. We need a new organizational paradigm. That means clarity, discipline, long-term vision. It means being unapologetically political. And yes, it probably means a return to mass-based parties – but rooted in contemporary conditions, learning from both the strengths and the mistakes of the past.

DK: That reminds me of something from an earlier generation. In the Netherlands, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, we had massive horizontalist squatter movements – tens of thousands of people willing to take the streets, occupy buildings, and physically resist police repression. It was revolutionary in energy, if not always in strategy. But we had no party structure. And eventually, the state responded with brutal repression and a cross-party political crackdown. The movement was dismantled, and within a few years, the Netherlands became one of the first “third-way” neoliberal democracies. That history is a warning.

Exactly. We’ve seen this pattern again and again. Horizontalism is great for mobilizing people quickly, for creating moments of radical imagination. But it’s not enough. When push comes to shove, it gets swept away. We need durable structures – organizations capable of holding ground, advancing demands, and taking power. We must learn from past failures, but also reclaim past strengths. Organization, discipline, clarity of vision – these aren’t authoritarian. They’re necessary. If we don’t build vehicles that can carry the struggle forward, we’re leaving the field open for authoritarian reaction.

FT: Finally, to loop back to the beginning – this really is a bifurcation moment, isn’t it? As Immanuel Wallerstein used to say, world-systems eventually reach points where their trajectories split. Either we find a way forward through transformation, or we spiral into fragmentation, repression, and ecological collapse.

Exactly. That’s what makes this moment so serious. Even if the far right isn’t fully aware of what it’s preparing for, the logic of global decline is pushing us in that direction. As the imperial core loses access to cheap labour and resources, the ruling class will respond by turning inward -crushing domestic labour and militarizing society. We’re already seeing this happen and if the left doesn’t offer an alternative – a post-capitalist vision rooted in justice, democracy, and ecological stability – then capital will manage the transition through violence and repression.

But we do have a chance. We know that human needs can be met with dramatically less energy and material throughput. We can build universal public services. We can stabilize prices without growth. We can reorganize production to serve life rather than profit. That’s the vision we must fight for. Not in the abstract, not one day, but now. Because the world we could live in is still possible, but it’s slipping away.

This interview was first published by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. Our gratitude for the right to republish.

Jason Hickel is a professor at the Institute for Environmental Science and Technology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, and the author of several books including The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions and Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World.

Don Kalb is founding editor of Focaal – Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology and FocaalBlog, a professor of social anthropology at the University of Bergen and director of GRIP.

Maria Dyveke Styve is a Max Weber Post-Doctoral Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence and GRIP affiliate. Her research interests span the political economy of development, dependency theory, economic anthropology, decolonial epistemologies, racial capitalism, critical race theory and economic history. 

Federico Tomasone is Project Manager for Social Rights and Labour Policies at Rosa Luxemburg Foundation’s Brussels Office

Cite as: Hickel, J., Kalb, D., Dyveke Styve, M., & Tomasone, F. 2025. “Reorganize Production to Serve Life, Not Profit” Focaalblog 8 July. https://www.focaalblog.com/2025/07/08/jason-hickel-don-kalb-maria-dyveke-styve-and-federico-tomasone-reorganize-production-to-serve-life-not-profit/

Features, The Political Power of Energy Futures

Pauline Destrée: Solar for the Few: Stranded Renewables and Green Enclaves in Ghana

Africa’s Green Energy Revolution

This post is part of a feature on “The Political Power of Energy Futures,” moderated and edited by Katja Müller (MLU Halle-Wittenberg), Charlotte Bruckermann (University of Bergen), and Kirsten W. Endres (MPI Halle).

In the past ten years, calls for a “green revolution” on the African continent have cast optimistic and promising scenarios of “leapfrogging” to mass renewable energy generation in order to meet the continent’s targets for electrification and forecast growth for energy demand. With a population expected to increase by 800 million by 2040 with rising urbanisation, the most pressing challenge for the continent in the next 20 years will be to meet growing energy demand in a context of partially-present and unreliable infrastructure (IEA 2019). Renewables have been positioned as a technological messiah of development, enabling the continent to “leapfrog” traditional models of centralized grid-based electricity distribution and to radically green its economies (IRENA 2015). The IRENA 2030 roadmap for Africa’s renewable energy, for instance, suggests that renewables could in the next 20 years constitute half of Africa’s total energy mix (IRENA 2015) – pending an estimated USD $70 billion investment a year. Yet current solar PV installed capacity on the continent only accounts for 5GW, or one percent of the global total (around 600GW) (IEA 2019). Visions of a renewable “energy renaissance” (Olopade 2015, 15) in Africa remain blighted by the current reliance and increasing dependence of African countries on imported oil and fossil-based energy use, and of the continued (and new) opportunities for oil and gas extraction. In turn, discourses of energy transition and leapfrogging, with their unilinear trajectories and singular vision of a low-carbon future, tend to obscure the local specificities and histories of energy systems like Ghana’s, for whom renewable energy, in the form of hydropower, has long been its main source of energy generation.

Photo of a rural landscape with dam in the distance.
Image 1: Akosombo Dam. Akosombo, Ghana. 2016. Photo by author

In this post, I look at the contested politics of renewable energy in Ghana through a focus on the rise of “corporate solar” during an energy crisis. Ten years ago, shortly after the country discovered oil in large quantities along the coast of the Western Region, it embarked on an ambitious renewable energy path by passing the Renewable Energy Act (2011) (Act 832). The Act aimed to promote and develop the country’s renewable energy resources to ensure the country’s energy security, indigenous capacity and sustainable development. Ghana’s initial target was to increase the renewable electricity generation share, currently at less than one percent, to ten percent by 2020 (Sakah et al. 2017). Ghana thus positioned itself as West Africa’s new “energy frontier”, ushering in a resurgence of fossil extractivism paired with ambitious support for renewable energy technologies (Degani, Chalfin, and Cross 2020). In the midst of oil and gas discoveries, renewables have become a strategic, moving target conveniently reformulated to fit political agenda and rhetoric (Obeng-Darko 2019). For reasons of space, I will not elaborate on the ways in which new oil production came to stymie the growth of renewables. Instead, I provide a snapshot of solar power’s new corporate contours of energy privilege in Accra. I identify the emergence of a “renewable divide” in urban Ghana through the rise of “green enclaves” mostly enjoyed by corporate bodies and wealthy individuals. Building on the recent literature in the anthropology of energy challenging the “fantasy” of solar as a promise of democratic energy access (Szeman and Barney 2021), I consider how energy disparities endure under the transition to cleaner and renewable energy sources.

Moratorium on the Future: Renewables as Stranded Assets

In 2019, at an event on renewable energy opportunities for the private sector, a representative from the Renewable and Alternative Energy department at the Ministry of Energy made an unpopular announcement. Referring to the 2011 Renewable Energy Act, he declared that Ghana was not only on track to meet its target for 10% of total energy generated by renewables, but that it had met its target “long ago”, since the Akosombo Dam, which was built in 1966 by Kwame Nkrumah and accounts for 27% of the country’s total capacity, was technically a source of renewable energy.

Invoking the country’s proud history of electrification through the Akosombo Dam – a key project in Nkrumah’s vision for African industrialization and self-sufficiency (Miescher 2014) – and its negligible contribution to global carbon emissions, he declared the matter closed. Rather than seeking to please international conventions that did not adequately capture Ghana’s place in the global responsibility framework for climate change mitigation measures, he concluded that Ghana, like other African countries, would do well to focus instead on providing enough power for its people and industries.

Renewable energy companies’ representatives, entrepreneurs and analysts were shocked by the Minister’s backtracking commitment. That same year, as a result of overcapacity on the national grid, the government had issued a moratorium on PPAs (power purchase agreements), banning any addition to its grid until 2027. Since then, utility-scale renewable energy projects have come to a stall, leaving many with “stranded assets” and uncertainty about the future viability of large-scale solar PV and wind farms in the country. Of course, the Minister wasn’t technically wrong to claim the Akosombo Dam as a source of substantial renewable energy in the country’s electricity generation mix. To the renewable energy industry, however, it was perceived as a betrayal of the prevailing understanding that the target referred to additional capacity-building, mostly in the form of solar PVs and wind turbines.

Image 2: Painted advertisement for solar equipment. 2016. Accra, Ghana. Photo by author
Image 3: Painted advertisement for solar equipment. 2016. Accra, Ghana. Photo by author

Corporate Solar & The Renewable Divide

The moratorium on renewable energy PPAs exacerbated the inequalities that solar power has created in Ghana’s energyscape. Today, the largest clients for solar companies in Ghana are banks, hotels and factories – corporate bodies that have the capital for upfront costs. Following the frequent blackouts during the energy crisis that best the country in 2014-2016 (locally known as “Dumsor”), and the steep increase in electricity tariffs, many businesses, particularly factories in the industrial zones, switched to distributed generation, adopting solar as a “commercial strategy” to reduce their costs of manufacturing. “Dumsor” is Twi for “off-on”, a shorthand for the power outages that have become increasingly common in the country; today, the word has come to index a more general situation of disenchantment with infrastructure delivery and political expediency. Solar energy companies were quick to capitalise on the crisis as a business opportunity. In 2016, when I was researching Dumsor for my PhD thesis, I spoke to the representative of an Indian solar company with a large global presence who told me that initial investments in solar energy in Ghana prior to the crisis had been minimal because the power sector was “too good” and “too stable” for profit, compared to countries like Nigeria or Egypt that had more frequent power cuts and thus a bigger potential market.

In the turn to solar as a panacea for crisis, large corporate bodies removed their operations from the national grid, alternating between distributed solar and diesel-powered generator sets. This commercialization of distributed solar has further strained the financial situation of the national utilities, heavily dependent on industrial consumers’ revenues to subsidize residential low consumers. This has resulted in higher electricity tariffs for urban residential consumers, making electricity increasingly unaffordable to many. The capacity to switch to solar during a moment of crisis revealed new forms of energy privilege that take place outside the grid. In turn, the adoption of solar by a select elite (cf. Günel 2021) has further exacerbated the conditions of energy inequalities and precarity that many Accra residents live under. In the low-income neighbourhood of Western Accra where I have been doing fieldwork since 2014, this “renewable divide”, as we may call it, crossed two types of association. My neighbours and interlocutors perceived rooftop solar as a luxury item unaffordable to most, or as a humanitarian good reinforcing unequal trajectories of transition between the global North and the global South.

Here, “corporate solar” coexists with the “developmental” deployment of small-scale solar (in the form of solar lanterns and mini-grids) introduced by NGOs and small social enterprises in rural areas. The parallel trajectories of corporate and non-profit interests may appear surprising, operating as they do in divergent moral economies. Both types of solar projects, however, are driven by the same material, political and economic advantages of solar, as a form of cheap, reliable and distributed generation that offers autonomy from the inefficiencies of state infrastructure (Cross 2019, 54).

In effect, both “developmental” and “corporate” solar contribute to what may be called the creation of “green enclaves” in the energy landscape of Ghana, pockets of autonomous, renewable energy that serve both corporate and humanitarian rationales. I borrow the term “green enclave” from an engineer of the Volta River Authority (VRA) responsible for the hydropower generation plant at the Akosombo Dam that provides a large part of Ghana’s generation capacity. At a convention for renewable energy in Accra in 2019, he described to me plans to install solar panels on the roofs of Parliament, ministries, and the residential facilities at the Akosombo dam as “the greening of our enclaves”, a term that fittingly describes the infrastructural model of renewable energy at large in the country. It is not surprising that the Minister who had conveniently re-adjusted Ghana’s renewable energy target himself had solar panels installed on his house.

In a context of widespread energy precarity, solar in urban Ghana has exacerbated inequalities of access to reliable and affordable electricity, creating “green” geographies of inequality, energy security, and privilege.

Image 4: Solar panel business. 2019. Accra, Ghana. Photo by author

Conclusion: Energy Transitions in perspective

Ghana’s case-study has important implications for understanding energy transitions around the world. In popular discourses of energy transitions, the replacement of fossil fuel dependencies by renewable energy sources seems both inevitable and imperative. Calls for a renewable energy revolution in Africa are appealing, but they too often assume that renewables come to fill a gap, a lack, or an evidential need – in other words, that their benefits are too self-evident to forgo. Renewables, in this case, belong to the future – and fossil fuels to the past. In many ways, Ghana presents an inverse scenario of this dominant model of transition. Having powered most of its electricity needs with hydropower, it is now switching to increased reliance on thermal power plants and an oil economy. Further, this past of renewable energy through hydropower is today invoked to encourage a rush for oil and gas exploitation. In discussions with energy officials, policymakers, and the general public, I am repeatedly reminded that “Ghana is a low emitter”, bearing no responsibility to global greenhouse gas emissions. For a country that relied until recently entirely on hydropower for electricity, yet currently faces issues of reliability and affordability (Eshun and Amoako-Tuffour 2016), “sustainability” appears as a secondary concern to more pressing issues of overcapacity and improving access to reliable and affordable power. In turn, the adoption of renewables may not primarily be motivated by questions of environmental ideology, but also as a convenient (if privileged) solution to crisis. Accounting for the political potential of renewable energy futures around the world will demand that we grapple with the contradictory, divergent and conflicted visions and temporalities of energy transitions, and the relations between crisis and capital, privilege and poverty through which they come into being. 

Pauline Destrée is a Research Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the University of St Andrews. She is a member of the ERC-funded research project Energy Ethics. Her research explores energy, extraction, climate change, gender and race in Ghana.

Twitter: @PaulineDestree https://twitter.com/PaulineDestree

Bibliography

Cross, Jamie. 2019. “The Solar Good: Energy Ethics in Poor Markets.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 25 (S1): 47–66.

Degani, Michael, Brenda Chalfin, and Jamie Cross. 2020. “Introduction: Fuelling Capture: Africa’s Energy Frontiers.” The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 38 (2): 1–18.

Eshun, Maame Esi, and Joe Amoako-Tuffour. 2016. “A Review of the Trends in Ghana’s Power Sector.” Energy, Sustainability and Society 6 (1): 9.

Günel, Gökçe. 2021. “Leapfrogging to Solar.” South Atlantic Quarterly 120 (1): 163–75.

IEA. 2019. “Africa Energy Outlook 2019.” Paris: IEA.

IRENA. 2015. “Africa 2030: Roadmap for a Renewable Energy Future.” Abu Dhabi: IRENA.

Miescher, Stephan. 2014. “‘Nkrumah’s Baby’: The Akosombo Dam and the Dream of Development in Ghana, 1952–1966.” Water History 6 (4): 341–66.

Obeng-Darko, Nana Asare. 2019. “Why Ghana Will Not Achieve Its Renewable Energy Target for Electricity. Policy, Legal and Regulatory Implications.” Energy Policy 128 (May): 75–83.

Olopade, Dayo. 2015. The Bright Continent: Breaking Rules and Making Change in Modern Africa. Reprint edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt USA.

Sakah, Marriette, Felix Amankwah Diawuo, Rolf Katzenbach, and Samuel Gyamfi. 2017. “Towards a Sustainable Electrification in Ghana: A Review of Renewable Energy Deployment Policies.” Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 79 (November): 544–57.

Szeman, Imre, and Darin Barney. 2021. “Introduction: From Solar to Solarity.” South Atlantic Quarterly 120 (1): 1–11.

Cite as: Destrée, Pauline. 2021. “Solar for the Few: Stranded Renewables and Green Enclaves in Ghana.” FocaalBlog, 9 April. https://www.focaalblog.com/2021/04/09/pauline-destree-solar-for-the-few-stranded-renewables-and-green-enclaves-in-ghana/

Blog

Samuel W. Rose: Disconnected Development Studies: Indigenous North America and the Anthropology of Development

The purpose of this work is to examine and elaborate on the relationship between the people of Native North America and the material and ideological content of developmentalism as examined within the fields of anthropology and Native American or Indigenous studies. I observe that Indigenous North American peoples are frequently excluded from discussions of economic development within anthropology. I try to reconcile this situation and reinsert native peoples into the anthropology of development by demonstrating the historical and political continuities between United States Indian Policy with the exported ‘development apparatus’. In doing so, I follow Neveling (2017) and others in pushing back against postdevelopment’s dematerialization of development and its emphasis on development as discourse. Instead, I argue that a historical materialist or political economic approach (Rose 2015, 2017, 2018) that conceptualizes development in the terms of Neveling’s (2017) “political economy machinery” better explains the situation of Indigenous North American peoples and the processes that make and unmake their lives.

The overall point here is that in order to properly understand the political economic basis and ideological dimensions to the Post-War developmentalism project it is necessary to understand and examine the history of those political economic models and the history of those ideological dimensions. While there likely were developmentalist antecedents in the policies of the European empires, a major distinctive feature of post-war developmentalism is that it was rooted in the political economy and hegemonic position of the United States. As such, it is crucial to understand the local antecedents for American developmentalist policies, which necessarily brings us to Indigenous peoples as they were the early laboratories of these policies and political economic models.

Contextual Disconnect

On the global level, the sub-discipline of the anthropology of development has flourished in the last half century, along with the interdisciplinary field of development studies. In that time, prominent anthropological works have been produced within the sub-discipline that have had a broad impact within anthropology and influence beyond their own regional and disciplinary scope. Some of these classics include the works of Arturo Escobar (1995), James Ferguson (1990), Akhil Gupta (1998), David Mosse (2005), and Tania Murray Li (2007). These works describe the transformative effects of ‘development’, especially on the role of state policies, on the regions formerly grouped together as the “Third World” (i.e. Africa, South and Southeast Asia, Latin America), which are now more conventionally referred to as the global South. The field of the anthropology of development, along with the interdisciplinary field of development studies, has remained almost exclusively “Third World” focused. Chibber (2013) observes that this isolation in the form of the lack of thorough comparative engagement between capitalist development in Western Europe and capitalist development in the Third World has led to an inaccurate and romanticized portrayal of each in postcolonial studies of Third World development. While I generally agree with Chibber’s critique, I wish to move into a different context. The anthropological literature on development in the global South is also disconnected from the anthropological literature on what would otherwise be called ‘development’ in what was at one time called the “Fourth World” (i.e. stateless nations), especially in regard to Indigenous peoples in North America. This disconnect actually goes both ways. Jessica Cattelino’s (2008) book is likely the most popular anthropological work on Indigenous economic development in Native North America in the last several decades. Even though her ethnography on (capitalist) economic development within the Seminole Nation of Florida was published after the texts of those aforementioned prominent anthropology of development authors, and deals with many similar issues around development such as the intricacies and problematics of sovereignty, governmentality, and possible alternative modernities, she does not utilize them or the other work from this subfield. Furthermore, Tania Murray Li’s (2010) comparative discussion of the relationship between capitalism and dispossession in different regions does not include Native North America despite the lengthy and ongoing history of dispossession of Indigenous peoples in North America in relation to both colonial policies of the past as well as contemporary processes of neoliberal capitalism and state (re)formation in the United States and Canada. Instead of including Native North America as another case study alongside Africa, India, and Southeast Asia, she mentions Indigenous people in the Anglo settler states (i.e. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, United States) or CANZUS countries (Cornell 2015) only once and in passing, and does so with the effect of driving a further wedge between them by saying that the processes of class differentiation were different among Indigenous peoples in those locations. Similarly, David Mosse’s (2013) summary article on the state of the subfield is telling of its geographic orientation as there is no mention of Indigenous North America at all and only a passing mention of development in Europe. The point is that these works are not drawing from and are not in dialogue with each other. There is a disconnect between anthropological studies of development in the global South with those on the economics and development of Indigenous people in the Anglo settler states even though (as I will argue) they share certain commonalities and histories.

Developmentalism and Native North America

The general scholarly consensus is that the modern ‘development apparatus’ and the pseudo-utopian vision that is the modernist-developmentalist paradigm began with the Truman administration after the Second World War, the emergence of the United States as a superpower, and actions taken within the context of the Cold War in needing to make capitalism more appealing for the (newly) former colonies in comparison to the political economic model of the Soviet Union and then later China (Ferguson 1990; Escobar 1995; Cowen and Shenton 1996; Rist 2008; Kiely 2007). As Escobar (1995: 3-4) states:

The Truman doctrine initiated a new era in the understanding and management of world affairs, particularly those concerning the less economically accomplished countries of the world. The intent was quite ambitious: to bring about the conditions necessary to replicating the world over the features that characterized the “advanced” societies of the time—high levels of industrialization and urbanization, technicalization of agriculture, rapid growth of material production and living standards, and the widespread adoption of modern education and cultural values.

The disconnect between the subfields is especially problematic here because while the Truman administration does mark a shift in global development policy, scholars of Native North America would observe that the Truman administration also constituted a dramatic (and infamous) shift in United States Indian Policy. These two phenomena are not disconnected. When the Truman administration began exporting this pseudo-utopian vision of the glories of capitalism, technology, and Western modernity to the world, United States Indian Policy shifted away from similar policies of bureaucratization, technicalization, and industrialization for tribal governments. These policies were based around the creation and support of local/Indigenous bureaucratic institutions that would in essence aid internally in the development of Native American societies toward a form of collectively managed capitalism, which was intended to bring them as societies into the modern world. Although it had antecedents in United States Indian Policy in the nineteenth century (Miner 1989) stretching back even to the Jefferson administration’s ‘civilization’ program, this type of internal developmentalism began in a comprehensive manner with the administration of Franklin Roosevelt in the early 1930s and crystallized around the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 (Jorgensen 1978). The Act, as the product of the political economy of the United States of the period, was therefore in accordance with the interests of the American bourgeoisie (Littlefield 1991), and brought about the transformation of Native American societies by formally institutionalizing capitalism within bureaucratic tribal governments. In many locations, it had the effect of solidifying political power over Indigenous communities by the emergent Indigenous bourgeoisie (Schröder 2003; Nagata 1987; Ruffing 1979; Rose 2014).

The Truman administration marked the shift in Indian Policy away from Reorganization and towards Termination (Duthu 2008; Fixico 1986). The Termination period involved a series of policies that sought to formally complete the integration or incorporation of Indigenous peoples into the American mainstream political economy by means of subjecting them to the authority of the States, physically relocating them off reservations and to urban areas, and ending—or terminating—the political and legal standing of Indigenous governments in the eyes of the United States (Duthu 2008). In short, the Termination era represents a shift in the orientation of developmentalism for native peoples: from one where their own local bureaucratic institutions were fostered as the means to bring native people into capitalist modernity, to one where these same institutions were viewed as the impediments to their achievement of modernity. It represents a shift from the policies of internal developmentalism to an external developmentalism.


Image 1: Screenshot of 48 Stat. 984 (Pub. Law 73-383), part of the Indian Reorganisation Act of 1934 (https://govtrackus.s3.amazonaws.com/legislink/pdf/stat/48/STATUTE-48-Pg984.pdf, taken 10 Nov 2020)

The internal developmentalist policies of Indian Reorganization bear a resemblance to the modernist-developmentalism that the United States exported to the world during the Truman administration. It is my contention that the development apparatus and the modernist-developmentalist paradigm are direct successors to the long history of United States Indian Policy and these efforts. The Truman administration’s shift to a policy of global scope meant that they were to export what is in essence the same civilizing project except they did so in the language of development and modernity. However, by the 1970s, Indian Policy would shift back toward internal developmentalism in the periphery except this time under the label of self-determination (Duthu 2008). This represents an oscillation of developmentalism in the center and in the periphery corresponding to periods of expansion and contraction of American political economy (Friedman 1994). For native peoples, internal developmentalism marks a period of peripheralization as the center contracts, while termination and assimilation mark a period of external developmentalism and reincorporation into the center as it expands.

Similarly, the geographic contexts must be comparatively examined to draw out these historical parallels to better understand the historical and contemporary dimensions of capitalist development. For example, at around the same time that James Ferguson (1990) was famously discussing the “anti-politics machine” and how development (even ‘failed’ development) is linked not simply to an expansion of capitalism but to the expansion of state power, Marxist anthropologist Alice Littlefield (1991: 219) was writing that

Studies and critiques of these major policy shifts [in US Indian Policy] have frequently noted that the assimilation policies often failed to assimilate, and that self-determination policies often failed to provide for meaningful self-determination. Looking beyond the discourse of the reformers who claimed credit for these policy shifts, it can be observed that material interests of various sectors of American capital were often well-served by the workings of particular policies.

While I recognize and agree with Neveling’s (2017) critiques of the theoretical and empirical dimensions of Ferguson’s work in his overemphasis on discourse to the exclusion of political economic context, the crucial point here for me is to understand that the underlying processes being described are not dissimilar. These two works are describing a singular process or a singular political economic machinery, except that it is occurring at different times and in different places. Ferguson is describing “development” in Lesotho in the middle to late twentieth century, while Littlefield is describing “civilization”, “assimilation”, and “self-determination” in the United States as applied to Native Americans in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Further Research

We do not have the space here to delve into a detailed examination of each of the finer points. Rather, my purpose with this piece was to try to begin to connect these disparate areas and fields of study and put them into dialogue with each other. Further comparative study would better elucidate the parallels and lines of divergence in the operation of capitalist development and the experiences of peoples within this machinery. This would lead to a greater understanding and greater insights into the history and operation of capitalist development as a global project and singular machinery.

Samuel W. Rose is an independent scholar based in Schenectady, NY. He received his PhD in Cultural Anthropology from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 2017. His dissertation was entitled Mohawk Histories and Futures: Traditionalism, Community Development, and Heritage in the Mohawk Valley. His research has focused on the indigenous populations of eastern North America, community and economic development, political economy, and issues of race, identity, and the politics of history. His work has appeared in journals such as Anthropological Theory, Dialectical Anthropology, Critique of Anthropology, and the Journal of Historical Sociology.

References

Cattelino, Jessica. (2008). High Stakes: Florida Seminole Gaming and Sovereignty. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Chibber, Vivek. (2013). Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital. New York: Verso.

Cornell, Stephen. (2015). Processes of Native Nationhood: The Indigenous Politics of Self-Government. The International Indigenous Policy Journal 6(4), Article 4.

Cowen, M.P. and R.W. Shenton. (1996). Doctrines of Development. New York: Routledge.

Duthu, N. Bruce. (2008). American Indians and the Law. New York: Penguin.

Escobar, Arturo. (1995). Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Ferguson, James. (1990). The Anti-Politics Machine: “Development”, Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Fixico, Donald. (1986). Termination and Relocation: Federal Indian Policy, 1945-1960. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

Friedman, Jonathan. (1994). Cultural Identity and Global Process. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.

Gupta, Akhil. (1998). Postcolonial Developments: Agriculture in the Making of Modern India. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Jorgensen, Joseph G. (1978). A Century of Political Economic Effects on American Indian Society, 1880-1980. Journal of Ethnic Studies 6(3): 1-82.

Kiely, Ray. (2007). The New Political Economy of Development: Globalization, Imperialism, Hegemony. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.

Li, Tania Murray. (2007). The Will to Improve: Governmentality, Development, and the Practice of Politics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Li, Tania Murray. (2010). Indigeneity, Capitalism, and the Management of Dispossession. Current Anthropology 51(3): 385-414.

Littlefield, Alice. (1991). Native American Labor and Public Policy in the United States. In Alice Littlefield and Hill Gates (eds.), Marxist Approaches in Economic Anthropology (p. 219-232).  Lanham, MD: University Press of America.

Miner, H. Craig. (1989). The Corporation and the Indian: Tribal Sovereignty in Indian Territory, 1865-1907. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

Mosse, David. (2005). Cultivating Development: An Ethnography of Aid Policy and Practice. New York: Pluto Press.

Mosse, David. (2013). The Anthropology of International Development. Annual Review of Anthropology 42: 227-246.

Nagata, Shuichi. (1987). From Ethnic Bourgeoisie to Organic Intellectuals: Speculations on North American Native Leadership. Anthropologica 29(1): 61-75.

Neveling, Patrick. (2017). The Political Economy Machinery: Toward a Critical Anthropology of Development as a Contested Capitalist Practice. Dialectical Anthropology 41(2): 163:183.

Rist, Gilbert. (2008). The History of Development: From Western Origins to Global Faith, 3rd Edition. New York: Zed Books.

Rose, Samuel W. (2014). Comparative Models of American Indian Economic Development: Capitalist versus Cooperative in the United States and Canada. Critique of Anthropology 34(4): 377-396.

Rose, Samuel W. (2015). Two Thematic Manifestations of Neotribal Capitalism in the United States. Anthropological Theory 15(2): 218-238.

Rose, Samuel W. (2017). Marxism, Indigenism, and the Anthropology of Native North America: Divergence and a Possible Future. Dialectical Anthropology 41(1): 13-31.

Rose, Samuel W. (2018). The Historical Political Ecological and Political Economic Context of Mohawk Efforts at Land Reclamation in the Mohawk Valley. Journal of Historical Sociology 31(3): 253-264.

Ruffing, Lorraine Turner. (1979). The Navajo Nation: A History of Dependence and Underdevelopment. Review of Radical Political Economics 11(2): 25-43.

Schröder, Ingo W. (2003). The Political Economy of Tribalism in North America: Neotribal Capitalism?. Anthropological Theory 3(4): 435-456.

Cite as: Rose, Samuel W. 2020. “Disconnected Development Studies: Indigenous North America and the Anthropology of Development.” FocaalBlog, 17 November. http://www.focaalblog.com/2020/11/17/samuel-w-rose-disconnected-development-studies-indigenous-north-america-and-the-anthropology-of-development/

2017 UK Elections, Features

Michael Jennings: UK Election 2017 manifestos and international development: Common ground and clear water

This post is part of a feature on the 2017 UK elections, moderated and edited by Patrick Neveling (SOAS, University of London).

With the election coming up today, I thought it would be interesting to look at the commitments to international development in the manifestos of the Labour Party, Conservatives, and Liberal Democrats.

The day-to-day realities of election campaigns tend to soon undermine the carefully calibrated and plotted plans of campaign managers. So this election that was intended (by the Conservatives) to be the Brexit election has moved in new directions as the policies put forward in the manifestos came under scrutiny and attack.

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Edward Simpson: The future of the rural world?

The conference “The Future of the Rural World? Africa and Asia” was hosted by SOAS, University of London during October 2015. The event marked the end of a major project funded by the United Kingdom’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) on “restudying” village India. It also coincided with the launch of an exhibition and film installations at the Brunei Gallery at SOAS, which emerged from the same project. At the conference, Peter Ho, Katy Gardner, and Henrietta Moore spoke provocatively on rural futures in China, Bangladesh, and East Africa.
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