"Regimes of Truth:"

Intentions and Beliefs Embedded in the

Discursive Practices of Development

Exemplified by the World Bank

Elizabeth Dougherty

November 26, 1995

ESPM 255 - Fortmann

"Development" is experiencing an unmasking. For just under 50 years, large agencies of international development enjoyed the experience of all but unfettered power in terms of designing and implementing "development" policies in the "Third World." Critiques of development policies and of development organizations have always existed, however in the 1980s and 1990s the postmodern, postcolonial and poststructural trends, taken up in varying degree in the international intellectual community, have fashioned an argument against development now incorporated into wider political circles. Calling into question the overall category of "reality", intellectuals from around the globe have called for a demystification of "regimes of truth," so-called by Foucault. (Watts & Peet:278) These regimes of truth are those people, governments, agencies, even world views, which claim that there is a singular version of reality which can be identified, and as such, acted upon with clarity. Practices built upon these ideologies further naturalize the ideologies to the point that their ontology is obscured, until they, like the Judeo-Christian God, become a "reality" without beginning or end.

Through the deconstruction of language, of specific stories, or "narratives of truth" the constructions of particular realities, situated in historical, political contexts become apparent. The subject of this paper is "development" as put forth by the World Bank. Following a discussion of the deconstruction of regimes of truth and the power relations invoked through discourse in "development," I will specifically tour through the narratives of truth that the World Bank, the largest lending institution in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), has made public concerning their beliefs and practices.

In their paper "Development Theory and Environment in the Age of Market Triumphalism," Watts and Peet begin a section called "Rationality, Discourse and the West" with the famous words of one of the prime foundational philosophers of the Western Enlightenment, Descartes: "Cogito ergo sum." "I think therefore I am." Although originally meant to refer to the consciousness which serves as a primary factor of humanity in Western philosophy, it can be understood in the context in which Watts and Peet employ it to mean that thinking, which is predicated for many Western thinkers on the structure of language (Derrida: 1971), can actually create reality.

Think for a moment about these worlds and phrases: modernity; Third World; basic needs; poverty; underdevelopment, empirical science. Each one has a prominent role in development discourse. But, out of what political historical moment, or series of moments do these words arise? Who employs them? To whom do they refer? Foucault, following on the heels of Nietzsche and Sartre, investigates how ideas become imbued with meaning further impacting relations of power. Using the idea of a genealogy, which does not follow a linear historical tactic but rather traces a multiplicity of interactions and influences which are constantly mutating, Nietzsche, and then Foucault, began to unearth relations of power which were obscured from view. Foucault describes the concept of genealogy:

The idea of genealogy shows the randomness as well as the constructedness of any idea. Foucault goes on to discuss the relations of power which influence the genealogy of ideas. One might again consider the list of words I put forth for consideration at the beginning of this section and then ask the question: is "poverty" an ahistorical reality? Or has the notion of poverty been forged over time, through a variety of power struggles between various classes or populations? Is the poverty of Oakland the same poverty Emory Roe points to in the crisis narratives of Africa?(Roe, 1995)

Foucault proposes that for every idea, their is a genealogy and that these genealogies cannot be extracted from relations of power, creating and created by power. Now, here I am speaking of power as if it were an entity in and of itself. What I mean to say is that power is, in the work of Foucault, both situated and decentered. In other words, power can be consciously utilized through the construction of realities, via narratives by individuals and institutions. But, as James Ferguson discusses, power is often decentered. Power emerges out of dynamics. Original intentions behind an act are many times not how the power actualizes. Instead, it takes on its own life, in a fashion, through a series of events. (Ferguson: 17,18)

Another important feature held within genealogy is that an idea can take on many forms and meanings. Meanings attached to ideas and objects often change according to contextual employment and the intentions of the users themselves. In The Development Dictionary, edited by Wolfgang Sachs, various writers take a genealogical approach to terms in use within development discourse, such as "development, "poverty", "needs," "planning." Rather than providing a linear history, these deconstructions allow us to view the influences on the ideas over time and in various contextual uses. How an idea is employed can change from one political regime to the next. This has to do with the situatedness of the discourse, who is using it and how.

Edward Said, author of Orientalisms, unveils the naturalized discourse of the West as it relates to the conceptualization and representation of the "non-West." The representations do not exist in a vacuum, but lead to practices. It is in this context that power comes alive. The awareness of discourse itself as a practice is vital in coming to the subject of development at large, and more specifically to the discourse practices of the World Bank in sub-Saharan Africa.

Edward Said, outlines these discourses, which both reflected and lent their weight to practices of Imperialism between Europe and the colonies. In his view, colonialism is nearly always Imperialism's most natural act. As he defines it, imperialism is based on one state or political center controlling another, most often geographically distant, or at least distinct from itself. In this way, it can be understood through the following analysis of 'development' that imperialism and its primary practice of colonialism, continues on in the post World War II and, for Africa, in the post-independence period. (Said:9) Said acknowledges the geographic dimensions of power.

For the purposes of control and as a result of other ideas, stories, narratives, discourses are produced. Rather than thinking of narratives as do Ewick and Silbey, as structured, linear episodes with a beginning, middle and end, I prefer to think of narratives as does Robert Desjarlais, "simple snapshots, select images known to bear (prophetic) meaning" following the way that the people with whom he lived in Nepal conceptualized a story. (Desjarlais: 31) By thinking of narrative in a fully formed and properly punctuated story, we are apt to miss many of the stories which we tell, which have been told to us, and of which we are not even yet aware.

These stories, these discourses of power, serve to establish "regimes of truth," which further precipitate in practices yielding identities imposed and assumed. Take for instance the terms "First World" and "Third World," been employed since the 1940s to distinguish between the industrialized geographical areas and political powers and those which are not. The First World seems not unlike the European metropoles of the colonial period, believing in their scientific, technological and even cultural superiority over the colonies. As Said might nod in agreement, these terms continue a form of social Darwinism which posits that certain forms of cultural, political and economic constructs are more evolved, further along, than others. As Sachs states:

Within this belief lie many other assumptions, imbedded, intertwined and dependent upon one another, such as the inherent bi-polarity of modernity and tradition, nature and civilization.

The dependability of scientific empiricism must also be highlighted as a discourse based on and producing practices. Shiv Visvanathan has taken on the subject of science as it is employed within the discourse of development in his article "On the Annals of the Laboratory State." Visvanathan proposes that the idea of modernity is inextricably bound to science and that science is that actor which proposes modernity as the highest stage on the ladder of human states of existence. "The violence of modernity arises not merely from the violence of the state, but from the violence of science seeking to impose its order on society." (Visvanathan: 261). Escobar also addresses the narrativity inherent in the postulation of scientific truth through the ideas of Donna Harroway:

This also builds on the ideas of Foucault in which social control in the post-Enlightenment Euro-American history is increasingly formulated not through the techniques of punishment, but of "discipline," control exercised through observation and through the newly standardized visions of normality, stability, proposed through science and psychology.

Again, these forms of control lead back to identity. Identity, which is largely constructed through experiences, is also based on beliefs and world views. More and more, through the agent of development, the Euro-American scientific and social world has reached into the imaginations of other cultural constructs of self and group in order to set forth norms. These standards are now being loudly contested through subaltern intellectuals like Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Spivak, and Chandra Mohanty. Still, people on both sides of the fence have assumed into their own identities the idea of a Third World as measured against the norm of the First World. This leads us onto looking at the role of development in the power relations of "First" and "Third", North and South, which in turn will contextualize a consideration of the rhetoric of the World Bank.

Wasn't Dorothy surprised to discover that the great and powerful Oz was nothing more than an old man who had lost his way in a hot air balloon on a lazy afternoon in Kansas! Landing in Oz, he had been received as something more than he was - a man with power, a man with the ability to actualize change in others. After a time, the residents of Oz forgot that there was the man of Kansas at all. He garbed himself in a mystique provided by technology, a few levers producing an image, a fire and a lot of hot air. "Oz" was great and he was powerful. But he was also an illusion, and the horse that could change colors was really the most magical thing in the Emerald City. (Further deconstruction unlooses the whole reality on the backlot of the Paramount Studio in Los Angeles...)

In much the same way recent theorists, such as Escobar, Ferguson, Mohanty and Bhabha, armed with the tools to deconstruct power structures based on mystified constructions of reality, have pulled the curtain aside on "development", the hero of the twentieth century sent to missionize the Third World. Development discourse was "born," according to Wolfgang Sachs, just after the end of the second World War, when the major powers of Europe, then holding great numbers of colonial territories around the world, were unseated from their positions of power both politically and economically. Fighting a war which touched the shores of the United States only in the form of coastal blackouts and German U-boat sightings, this youngest of world powers emerged as the major force of the industrialized world. Harry Truman was the first president elected after the war in which Germany and eastern Europe were carved up between European forces and the Soviet Union. Europe held their colonies and the mind set inherent in these acts of imperial power structures point to the situatedness of knowledge which could imagine the world to be appropriated split up geographically, political, economically and culturally into terms such as "First," "Second," and "Third." (Sachs: 1-5) In his inaugural speech, Truman proposed his plan for "development.

Within this quote the many elements of the power relations imbedded in the discourse of development are already found. The peoples around the world who are living outside of the context of industrialization and Western standards of living are referred to with the words "misery," "victims of disease," "primitive," "stagnant," "poverty," "handicap," "threat," "suffering." This is juxtaposed to the warmth of "prosperous areas," "benefits of technical knowledge," "aspirations for a better life," "democratic fair dealing," "peace," "prosperity," "production" and, last but not least, "modern scientific and technical knowledge." Truman no doubt believed in the words he spoke and that increased national production through industrialization would bring with it the "benefits" primary to the American Dream: growth, wealth, individual initiative. By outlining a vast part of the planet as "underdeveloped" in this speech (Sachs: 2) Truman was presenting opposing identities and responsibilities: the industrialized world should take on the job of alleviating the "problems" of the "underdeveloped," while the "underdeveloped" should believe themselves as such and strive for the standards set by the West, (also called the North.)

Gustavo Esteva, writing the genealogy of "development" in The Development Dictionary, responds to this speech and its implications:

Many of those emerging out of postcolonial, poststructural and Subaltern studies utilize this metaphor of the mirror to understand how the West/North has used the "Other(s)" in order to define itself. Often this vision emerges from the imagination which allows an individual or group to see themselves as "civilized" in opposition to "primitive," as did Truman. These words are each imbued not only with a meaning particular to the historical political context, but with a valuation as well. In this context, it is not just that primitive means: without a written language, or the ability to power electricity or without the knowledge to curb "overpopulation", but primitive is valued as "miserable," "suffering" and even worse to a recently post-war nation, "dangerous."

Francois Lionnet discusses the damage extended to this opposing definitional practice.

This idea returns to Foucault's notion of decentered power. The idea is put forth by those who are in a dominant power position that the "Other(s)" is/are primitive, ignorant, simplistic, static, without history. When presented with these ideas, there is the possibility that those who are the subject of the imaginative discourse of description will accept and embrace this image of self, for whatever reason this serves them in the power relationship. Such a process leads to results which may or may not have been the intention of the original imagining. The dynamics of assimilation, cultural drift and forceful hegemonic dominance take on a life of their own. No longer can sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, separate out a pre-colonial African self. Africa, itself, was not imagined by its inhabitants as some sort of cultural whole until after European colonization. In a sense "Africa" is an invention which functions actively within the internal imaginations within the last century. (Mudimbe: 1988) Merely coming to ethnic terms such as "Ibo" or the national terms, "Nigerian" or "Cameroonian" has been recent. Even now, the geo-political countries constructed by the colonial powers, largely without basis in terms of the functioning of groups of people, causes these boundaries to remain under heavy contestation. While the example of Rwanda is the most obvious, Cameroon also faces the possibility of separation of southern and northern sections based on "politico-ethnic" separations.

As I have before mentioned, although technically in a postcolonial political phase, development exemplifies the continued economic colonization of the Third World by the First, pervasively impacting political and social relations. Rather than colonial power extended by military and political force in which the resources of the colonies are used to feed the industrial production and consumption in the metropoles, there is now an economic colonization, also political in nature. After World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union used the Third World as a political chessboard. (See Sachs: 2-3, quoted on page 5 of this paper) The primary tool, besides the direct supply of military aid and hardware, was the offer of development assistance. Many conservation traditions begun under colonialism are continued today without break in the construction of "resources" and "people." Although "primitive" is often replaced with "rural poverty," the conceptualization that the people of the Third World are inept at taking care of their own "resources" continues to prevail, enabling development practices. Take for example a quote which opens the final chapter of a book entitled, The Myth of Wild Africa, written by two staff members of the World Wide Fund for Nature, an organization which often works as joint policy producers and implementers with the World Bank.

The condescension clearly emerges in this message: that like capable parents, the North should allow the native/children to mess it up themselves as they have to learn in the end how to do it like a grownup. J. Bandyopadhyay and Vandana Shiva also discuss the straightforward link between colonization and development:

Melissa Leach, (See Leach: 9 quoted on page 19-20 of this paper) as well as many of the authors published in both Voices form Africa: Local Perspectives on Conservation (published, by the way by WWF) and Conservation in Africa: People, Policy, Practice, likewise acknowledges the continuity between colonial conservation practices and those currently devised by international development and environmental organizations such as WWF (U.S.), Overseas Development Agency (British) and GTZ (Germany). It is also noteworthy that in both middle of the road and radical Third World criticisms of development, the United States is most often the central figure of culpability. According to the World Bank:

This now leads us to the consideration of specific discursive constructs as they impact real situations. Having presented very briefly the basic propositions in taking a discursive approach toward development, the historical contexts in which development emerged, and the primary power relationship development displayed, let us follow the Yellow Brick Road to the intentions and practices of the World Bank.

The World Bank (International Bank for Reconstruction and Development) came into existence in 1944 in partnership with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) at a conference attended by leaders from England and the US in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. It is not unusual to hear the Bank and IMF referred to together as the Bretton Woods Institutions. Although initially intended as lending institutions for European reconstruction after the second World War, the Marshall Plan took over this chore in 1948, leaving the new World Bank and IMF to find other countries in need of loans. (Danaher: 1) Although touted as a source of funding for "underdeveloped" countries to improve conditions of poverty (the focus of the Bank president McNamara in the '70s and '80s) and promote sustainable development (a new feature of nearly all documents outlining any program), the World Bank is criticized for financing large industrial projects which bring money into economic sectors which continue to tip the balance between the rich and poor in any given country. (Gavin: 16-51) The Bank promotes investment of foreign capital and agricultural ventures which will assist in export.

Harris goes on to stress that the "structural adjustment" and "conditionalities" set by the Bank as a precursor to lending are utilized as social controls. The countries of SSA (sub-Saharan Africa) are functioning in an economic backwash of control. Having taken out loans in the '70s and early '80s many countries, such as Cameroon in West Africa, expected to be able to deal with the payment of the loans over the 20 year period for return. However, the global economy in the late '80s took a turn for the worse, and the products specific to many SSA countries, such as oil, coffee, cocoa and palm oil, fell in price. Thus the exports which the Bank supported in initial loans for agricultural development projects (ADPs) were no longer providing sufficient funds within the countries to handle the repayment of debt. (World Bank, "Cameroon Recovery Credit, "Cameroon; Financial Sector Operation, Appendix D/2) Instead, countries like Cameroon have seen a drop in their GNP, a major tool for the Banks determination of success or failure of their projects. Loans are extended and the influence, not just of the Bank, but of the increasing number of multinational corporations which are contributing to the financial base of the bank become more firmly entrenched in the political and economic policies of the debtor nations.

This grudging acceptance of the conditions which the Bank stipulates as the forerunner to the loan may well account for the high rate of failure of projects funded by the Bank and IMF. Not unlike colonial times, when forestry plans lifted wholescale from India and terracing agricultural techniques brought from the US were overlain onto the various geographies and social practices within the African continental borders, plans for dams, roads, railways were and are often brought into new territories from other international Bank projects without proper study as to the feasibility or impact of the newly proposed project. But going back a step further, there is also the basic assumption that 'development' means technological and scientific growth is what will bring a nation-state such as Cameroon into modern times.

The other assumption apparent in both the words of the Bank and those who critique it is that the Bank's intention to remain outside of the political sphere can be contained by an economic approach. It is an oddly categorical idea that if the there are two separate terms, their are two distinct categories of practice which will not impact one another.

This exemplifies the manner in which the Bank presents itself as a purely economic institution without awareness or intentions as to its political and social impact.

Another marked element of all Bank publications is the total lack of individuals. Even in a country report of Cameroon's Bank project for "Economic Recovery Credit" in discussing the decline of Cameroon's economy since the mid '80s, there is no mention of Cameroon's political struggles between the former and current presidents, Ahidjo and Biya. What they do say is this:

Cameroon's "first step toward democracy" came with the single candidate "election" of Paul Biya, an president appointed by his predecessor, Ahidjo. The results certainly were widely contested, as have been the severe human rights abuses which have marked the practical dictatorship of Biya. "A segment of the population" revolted. But in this document, they remain nameless, partyless. It is a depersonalized and objective narrative which removes from the text of the Bank's reports both those people culpable and those people impacted.

There is a particular actor obscured in this small quote of Bank narrative which concerns a huge political situation impacting the management and possibility for economic 'adjustment,' the goal of the World Bank. This obscured actor is the government of France. "In January 1994, a 50 percent downward realignment of the parity of the CFA franc..." This 50 percent downward realignment was effected by France, which controls the value of the franc, the monetary unit of exchange in operation in Cameroon. According to an article by Fred Pierce, France agreed to swap a portion of Cameroon's debt to France in order to gain greater access to the moist tropical forests of the country. (Pierce: 7) This sudden, textually magical realignment of the parity of CFA (Communaute Financiere Africaine) found in the Bank's narrative in actuality by one country's government negotiating with another in order to trade resource access for debt forgiveness. Perhaps the Bank can envision this as a purely economic transaction, which it glosses by ignoring both the agents and the terms of agreement. But the actuality is that there are social, political and environmental results which this event affects.

Further narrative constructions are evident in "Summary of World Bank forest policy." This document comes as a chapter in a book entitled Conservation of West and Central African Rainforests, a compilation of essays by full time Bank employees, employees of state-run programs in African countries and academics employed to research and write chapters concerning issues primary to conserving moist tropical forests, "rainforests," in West and Central Africa. A number of these studies promote local participation in conservation projects and deconstruct the ideas of pristine, untouched and uninhabited in terms of West and Central Africa's forests. It is a text which overtly discusses conservation in tropical forests in just the way that many Bank critics would want. This book, somewhat like the book published by WWF Voices from Africa: Local Views on Conservation gives the image that these large development and aid agencies and organizations are environmentally aware, and not at all occupied with foregrounding global economic accessibility to 'developing' nation resources.

But earlier in the book, their own statements concerning the World Bank's forest strategies exhibit discrepancies with the shining examples of eco and indigenous awareness. In the section, "Role of the Bank", the Bank proposes:

As the editors of Rural Development in Tropical Africa express,

One of the foundational ideals of the World Bank is that there is a necessity for intervention. A major topic to be undertaken is the extent to which Third World nations have taken on this belief, and identity, for themselves. How deeply does the idea exist that without financial assistance from international money organizations it is not possible to proceed or succeed? This question aside, the idea of intervention from the international community continues in this story of forest protection. This proposition would seem to move beyond the "pure" economic interests that the Bank assumes and move into overt social and political control through legislation of resource use based on international rules, hearkening back to Foucault's writings on social control through discipline. (Foucault: 1973, 1979) Rather than assisting countries, this indicates yet greater control of the more powerful political and economic positions already held by industrial countries.

Another element of discursive analysis is not actually embedded in the narrative itself, but in the discrepancies between the narratives and the practices. There are occasions in which one could not find blame in the Bank's story were it not for the lack of follow through in practice. Could it be that the World Bank has found the road to hell?

In the section of the same chapter, entitled, "The Role of the World Bank" the text explains the measures to take in order to assist in forest preservation.

The situation in Cameroon, in terms of actual practices, undercuts the claims of intention expressed here. The Bank has funded a number of parks in Cameroon as well as supporting research on the establishment of new Faunal Reserves. The effective management they promise is either between one and seven Cameroonian park rangers, experienced more as border police than park rangers or by European management, which generally rotate through their assignments in Cameroon every one to two years. The Cameroonian staff is not sufficient in number to supply adequate conservation education or rotation. The rotation of European staff, often the actual managers, lends to inconsistency and instability within the parks and reserves. In areas of proposed parks, although originally hired by the World Bank to evaluate the biological diversity of flora and fauna as well as the human social needs and conditions, researchers have been cut from the budgets, citing lack of funding for their positions.

Additionly, assumptions are embedded in the text, namely that parks and reserves are the proper way to enact tropical forest conservation and that restriction of access to the conserved areas is also necessary. There is a long tradition of parks, begun in the United States with the establishment of Yellowstone Reserve in 1872. This practice was imported into the colonial conservation schemes in Africa almost immediately. Leach addresses this issue as it played out in colonial Africa.

These are the elements, expressly neo-colonial, which continue to serve as the basis for beliefs that drive the discourses of power produced within texts such as these by the World Bank. As two Third World critics express:

By analyzing discourses on which practices are based, we are able to unearth assumption and intentions. These documents reveal relations of power and "regimes of truth." Although, as noted in the last section, practices must likewise be analyzed in order to more fully understand the issues of power, knowledge and their uses, discourses open a door into the consciousness which mold beliefs upon which practices are based. "Development" as a practice must continue to be deconstructed in order to affect a change in the treatment of humans and other planetary inhabitants through a revamping of First/Third, North/South inseparably linked economic, political and social relations.