Aren't you all so happy that now that I'm in school, I can copy and paste my reading journals as goodreads reviews? :)



I’ve wanted to read this book for a long time, so I was excited to get started on it. The first chapter, I wasn’t feeling so sure about it. His introduction to global development issues seemed to be very market-heavy, and I kept thinking: Can we pursue this line of thinking without acknowledging the role that globalized market capitalism has played in creating the very economic i

Aren't you all so happy that now that I'm in school, I can copy and paste my reading journals as goodreads reviews? :)



I’ve wanted to read this book for a long time, so I was excited to get started on it. The first chapter, I wasn’t feeling so sure about it. His introduction to global development issues seemed to be very market-heavy, and I kept thinking: Can we pursue this line of thinking without acknowledging the role that globalized market capitalism has played in creating the very economic inequalities that we all find so reprehensible? My misgivings stayed with me throughout the book, due to little details like a complimentary nod to the Chicago boys in the context of Chile’s history.



Which is a shame, because there was a lot I liked about this book. I am mostly on board with Easterly’s critiques of the World Bank and IMF, and I really like his ideas about bottom-up development and the importance of accountability in development work. I thought Part III (on colonialism and postmodern imperialism) was really important. However, there were a lot of places where I felt that he cursorily passed over important debates: for instance, in his discussion of prostitution, or of the role of breastfeeding in HIV transmission. These are important debates, far from cut-and-dried, and I wish he would have given them the relevant attention. But the most frustrating thing about this book was its failure to critique multinational corporations with the same incisiveness that he critiques international financial institutions and governments.



A couple of examples of him giving corporations a pass were two little text boxes on “corporate charity.” On page 109, he apparently wants us to congratulate Shell for selling cook stoves in the developing world. No mention, of course, about Shell’s egregious human rights record: complicity in oil theft, oppression of indigenous peoples, and execution of human rights activists in the Niger Delta; pollution, rainforest destruction, and displacement of indigenous peoples in several countries, including Chad, Cameroon, and Peru; and continued lobbying to conduct oil exploration in protected areas and delicate ecosystems, as happened in Pakistan and other places. But Easterly mentions none of this; he merely praises Shell’s “market-driven” approach to the problem of indoor smoke contamination. AND THEN, on the very next page, Easterly segues into an apparently-unironic discussion of Bolivia! I was bamboozled; no mention here of Shell’s gas pipeline that has displaced indigenous peoples in the Chiquitano Forest in Bolivia! From the World Rainforest Movement: “The construction of the gas pipeline between Bolivia and Brazil by the Shell and Enron petroleum companies has affected an area of 6 million hectares of Chiquitano Forest, inhabited by 178 indigenous and peasant communities. This forest has been in the hands of Chiquitano and Ayoreo indigenous peoples for hundreds of years.” *Oh, and by the way, he ends his cursory treatment of Bolivian history with a brief mention that “indigenous groups are suspicious about an incipient natural gas boom driven by foreign companies.” Anybody who has read about the exploitation of Bolivia’s natural resources by foreign companies knows that this sentence is woefully inadequate in describing the reality of the situation for Bolivians.



Then on page 208, the corporate apologetic strikes again, this time complimenting Unilever’s multi-level marketing scheme to sell their hand soap by promoting hand washing among poor people. (This is a sidenote, but when I lived in Mozambique, one of my friends told me how offended he was when a bunch of white people showed up wanting to give him lessons about washing his hands. He said, “How stupid do you people think we are?”) As for Unilever, I don’t even know where to start with this one. The company got its start by deforesting the Belgian Congo to get the palm oil used in its soaps, and its post-colonial legacy continues with similar trends: Monoculture crops, displaced people, deforestation, destruction of local economies, exploitative labor for subpar wages, child labor… and the list goes on and on. (Easterly actually makes a brief but largely uncritical reference to Unilever’s history in Africa on page 282, when he mentions the Tanganyika Groundnuts Scheme.) Though I don’t think Unilever sells infant formula, it strikes me as incredibly (apparently unintentionally) ironic that Easterly is lauding one of the largest producers of consumer goods in the world in his section about babies dying of diarrhea. Guess what’s one thing that contributes to babies dying of diarrhea? International (and illegal) formula marketing. And guess what are some things that contribute to generalized global malnutrition? Destruction of traditional agriculture for industrialized monocrops—oh, and the flooding of local markets with international consumer goods. Throughout the rest of the book, Easterly is a proponent of local, homegrown markets, and I feel like he really undermines his case by congratulating Unilever on creating a monopoly (through making health claims) on their imported soap in local markets in India. For a book that so strongly supports local markets, there sure isn’t much critical analysis of the impact of multinational corporations in the context of neoliberalism.

