modernization as spectacle in africa (excerpt)

8/9/2019 Modernization as Spectacle in Africa (excerpt)

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MODERNI ZATI ON

as SPECTACLE in Afr ica

E D I T E D B Y

P E T E R J . B L O O M , T A K Y I W A A M A N U H ,and S T E P H A N F . M I E S C H E R



c ontents

a cknowledgments vii

introduction \ Stephan f . Miescher, peter J. Bloom, andt akyiwaa Manuh 1

Part One: Modernization and the Origins of the Package

1 a f er Modernization: Globalization and the a frican d ilemma \percy c . Hintzen 19

2 Modernization T eory and the f igure of Blindness:f ilial r eections \ a ndrew a pter 41

Part Two: Media, Modernity, and Modernization

3 f ilm as instrument of Modernization and Social c hangein a frica:T e l ong View \ r osaleen Smyth 65

4 Mass e ducation, c ooperation, and the “a frican Mind” \a aron Windel 89

5 is propaganda Modernity? press and r adio for “a fricans” inz ambia, z imbabwe, and Malawi during World War ii andits a f ermath \ Mhoze c hikowero 112

6 e locution, englishness, and empire: f ilm and r adio inl ate c olonial Ghana \ peter J. Bloom 136

Part T ree: Infrastructure and Eff cts

7 n egotiating Modernization: T e Kariba d am project in thec entral a frican f ederation, ca. 1954–196 \ Julia t ischler 159

8 “n o o ne Should Be Worse o ff ”: T e a kosombo d am,Modernization, and the e xperience of r esettlement in Ghana \Stephan f . Miescher 184



vi | c ontents

9 r adioactive e xcess: Modernization as Spectacle and Betrayalin postcolonial Gabon \ Gabrielle Hecht 205

Part Four: Institutional Training in Nkrumah’s Ghana

10 Modeling Modernity: T e Brief Story of Kwame n krumah,a n azi pilot n amed Hanna, and the Wonders of Motorless f light \Jean a llman 229

11 T e a frican personality d ances Highlife: popular Music,Urban Youth, and c ultural Modernization in n krumah’sGhana, 1957–196 \ n ate plageman 244

12 Building institutions for the n ew a frica:T e institute ofa frican Studies at the University of Ghana \ t akyiwaa Manuh 268

Part Five: Modernization and the Literary Imagination

13 T eater and the politics of d isplay:T e Tragedy of KingChristophe at Senegal’s f irst World f estival of n egro a rts \c hristina S. McMahon 287

14 r eengaging n arratives of Modernization in c ontemporarya frican l iterature \ n ana Wilson-t agoe 307

15 Between n ationalism and pan-a fricanism: n gũgĩ waT iong’o’sT eater and the a rt and politics of Modernizing a fricanc ulture \ a ida Mbowa 328

c ontributors 349 index 353



1 a f er ModernizationGlobalization and the African Dilemma

percy c . Hintzen

a frica to the r escuei recall a meeting that i attended at a time when media reports were circulatingraising concerns about South a sia as a cheap location for computer programmingand so f ware development. T e value of the U.S. dollar was falling on internationalcurrency markets, which was having a negative eff ct on industry pro ts in Southa sia. increasingly the region was being rendered less competitive relative to theUnited States. in response, high-tech companies began shif ing their operationsback to the United States, generating increasing demand for programmers andcomputer engineers. With increasing U.S. demand came rising salaries and com-pensation packages driving costs in an upward spiral.T e solution, discussed andproposed, was to shift computer programming and so f ware engineering func-tions to a frica—the last bastion of cheap production in an increasingly competi-tive globalized economy. T is is a particular case of a general trend where for-eign direct investments in a frica are seen as a solution to a current crisis of globalcapitalism that demands reallocation in global production to areas where remu-neration and transaction costs are cheapest and where there is rising consumerdemand for global products and services.

T

e shift to a frica is facilitated by the sundering of the relationship betweenpro t accumulation and nationalist agendas for economic development. Suchagendas, at one point, had begun to threaten and disrupt a colonial and post-colonial order of “dependency” where economic surpluses generated in the colo-nies and former colonies are transferred to the developed global north. T e goalof retaining economic surpluses in the colonies and former colonies, motivatedby reversing relationships of dependency, was at the critical center of narrativesof “modernization.” in a new development ethic, modernization was to be accom-plished through the implementation of policies that would result in dramatic in-creases in macroeconomic performance (national income, output, savings, con-sumption, and investment) at the national level. Such policies, it was assumed,would guarantee the accumulation of pro ts in the former colonies. T e “turn toa frica” was being proposed in the wake of declining performance of these very

19



20 | percy c . Hintzen

macroeconomic indicators in the “developed,” industrialized, “mature” econo-mies. o ld patterns of “dependency” had to be turned upside down to accommo-date the new reality of dependence on growth in incomes, consumption, and investment opportunities in the former colonies of e urope located in the globalsouth. in an editorial written for a special edition of Vanity Fair on a frica dedi-cated to a global “product r ed” campaign that he heads, Bono, the lead singer ofthe irish band U2, explained that the campaign’s purpose was to raise money fora Global f und, organized as a unique global public/private partnership amonggovernment, civil society, the private sector, and aff cted communities to ghta id S, tuberculosis, and malaria. 1 T e money comes from an allocated percentage

of pro ts earned by participating companies from the sale of targeted “productr ed” goods. in making his appeal, Bono made reference to the health crisis in a f-rica, and particularly to the prevalence of the three diseases targeted by the fundas an example of factors that constrain, restrain, and prevent the modernizationof the continent: “We needed help in describing the continent of a frica as an op-portunity, as an adventure, not a burden. o ur habit—and we have to kick it—is toreduce this mesmerizing, entrepreneurial, dynamic continent of 53 diverse coun-tries to a hopeless deathbed of war, disease, and corruption” (Bono 2007, 36). Without knowing it, Bono entered into the fraught fi ld of historicist dis-course. His assertion of a frica’s dynamic entrepreneurship turns on its head the very foundations of e uropean thought that assigned the continent and its progenyto the constitutive outside of civilization. entrepreneurship is an exclusive prac-tice of “civilized,” “enlightened” subjects located in “modern” spaces. a narra-tive logic of a frica as the natural home of the “unenlightened” engaged in “tra-ditional” practice placed entrepreneurship outside its realm of possibility. Bonochallenges this narrative, proposing instead an alternative explanation—that ra-tional will, as the motive force of entrepreneurship, was snuff d out by the very

logic and practices of e uropean colonialism.T

is came with devastating conse-quences for a frica, where, according to Bono, we modern enlightened subjectshave rendered the continent “a hopeless deathbed of war, disease, and corruption.”n ow, the “mesmerizing, entrepreneurial” dynamism of the a frican continent ison display “where every street corner boasts an entrepreneur” (Bono 2007, 32). e ntrepreneurial dynamism is, singly, the most important marker of th e modernenlightened subject. it is the product of reason and rationality. in the narrative ofthe e nlightenment and its off shoot in German and european idealism, the a f-rican is understood to be devoid of rational capacity, trapped in the stasis of a“pre-history” of non-reason. T is forecloses participation in enlightened civili-zation and precludes a frican entrepreneurship. 2 T e idea is founded on the no-tion that e uropean enlightened rationality and reason have produced, through“rational will,” the conditions for human perfection.3 a “T ree Worlds” global



a f er Modernization | 21

division con nes a frica to the geocultural space of the “a boriginal” for whomreason and its provenance in consciousness are foreclosed. T e a sian “o riental”fares little better in this narrative, constrained by an irrational consciousnessthat misallocates reason to the supernatural in which all conscious action is di-rected in adoration and worship. T e e uropean, as the “universal subject,” is dis-tinguished from the a frican by capacities for cognition, and from the o riental byself-consciousness. T is geopolitically diffe entiated discourse of diffe ence is atthe foundation of Kantian, Hegelian, and Marxist philosophy.4 in its early formu-lations, rooted in German idealism, such diffe ence was cast as the unchangingnature of “natural law.” c hanges in the social and technical conditions of industrial capitalism ren-

dered these naturalist assertions untenable as explanations for the division of theworld. T e need for signi cant increases in capital investments (including invest-ments in human capital) and in infrastructural development and utilities in e uro-pean colonies populated by “natives” and “o rientals” demanded a reformulationof naturalist thought. in new discourses of “development,” the possibility of the“conscription” of the colonized into the “modern” colonial project was acknowl-edged along with a full transition from “tradition” to “modernity” in an unde- ned future. T is new discursive pedagogy was foreshadowed by and predicatedupon “historicist” representations of geopolitical diffe entiation that began withHegel and were subsequently elaborated by Marx.T ese new representations arecritical to any attempt at understanding the discursive preconditions for even-tual challenges to e uropean colonialism organized around developmental agen-das for capital accumulation. T ey opened up new horizons of thought and con-sciousness, allowing for the possibility that the colonized had the potential forcivilized enlightenment, and they provided justi cation and support for the ideaof political independence and national self-determination. But any assertions ofcivilized enlightenment had to be contained if the new historicist representations

were to serve the interests of the colonial project. So, in their application to thecolonies, the e uropean colonizer was cast as the agent of civilization and better-ment. d evelopment became a “universal necessity” and colonialism its instrument(see McMichael 2008, 25). europe became the prototype of progress to human bet-terment and the promised future for the colonies. T e colonized were inscribedinto the new world of development as “almost the same, but not quite” as the en-lightened modern self (Bhabha 1994, 86). a s such, colonialism received its new le-gitimation and justi cation as the historical route of transition to modernity. a tsome point, however, the inevitable and fraught issues of readiness and timinghad to be raised—issues that eventually fueled the anticolonial struggle for inde-pendence. o nce development entered into the arena of colonial discourse, the colonialproject could be justifi d only as a form of tutelage.T e problem of conceding




new measure of productive output designed during World War ii to quantify thedegree to which the U.S. economy was meeting its goals of war production (Sachs1996, 239–40). n ew international institutions were organized to ensure and man-age the transition to economic development in a postcolonial and postwar globaleconomy. in July 1949, the international Bank for r econstruction and d evelop-ment (the World Bank) made its rst foray into the “developing areas” througha program for “multitude improvements and reforms” designed for the economyof c olombia. T e program emphasized the need for “careful planning, organi-zation, and allocation of resources” through a “detailed set of prescriptions, in-cluding goals, quanti able targets, investment needs, design criteria, method-ologies, and time sequences” (e scobar 1995, 24–26). even though they retained

all of the discursive features of the old historicism, these new understandings ofunderdevelopment became tied to the narrow economic rationalities of produc-tion, consumption, and investment as fundamental conditions of modernization.e conomic rationality became the motive force for development against the irra-tionality of colonial forms of mercantilism.T e idea of a cultural transition fromthe “traditional” to the “modern” was replaced by the notion of progress in a pro-cess of modernization directed by policies of rational investments in industriali-zation, denied by colonial commandment. West indian economist and n obel laureate W. a rthur l ewis was at the centerof these new developments (see t ignor 2006). He considered colonialism to bean impediment to modernization and argued that the colonizing project restedupon the maintenance of a strict division of labor necessary to guarantee a sup-ply of cheap raw agricultural and mineral primary commodities needed as inputsto capitalist industry in the colonial centers of e urope. l ewis, as an unmitigatednationalist, challenged British colonial policy on these very grounds.T e indus-trialization of the West indies (and therefore its modernization), he felt, was sty-mied by the inevitability of colonial opposition because of the threat it posed to

British industry.6

l ewis proposed a program of economic development predicated upon na-tional self-determination and independence from europe. He advocated a proac-tive role for the postcolonial state and called for the development of internationalorganizations controlled and directed by “development scholars.” c apital invest-ments that were denied to the colonies under the colonial project were to be se-cured through scal and other incentives designed to attract foreign industriesand foreign investors. He argued for this form of “industrialization by invitation”as the necessary precondition for modernization (l ewis 1950, 1954). f or l ewis, colonialism was the main impediment to modernization becausethe colonial economy was organized around the export of surpluses. T is prevented the accumulation of savings needed for investment. Under such condi-tions, development transition could not occur. c olonialism denied the coloniesan opportunity to embark on the path that led to the industrial revolution in e u-




rope (l ewis 1979, 4). in a frica, the problem of transition was complicated by thepresence of a large “subsistence” sector. independence would provide postcolo-nial elites with the opportunity to apply their “rational will” to the task of mod-ernization. With the importation of capital, technology, and skills, the “surpluslabor” engaged in inefficient production for subsistence would become absorbedinto the industrial sector. T is would provide the former colonies with a com-parative advantage in global trade. n otwithstanding this new turn, development and modernization continued tobe overdetermined by its historicist roots. 7 T e historicist assumptions of a naturalhistorical progress were retained in the new developmentalist thinking. T is wasespecially evident in the version of development theory proposed by Walter r os-

tow, the a merican economist and advisor to the administrations of presidentsKennedy and Johnson, which became instrumental in the policies and practices ofdevelopment economics. a s a universal proposition, according to r ostow, coun-tries went through ve historical stages of economic growth. History began with“traditional society.” implementation of appropriate policies for accumulation ofsavings and investments were needed in these societies to create the “precondi-tion for takeoff .” T e threshold to modernization was crossed during the “take-off ” stage. o nce accomplished, it led to a “drive to maturity” that set the stagefor an “age of high mass consumption.” r ostow’s teleological version of historyended in a utopia that was “beyond consumption.” l ike l ewis, he saw a “central-ized nation state” fashioned out of new nationalist coalitions as one of the critical“preconditions for takeoff .” With it, the impediments to modernization thrownup by both traditional and colonial interests would be swept aside (r ostow 1953). T us, in the new ideology of economic development, the r ubicon of mod-ernization was to be crossed with the accumulation of savings that became avail-able for investments in industrial production. Such investments were foreclosedunder colonialism because of the threats they posed to colonial and traditional

interests.T

e success of the anticolonial movement eff ctively created the spacefor economic transformation with the removal of the colonizer. T eorists of political modernization were not as convinced as developmenteconomists that the transition from tradition to modernity rested solely on theapplication of rational economic will. t raditional interests were hard to dislodge,and their continued presence came with resistance to eff rts at modernization.independence had left traditional interests intact to be dealt with as a political problem, and so the path to economic rationality was paved by “political order.”f or them, the imposition and maintenance of order became the paramount po-litical virtue. d isorder was the fundamental impediment to progress. t raditionalinterests (including the peasant and the poor) came to be identifi d as sources ofdisorder. T ey needed to be controlled and contained for eventual conscriptioninto modernization.




T e retention of historicist thought based on the Manichean cultural divisionof tradition and modernity was at the criti cal center of the political version of“modernization theory” that developed in the 1960s. What diffe entiated it fromcolonial understandings was the concession it made to a domestic group of elite“modernizers,” already possessed of rational will.T is did away with the need forcolonial agents of transformation. Modernization theory thus managed to accom-modate the new developmentalist thinking while retaining notions of native in-feriority. it was proposed that the institutionalization of authority be led by elite“modernizers” if the political order was to be guaranteed as a condition of eco-nomic development. d emocracy was to be held in check until the forces of tra-dition were swept away. f or Samuel p. Huntington, one of its key advocates, “the

problem is not to hold elections but to create organization s . . . to provide an as-surance of political order” in the face of the “mobilization of new social forcesinto politics” (Huntington 1968, 7–9, vii).T ere is, in his formulation, a “gap” be-tween economic development and political development. T e imposition of theabsolute authority of a modernizing elite became an “organizational imperative”if disorder stemming from this “gap” is to be prevented (7–8).T e process of tran-sition begins with “modernizing monarchs” willing to transform their systemsinto “modern constitutional monarchies.” T is sets the stage for assumption ofpower by “radical praetorians [in] middle class break-through coups”—the latter,in turn and at the appropriate time, to be replaced by modern leaders in a one-party system. T ere is little room for democratic practice during this transition.d emocracy, as it turns out, must wait for the appropriate moment in the processof modernization. T is is because democracy requires

strong, adaptable, coherent political institutions: eff ective bureaucracies, wellorganized political parties, a high degree of popular participation in public af-fairs, working systems of civilian control over the military, extensive activity bythe government in the economy, and reasonably eff ective procedures for regu-

lating succession and controlling political con ict. (1)

in this formulation, the postponing of democracy in postcolonial politicalorganization became, at one and the same time, a necessary condition of prog-ress as well as con rmation that the former colonies were “almost the same butnot quite ” civilized.T is, in essence, became the “meaning” of modernization andre ected the way its narrative was overdetermined by traditional historicism. ineff ct, it was just a diffe ent version of colonial reason and practice, with the col-onizer replaced by a national elite subservient to the interests of the new bloc ofglobal capitalists centered in the United States. T e retention of historicist discourse in the “a merican” versions of economicdevelopment and modernization theory resolved a fundamental contradiction inthe new developmentalism. T e goal for the former colonies had less to do with




progress and development transition and more with dislodging colonial mercan-tilist interests who stood in the way of a merican capital. d evelopment econom-ics and political modernization were handmaidens of a new global hegemony ofruling interests centered in the United States. T e twin ideas of progress and development were merely legitimizing rationales for the incorporation of the “mod-ernizing elite” in the global south into a new coalition of interests that replacedthe global elite class of colonizers. a s petty bourgeoisie, members of this modern-izing elite were particularly well suited to the service of a merican interests in thenew global transformations. T ey employed their newly achieved “legal-rationalauthority” derived from control of newly independent states to transform theirstate bureaucracies and their bureaucratized po litical parties, trade unions, and

voluntary organizations into “power instruments of the rst order”—an outcomeanticipated by nineteenth- century historicist scholar Max Weber (1958, 228). T e goal of “modernization” was not merely the destruction of the institu-tions of colonial order and demobilization, but control of traditional interests.proletarianization had produced new “social forces” that challenged the hege-mony of a merican-centered global capital, organized around anticapitalist ide-ology. economic development and political modernization were predicated onthe containment, control, and negation of these challenges. Modernization waspresented as “non-ideological.”8 ideology, on the other hand, became exclusivelytied to socialism and communism, represented as the new forms of nonrationalthought and practice. l ike “tradition,” socialism and communism were cast inthe new narrative of modernization as impediments to progress and as sourcesof disorder. T ey were to be contained if not destroyed at all costs. ideology, ac-cording to d avid a pter, one of the major theorists of modernization, was dan-gerous because

rhetoric is confused with reality, tactics with values, meaning with motives.T e leaders are erratic, aggressive, and given to creating their own rules ofconduct. By claiming the future, they disclaim responsibility for the present.a nd by manipulating political religion, they endow such conduct with mo-rality. (a pter 1965, 388)

a t stake was the challenge posed to the hegemony of global capitalist interestsby euro-c ommunism and West ern european forms of socialism. T ese had be-gun to inform, direct, and in uence campaigns of mobilization in the postcolo-nial global south. T e point of those who speak of “hegemony” is that it is not static, neitherin its structure nor in the composition of its “ruling group.” 9 T e new a meri-can-centered capitalism, because of its challenges to colonial hegemony, incor-porated the modernizing elite of petit bourgeois interests in the former coloniesinto a new social-democratic alliance of global solidarity comprising, according




to Samir a min (1980), metropolitan capitalist interests, the affluent metropolitanmiddle class (cut off from unprivileged minorities, women, etc.), the “compra-dor” national capitalists in the global south, and now the latter’s petit bourgeoi-sie. T is set the stage for the eventual abandoning of national goals set as targetsby the mantra of modernization. T e consequences were inevitable. r ather than transferring the bene ts ofmaterial progress to the former colonies, modernization (understood as po liti-cal modernization and economic development) became the legitimizing and jus-tifying narrative deployed in the service of the interests of a merican-centeredglobal capital. Modernization, through its reformulation of historicist discourse,became the instrumental idea behind the organization of new practices of global

power and created a new social mapping of the world that replaced the previouscolonial formation. o verdetermined by historicist thinking, it retained the notionof the developmental inferiority of the “underdeveloped” global south by sepa-rating the now-globalized “modernizing elite” from the rest of the “native” popu-lation (see e scobar 1995, 10–17).T is served to naturalize a new system of powerthat functioned to regulate the practices of the population of the “undeveloped”world and to impose new disciplinary technologies upon its masses. in the pro-cess people came “to recognize themselves as developed or underdeveloped” andinfused with a “desire for development” (10–11). in the international arena, the distinction between developed and underdevel-oped countries became central to new understandings in the unfolding system ofpower relations. n ew forms of national evaluation were introduced based on mea-sures of “economic development.” d omestically and internationally, the technicalknowledge of development was deployed as an “efficient apparatus” that “system-atically regulated [these] new relations of power” (10).T e binary divide betweenthe “developed” and the “underdeveloped” at the international level became rep-licated in distinctions made between the “modern” and “traditional” in the na-

tional arena. in this new developmental thinking, progress became the goal andthe sole governing principle in the socioeconomic practices of the “underdevel-oped” countries. T e global north, and particularly n orth a merica, came to berepresented teleologically as the inevitable “end of history” and ideologically asthe new utopia. it was a new version of colonial tutelage by the United States im-posed by new international institutions in cluding the Bretton Woods nancialinstitutions of the World Bank and international Monetary f und and the vari ousarms of the United n ations, all formed during the closing stages of World War i iand becoming operative in the war’s immediate af ermath. T e “quest for development” came with its own contradictions because of thepromise of betterment it made to the “natives.” T e rationale for the “developmentproject,” as argued and presented, was its guarantee of material progress and thetransformation of the postcolonial po litical economies into clones of the devel-




oped industrialized n orth. T is led, inevitably, to popular demands for and ex-pectations of “betterment” as central features of postcolonial preoccupations. Butdevelopment, as ideology, and its promise of modernization were nothing morethan hegemonic ruses. T ey served, following Gramsci (1971), as a mechanismof political and economic control, the means through which the ruling group ofinterests was able to project its own way ofseeing the world so that those subor-dinated by it accepted their conditions as “common-sense” and “natural.” T isguaranteed their willing and active consent. T e promise of modernization wasmade to instantiate and conscript the participation of europe’s former coloniesand their populations into the architecture of a meri can-centered global capital. T e contradictions between the goal of national development and the de-

mands of this new global system of capital began to become evident in the 1970s.e conomic growth stemming from development investments was not “tricklingdown” to the vast majority of the population.10 n ational development was show-ing itself to be incompatible with the accumulative agendas of the new globalcapitalist order, now freed from the demands and obligations of colonial metro-politan interests. Because of the failure of its promise, radical nationalist agendas,supported and in uenced by the Soviet Bloc and c hina and their anticapitalistMarxist/l eninist and Maoist ideologies, began to infuse postcolonial nationalistformation. f orms of democratic socialism adopted in e urope in the wake of theshift of capitalism’s center to the United States began to inform postcolonial na-tionalist discourse in the erstwhile colonies.11

T e n eoconservative t ransformationT e goal of political modernization, as ideology and practice, was to consolidatethe absolute authority of the “modernizing elite” in postcolonial po litical economyand statist formation. it was accompanied by a phenomenal expansion of newmultilateral agencies, including their Bretton Woods versions, in the former colo-

nies.T

is expansion inserted a new set of global actors into state decision- making.T e hegemonic narrative of development naturalized the power and authority ofthe national and global elite as agents of modernization. in the process, the do-mestic postcolonial political economy became unhinged from its colonial andquasi-mercantilist roots and inserted into an ever widening and deepening globalsystem. T e putative commitment of the postcolonial elite to national developmentbegan to erode. T e multilateral agencies charged with developmental transfor-mation became instrumental in imposing a new creed of globalization upon thepolitical economies of the global south. a shift to the global was made impera-tive by new demands stemming from changes in the structure of internationalcapitalism. T ese changes were produced out of new developments in informa-tion, communication, and transportation technology. T ey ushered in new “dis-articulated” forms of production organized in the interests of newly consolidated




forms of global commercial, nancial, and manufacturing capital (Gereffi 2007,128–29). a new mantra of economic “globalization” began to take hold as an au-thoritative imposition on policy and practice in postcolonial states. What resulted,according to Henry Bienen and John Waterbury, was a “neoconservative trans-formation” where the national and global elite “set out to fundamentally reorga-nize social and political” order with the aim of redirecting “the pattern of politi-cal and social power” away from the nationalist agenda of development (Bienenand Waterbury 1992, 382). T e model and prototype for this transformation emerged in the mid- 1970sin a push by newly industrializing countries (n ic S) in l atin a merica and easta sia to develop export industries (Gere ffi 2007, 114–34).T e success of these coun-

tries’ eff rts convinced many of the decision-makers in e urope’s former coloniesto follow their example.T e global south began a shift to exclusive production ofcommodities for export (129–30), which was a necessary condition for success-ful implementation of new disarticulated forms of global manufacturing. Whateventually emerged were “commodity chains” of production organized in “export/marketing networks” spanning “several countries, with each nation performingtasks in which it has a cost advantage” (127–28). c ountries in the global south beganto be diffe entially inserted into this new global system based on their “compara-tive advantage” (i.e., the cost advantages they enjoyed) in labor, utilities, inputs,and all other elements involved in the production process, and on the amount ofland, labor, capital, and entrepreneurship available for exploitation in the produc-tion and sale of goods and services for the global market.T ey also had to bearthe burden of the costs of infrastructural development to support the new exportorientation. Many built special industrial parks and developed export-processingzones (e pz s) that were exempt from national regulation and tax regimes. T erewas tremendous rearticulation of the system of global production with a prolif-eration of “world factories . . . producing world rather than national products”

(McMichael 2008, 89–90). in the new order, “production steps” became “separatedand distributed among geographically dispersed sites in assembly-line fashion,producing, and assembling a completed product. World products emerge froma single site or a global assembly line of multiple sites organizing disparate laborforces of varying skill, cost, and function” (89–90).T e new global order led todramatic declines in domestic production, in cluding domestic agriculture. pro-duction of traditional crops was replaced by agro- commodities for export. Most ofthe nations’ productive resources (in cluding capital and entrepreneurship) becamehitched to the global economy (see f robel, Heinrichs, and Kreye 2007, 160–74). T e neoconservative turn transformed the postcolonial social order and itsrelations of power. Strategic sectors of the population that became mobilized insupport of the anticolonial campaign for independence had to be demobilized,disciplined, and/or coerced. Welfare programs, subsidies, and other types of state

modernization as spectacle in africa (excerpt)

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