Business-led development

Business-led development.

Essay Questions: 

Below is a choice of two essay questions. Select one. Below each of the two essay questions is a short list of key references that you can use as a starting point for your research. However, as this is a research essay, you must also find and use at least five academic journal articles or book chapters in addition to those you use from the list provided. You may also use grey literature (i.e. reports and other documents from organisations such as the UN), but any such sources must be in addition to both the sources you choose from the reference list provided and the five academic sources you find through your research. 

Essay Question 1: Famine

For a long time, experts thought that a lack of available food was the cause of famine. However, Amartya Sen revealed in his research that famines occur when some sections of society do not have access to food that is available.

What are famines? With reference to examples of famine since the 1980s, describe the multiple factors that cause famine (e.g. human-made factors, such as economic shocks, violent political conflict, policies regarding humanitarian aid budgets or bureaucratic negligence, and environmental factors, such as extreme weather events or crop failures). In your opinion, are famines human-made emergencies? What explains the rapid increase in the number of people who need emergency food assistance? Moreover, why in an era of declining poverty and hunger globally, are we suddenly facing famines in unconnected countries of South Sudan, northeastern Nigeria, Yemen, and Somalia?

Some suggested references as a starting point for your research 

Battersby, Jane. 2013. Hungry cities: A critical review of urban food security research in sub-Saharan African cities. Geography Compass, 7(7): 452–63.

Devereux, Stephen. 2001. Sen’s Entitlement Approach: Critiques and CounterCritiques. Oxford Development Studies, 29(3).

Devereux, Stephen. 2009. Why Does Famine Persist in Africa? Food Security, 1(1): 25–35.

Malthus, T. 1798, 1976 edition. An Essay on the Principle of Population, New York: W. W. Norton. (eBook available)

Baro, M. and Deubel, T.F. 2006. “Persistent hunger: Perspectives on vulnerability, famine, and food security in sub-Saharan Africa.” Annual Review of Anthropology, 35(1): 521–38.

Maxwell, D. 1999. The political economy of urban food security in sub-Saharan Africa. World Development 27(11): 1939–53.

Sen, A. 1981. Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation,

Oxford: Clarendon Press. (Chapters 1 and 2)

[The most influential book on famine since Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population, in which Sen introduces his ‘entitlement approach’ to the analysis of poverty and famines].

de Waal, A. 2005. Famine that Kills: Darfur, Sudan (revised edition) Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Ebook available)

Watts, M. and Böhle, H.G. 1993. The space of vulnerability: The causal structure of hunger and famine. Progress in Human Geography, 17(1): 43–67.

Essay Question 2: Business-led development

There is an increasing body of literature promoting the tenets of market forces in helping to alleviate poverty. Proponents of this position include Easterly and Moyo, who argue that markets work better than foreign aid in combating poverty, even claiming that aid is part of the problem. Market-based approaches to development consider poor people as producers, consumers, and micro-entrepreneurs while also seeking solutions to make markets more inclusive and efficient (we have looked at Fair Trade as an example of this).

Drawing on examples from social enterprise or microfinance, explain how marketoriented development approaches are driven by a neoliberal agenda to lift the poor out of poverty using business principles. What are the limitations such capitalist market-based approaches have in aiding the world’s poor? In your opinion, can the free-market be relied upon as the sole approach to poverty alleviation or does it play only a role in the nuanced approach to development? Explain your position.

Some suggested references as a starting point for your research

Banerjee, A. and Duflo, E. 2011. Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Poverty. New York: Public Affairs.

Blowfield, M. and Dolan, C.S. 2014. “Business as a Development Agent: Evidence of Possibility and Improbability.” Third World Quarterly 35(1): 22–42.

Cieslik, K. 2016. “Moral economy meets social enterprise community-based Green energy project in rural Burundi.” World Development 83 (July): 12–26.

Dolan, C. 2012. “The new face of development: The bottom of the pyramid entrepreneurs.” Anthropology Today 28(4): 3–7.

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

Ferguson, J. 2010. “The uses of neoliberalism.” Antipode 41(S1): 166–184.

Hall, J., Matos, S., Sheehan, L. and Silvestre, B. 2012. “Entrepreneurship and innovation at the base of the pyramid: A recipe for inclusive growth or social exclusion?” Journal of Management Studies 49(4): 785–812.

Hermes, N. and Lensink, R. 2011. “Microfinance: Its impact, outreach, and sustainability.” World Development 29(6): 875–881.

Moyo, D. 2010. Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa. Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre.

Rankin, K. 2001. “Governing development: Neoliberalism, microcredit, and rational economic woman.” Economy and Society 30(1): 18–37.

Rankin, K. 2008. “Manufacturing rural finance in Asia: Institutional assemblages, market societies, entrepreneurial subjects.” Geoforum 39(6): 1965–1977.

Sen, A. 1985. “Wellbeing, agency and freedom: The Dewey Lectures 1984.” Journal of Philosophy 82: 169–221.

Smith, B.R. and Stevens, C.E. 2010. “Different types of social entrepreneurship: The role of geography and embeddedness on the measurement and scaling of social value.” Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 22:6, 575-598.

Venot, J.P. 2016. “A success of some sort: Social enterprises and drip irrigation in the developing world.” World Development 79(313): 69–81.

Wilson, C. 2006. Make Poverty Business: Increase Profits and Reduce Risks by

Engaging with the Poor. Sheffield: Greenleaf. (eBook available)

This Assessment Task relates to the following Learning Outcomes:

•!    Understand why international aid remains such a contested arena within international relations and such a problematic context for altruistic notions of help. 

•!    Learn to think critically and reflexively about recent debates informing development, the motivations behind international aid and the attendant difficulties in its delivery

•!    Examine the social outcomes that emerge from programs of international aid by looking beyond the rhetoric and developing an appreciation of the many background factors that influence these outcomes.

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Business-led development

 

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