Critical Development Forum Seminar

Resources for Teaching and Learning from the CDF Seminar

Jillian's CEP

CDF Seminar, Part Deux

Daniel's Community Engagement Project

Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, Nothing is going to get better. It's not.

There is one part in the Kingsnorth reading that gave me a little bit of direction, though, when he talks about people all over the world who are just taking back space, reconnecting wires, creating their own alternatives without asking anyone’s permission. Maybe activism doesn’t have to be “activism”. Maybe it doesn’t have to be something special, something only well-qualified, selfless people can do. Maybe it can just be a part of life, an organic expression of what we really need.

Activism, Awareness, and Guilt

Before this class started, I was highly critical of my own criticism of development work, thinking that my thoughts and confusions were counterproductive. Now, I realize that the rigmarole I run through in my head on a daily basis is exactly what I need to be doing – checking myself, checking my actions, and making sure I’m as educated as possible about my own personal decision-making, both in the here and now and ten or twenty years down the road.

I used to simply see myself as a giver and that I’m helping others with a self-intention for my own experience of exploring the world. My view of development used to clearly define by two separate sides, black and white, riches and poor, giver and taker, teacher and learner, leader and follower. But now it had changed, ideas I carrying from this class changed how is see development work. I came to a better understanding that there is no define separation of different components in development work; it’s all interrelated to one another. The relationship of giver and taker, teacher and follower are much more complex. It doesn’t measure based on materialistic, money or wealth. Development work and helping other need come with a sense respect for every individual, equality of human right interconnection and communication among all of us.

Throughout this class, I’ve begun to understand that my role in the process of development cannot just be the minimum amount of action to clear my guilty American conscience. The process of redeveloping the world into a place where everyone can coexist doesn’t start in the middle of Africa. It starts here with us. We cannot expect to bring massive, sweeping changes that will eliminate poverty and provide everyone with healthcare and clean water without expecting change to happen in our lives as well. ... The other thing that struck me was the optimism in Paul Hawken’s address. His words on how interconnected we are and the quote he used from Charles Darwin gave life to the idea that we are all apart of a “little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars of heaven”. This made me think of another quote from Neil DeGrasse Tyson, “When I look up at the night sky, and I know that, yes, we are part of this Universe, we are in this Universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts is that the Universe is in us. When I reflect on that fact, I look up—many people feel small, because they’re small and the Universe is big, but I feel big, because my atoms came from those stars.” I think if we all realized how interconnected we are, and then thought about how our actions really influence ourselves and everyone else, we might be just be a little bit better off.

Activism, Youth Activism, and Social Change

On the subject of inspiration, I really really liked the Howard Zinn article. It definitely gave me the perspective I needed, as his discussion from a historian's point of view made a lot of ideas click for me and made me feel much better about the state of the world. For instance, his examples of how apparently invincible power structures were dismantled almost overnight gives me a lot of hope for our times. It's so hard to step outside of our society and look at it from an unbiased perspective. But when I do, I realize that no system of oppression can last forever because the only constant in history is change, so as long as I critically and responsibly put my own time and effort into improving the world, then a better world is not only possible but inevitable.

[On the topic of the U.S. government's support for the Contras in Nicaragua, and similar cases of global human rights violations funded and supported by the global North.] How do we stand for this? How are we comfortable with our own governments treating citizens of others countries with so little compassion? Why are there not more riots? Why does this not result in our officials being removed from office, impeached on counts of inexcusable greed directly resulting in the deaths and loss of livelihoods of thousands?

[For this week's assignment,] I looked at the Women Thrive Worldwide and noticed immediately that their mission statement on the top of the page connected women in poverty to US policy. Additionally, on the home page was a link to an analysis of Obama’s proposed 2013 budget and the effects on women in poverty. I felt very optimistic about this website because they were giving me information to act how I saw fit. ... Previously I looked at Integrated Community Development International, and while their work sounds great, they were only asking for money. They were selling a service, not asking for action.

...To borrow the military turn of phrase adopted by the international [development] agencies [working towards the Millenium Development Goals], we must 'attack the problem of poverty'. So, poverty is the problem. In the old days there was a 'native problem' or a 'coolie problem', and more recently there has been the 'woman problem' (or the problem of the unemployed, or refugees or immigrants, and so on). No one seems to remember that for such 'problems' to arise two sets of actors must be involved: rich and poor, white and black, men and women. In other words, the rich do not exist without the poor - to take one example. The advantage of an approach that focuses on only one party in the relationship is that it puts the blame for the 'problem' on the weaker party and removes whoever has arrogated the right to pose the question from the 'problem' altogether. By eliding social relations this rhetorical sleight of hand brings forth a new, apparently 'objective' reality; poverty in this particular case. The new reality can then be discussed, quantified, attacked; attempts can even be made to eradicate it without questioning social relations overall.

The problem of poverty lies not in poverty but in wealth.