Overview

Growth against Democracy: Savage Developmentalism in the Modern World, by H.L.T. Quan is a compelling interrogation of the ways in which we have thought about modernity, capitalism, and democracy, and how those ideas inform neoliberal economics, diplomacy, and impact human life. To explicate contemporary theories of development, Quan introduces the concept of “savage developmentalism,” with its attendant distortions of the ideals of equality and freedom and assumptions that foment antidemocratic social and political forms. By outlining the pitfalls of security-obsessed developmental approaches, Growth against Democracy troubles the simple notion that modernity is inherently superior and development will benefit everyone. It shows how capitalists' needs for market, finance, and profitability often lead to development programs that engender expansionism, dispossession, and repression. Drawing on political theory, international political economy, critical ethnic studies, legal studies, and feminist analytics, this groundbreaking study exemplifies how multi-disciplinary scholarship best addresses the increasingly complex and multi-layered issues facing humanity today. It analyzes the linkages between development and national security, and provides sustained attention to the making of foreign policy, the development of capitalism and corporate globalization. The book highlights three critical examples of where savage developmentalism has eventuated worse living conditions, severe social repression, and displacement: Brazilian-Japanese economic relations in Brazil under military rule (1964-1985); China’s aggressive courting of African good will and resources; and, the United States’ reconstruction of Iraq. These three major historical cases represent some of the most momentous global development in the last sixty years, and never before have such powerful cases been analyzed in the same monograph. Growth against Democracy helps re-evaluate the promises of progress, security, and freedom, and broadens our ideas about and priorities for humane public policy at the national and global levels.

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9780739170595

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Reviews

Growth Against Democracy is an outstanding contribution to the scholarly literature on global capitalism and its effects. I don't know of any other work that shows in such a thorough way the connections between the larger processes and practices of globalized capitalism and the increased tendency in U.S. law to privilege corporate over what Quan calls bio-personhood. The practical and political significance of this contemporary debate about corporations' legal rights is demonstrated with careful attention to the important legal details. -- Jackie Smith, University of Pittsburgh

Growth Against Democracy is an outstanding contribution to the scholarly literature on global capitalism and its effects. I don't know of any other work that shows in such a thorough way the connections between the larger processes and practices of globalized capitalism and the increased tendency in U.S. law to privilege corporate over what Quan calls bio-personhood. The practical and political significance of this contemporary debate about corporations' legal rights is demonstrated with careful attention to the important legal details. -- Jackie Smith, University of Pittsburgh This excellent book is a radical critique of unfettered neoliberal developmentalism and its devastating impact on hundreds of millions of people in the Global South living in absolute poverty. It argues that savage developmentalism involves a commitment to three priorities: expansionism (including wars), social stability, and anti-democracy. Quan (Arizona State Univ.) does a superb job of unpacking the basic mythologies of capitalism, including the belief in the self-regulating market. Quan argues that the mainstream debate on development neglects the issue of whether capitalist development is desirable or undesirable. He criticizes both modernization theory and neo-Marxist dependency theory, suggesting that they share a similar epistemological commitment to progress and modernity. However, he does not explain why genuinely democratic and substantively fair development as modernization and progress would be undesirable for the Global South. The book illustrates the way savage development operates in the modern world with three excellent case studies: Brazilian-Japanese trade and financial relations in Brazil (1964-85), China's expansionist strategy in Africa, and the neoliberal economic order imposed on Iraq after the 2003 US invasion and occupation. This well-researched book would have benefited from a glossar. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduate, graduate, and research collections. * CHOICE *

Author Information

H. L. T. Quan is a political theorist, award-winning documentary filmmaker, and assistant professor in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University.

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