Document Type
Introduction
Abstract
International development can be understood as a particular way of seeing the world that is both a pedagogical and a political project. It frames the citizens of “underdeveloped” states as subjects, available to be both “seen” and “known” in particular ways that have important implications for governance and law. This Special Issue approaches development as a discourse and as a set of practices that encompass a “way of seeing” and operate as a “frame” through which the subjects of development are apprehended and acted upon.
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Citation Information
Buchanan, Ruth.
"Looking into Law and Development: Pedagogies and Politics of the Frame."
Osgoode Hall Law Journal
59.1 (2022)
: i-xiii.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.60082/2817-5069.3735
https://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/ohlj/vol59/iss1/1
References
1. See e.g. David Trubek & Alvaro Santos, The New Law and Economic Development: a Critical Appraisal (Cambridge University Press, 2006); Kenneth Dam, The Law-Growth Nexus: The Rule of Law and Economic Development (Brookings Institution Press, 2006); Kevin Davis & Michael Trebilcock, "The Relationship between Law and Development: Optimists versus Skeptics" (2008) 56 Am J Comp L 895; Marius Pieterse, "Local Government Law, Development and Cross-border Trade in the Global Cities of SADC" (2020) 13 L & Development Rev 127; Celine Tan, "Beyond the 'Moments' of Law and Development: Critical Reflections on Law and Development Scholarship in a Globalized Economy" (2019) 12 L & Development Rev 285. https://doi.org/10.5131/ajcl.2007.0031
2. Amanda Perry-Kessaris, "Approaching the Econo-Socio-Legal" (2015) 11 Annual Rev L & Soc Science 57. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-120814-121542
3. Gilbert Rist, The History of Development: from Western Origins to Global Faith, 3rd ed (Zed Books, 2008) at 24
Sundhya Pahuja, "Global Poverty and the Politics of Good Intentions" in Ruth Buchanan & Peer Zumbansen, eds, Law in Transition: Human Rights, Development and Transitional Justice (Hart, 2014) 31.
4. Pahuja, supra note 3.
5. Sheila Jasanoff, States of Knowledge: The Co-production of Science and Social Order (Routledge, 2004); Clark A Miller & Carina Wyborn, "Co-Production in Global Sustainability: Histories and Theories" (2020) 113 Environmental Science & Policy 88. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2018.01.016
6. See supra note 1.
7. (Gallivant Film/Wislocki Films, 2017), online: https://www.anothernewsstory.com/. Directed by Orban Wallace.
8. Fuyuki Kurasawa, "In Praise of Ambiguity: On the Visual Economy of Distant Suffering" in Ratiba Hadj-Moussa & Michael Nijhawan, eds, Suffering, Art, and Aesthetics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) 23 https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137426086_2
Fuyuki Kurasawa, "The Sentimentalist Paradox: on the Normative and Visual Foundations of Humanitarianism" (2013) 9 J Global Ethics 201 at 201-14. https://doi.org/10.1080/17449626.2013.818461
9. Judith Butler, Frames of War: When is Life Grievable (Verso, 2010). See also Christine Schwöbel-Patel, Marketing Global Justice: The Political Economy of International Criminal Law (Cambridge, 2021) at 5. Schwöbel-Patel's analysis of the spectacle of global justice that is a critical dimension of the field of international criminal law is an example of new scholarship in international law that is pushing against the boundaries of a purely text-based discipline.
10. Ruth Buchanan, "Revisiting Local Hero" in Shane Chalmers & Sundhya Pahuja, eds, Routledge Handbook of International Law and the Humanities (Routledge, 2021) 312 at 315. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003170914-29
11. The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible (Continuum, 2005). "Politics revolves around what is seen and what can be said about it" (ibid at 13).
12. See also Fleur Johns, "Data, Detection, and the Redistribution of the Sensible in International Law" (2017) 111 Am J Intl L 57 https://doi.org/10.1017/ajil.2016.4
Christine Schwöbel-Patel, Marketing Global Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2021). Schwöbel-Patel observes, citing Rancière, that "what is seen in society is part of a political battle, a battle over the distribution of the sensible" (ibid at 17).
13. (Yale University Press, 1998). A selection from the Scott book provided a textual foundation for an opening roundtable discussion at the workshop held at Osgoode Hall Law School where many of these papers were first presented in drafts.
14. According to Google Scholar, Seeing Like a State has been cited by approximately 1,500 works every year for the past five years. There are far too many to cite here, but some examples include Marion Fourcade & Kieran Healy, "Seeing Like a Market" (2017) 15 Socio-Economic Rev 9
Radhika Gorur, "Seeing Like PISA: a Cautionary Tale About the Performativity of International Assessments" (2016) 15 European Educational Research J 598 https://doi.org/10.1177/1474904116658299
Kristin Bergtora Sandvik, "Blurring Boundaries: Refugee Resettlement in Kampala-Between the Formal, the Informal, and the Illegal" (2011) 34 Political & Leg Anthropology Rev 11 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1555-2934.2011.01136.x
James P Walsh, "Watchful Citizens: Immigration Control, Surveillance and Societal Participation" (2014) 23 Soc & Leg Stud 237 https://doi.org/10.1177/0964663913519286
Kristen E Looney, "China's Campaign to Build a New Socialist Countryside: Village Modernization, Peasant Councils, and the Ganzhou Model of Rural Development" (2015) China Q 909. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741015001204
15. Kevin P Donovan, "Seeing Like a Slum: Towards Open, Deliberative Development" (2012) 13 Georgetown J Intl Affairs 97
Daromir Rudnyckyj & Anke Schwittay, "Afterlives of Development" (2014) 37 Political & Leg Anthropology Rev 3 https://doi.org/10.1111/plar.12047
Lama Mourad, "Standoffish Policy-Making: Inaction and Change in the Lebanese Response to the Syrian Displacement Crisis" (2017) 9 Middle East L & Governance 249 https://doi.org/10.1163/18763375-00903005
Jeffrey Adam Sachs, "Native Courts and the Limits of the Law in Colonial Sudan: Ambiguity as Strategy" (2013) 38 Law & Soc Inquiry 973. https://doi.org/10.1111/lsi.12040
16. Mahlet Makonnen, "Land Grabs in Ethiopia: Effects of Displacement on Women and Potential Remedies" (2018) 22 UCLA J Intl L & Foreign Aff 155; Susan Paulson, "Power and Difference in Conservation Policy: Changing Masculinities and Andean Watersheds"
(2016) 23 Brown J World Affairs 207; Qing Liu, Raymond Yu Wang & Heping Dang,
"The Hidden Gaps in Rural Development: Examining Peasant-NGO Relations through a Post-Earthquake Recovery Project in Sichuan, China" (2018) China Q 43 https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741017001722
Michelle S Mood, "False Choices and Perverse Outcomes in China's Rural Development: Still Petting the Monkey and Ignoring the Chickens" (2013) 20 Brown J World Affairs 191.
17. See especially the discussion in Fleur Johns, "From Planning to Prototypes: New Ways of Seeing Like a State" (2019) 82 Mod L Rev 833. On the proliferation of mechanisms for measuring development progress and how they operate in the context of a case study of MDG 7, see Ruth Buchanan, Kimberley Byers & Kristina Mansveld, "What Gets Measured Gets Done" in Moshe Hirsch & Andrew Lang, eds, Research Handbook on the Sociology of International Law (Edward Elgar, 2018) 101 [Buchanan, Byers & Mansveld, What Gets Measured]. See also Sally Engle Merry, "Measuring the World: Indicators, Human Rights, and Global Governance" (2011) 52 Current Anthropology 583.
18. Scott, supra note 13 at 4.
19. "'Making Up' with Law in Development" (2021) 59 Osgoode Hall LJ 1 at 3. https://doi.org/10.60082/2817-5069.3736
20. Scott, supra note 13 at 11-83. This point is developed in "Part 1: State Projects of Legibility and Simplification."
21. Buchanan, Byers & Mansveld, What Gets Measured, supra note 17 at 111-12. See also Wendy Nelson Espeland & Mitchell L Stevens, "A Sociology of Quantification" (2008) 49 European J Sociology 401 at 408.
22. (2015) 23 Annual Rev L & Ethics 129 at 129.
23. Ibid at 137-38 ("The shift to big data is a further step in their attempt to reduce complexity and be able to better predict the actions of their citizens").
24. Supra note 17.
25. Ibid at 849-50.
26. Ibid at 857.
27. Ibid at 863.
28. Supra note 15.
29. Ibid at 4.
30. Ibid at 3.
31. "Frontier transformations: Development visions, spaces and processes in Northern Kenya and Southern Ethiopia" in Jason Mosley & Elizabeth E Watson, eds, Special Issue, Frontier transformations: Development visions, reconfigured spaces, and contesting processes in Northern Kenya and Southern Ethiopia (2016) 10 J East African Studies 452. https://doi.org/10.1080/17531055.2016.1266199
32. Ibid at 455.
33. Ibid.
34. Scott, supra note 13 at 237. https://doi.org/10.1177/089033449701300314
35. "Seeing Like a Clinic" (2021) 59 Osgoode Hall LJ 37 at 64. https://doi.org/10.60082/2817-5069.3737
36. Scott, supra note 13 at 255.
37. Supra note 19 at 3.
38. Smith, supra note 35 at 63; Sachs, supra note 15; Nicholas Simcik Arese, "Seeing Like a City-State: Behavioural Planning and Governance in Egypt's First Affordable Gated Community" (2018) 42 Intl J Urb & Regional Res 461. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.12601
39. Supra note 19 at 14.
40. Ibid at 14.
41. Ibid at 20.
42. Ibid at 14.
43. Supra note 35
44. Ibid at 45.
45. Ibid at 45.
46. Jeremy Baskin & Sundhya Pahuja, (2021) 59 Osgoode Hall LJ 77. https://doi.org/10.60082/2817-5069.3738
47. Ibid at 79.
48. Ibid at 80.
49. Supra note 35.
50. Supra note 46 at 80 [emphasis added].
51. Supra note 35 at 71 [emphasis added].
52. (2021) 59 Osgoode Hall LJ 109. https://doi.org/10.60082/2817-5069.3739
53. Ibid at 113.
54. Ibid at 151.
55. (2021) 59 Osgoode Hall LJ 153. https://doi.org/10.60082/2817-5069.3740
56. Ibid.
57. Ibid at 164.
58. Ibid at 185.
59. "The Comic and the Absurd: On Colonial Law in Revolutionary Palestine" (2021) 59 Osgoode Hall LJ 189 at 192 https://doi.org/10.60082/2817-5069.3741
60. Ibid at 196-197.
61. Ibid at 194.
62. Ibid at 196-197.
63. Ibid at 222.
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