Document Type
Article
Abstract
Images are powerful. They shape how we see and understand the world and, in the process, challenge (or reinforce) our assumptions and perspectives. The images we use in the classroom are no exception, whether used passively as visual aids or as a “medium through which active learning is energized.”1 In this article we embrace the “pictorial turn” in university teaching and reflect on the use of images when teaching “development.”2 Development is an area that typically attracts students with an internationalist orientation and who seek to make a positive change in the world. Yet the concept of development is fraught in historical and political economic terms. Its complexity is reflected in academic debates about developmental imageries and imaginaries and, in particular, in representing global poverty. We argue that, by using images carefully and reflectively, we can help students think critically about the development project’s history and imperial dimensions whilst nurturing their desire to either struggle against global injustices or improve life and livelihood in particular places. We write from the standpoint of teachers in postgraduate education in both law and cognate disciplines. Our aim is to equip students with the kinds of contextual understandings and critical intellectual tools which help them to become engaged agents of change.
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Citation Information
Baskin, Jeremy and Pahuja, Sundhya.
"Picturing Pedagogy: Images, Teaching, and Development."
Osgoode Hall Law Journal
59.1 (2022)
: 77-107.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.60082/2817-5069.3738
https://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/ohlj/vol59/iss1/4
References
1. David Roberts, "Higher education lectures: From passive to active learning via imagery?" (2019) 20 Active Learning in Higher Education 63 at 63 [Roberts, "Higher education lectures"]. https://doi.org/10.1177/1469787417731198
2. On the pictorial turn, see David Roberts, "'The message is the medium': Evaluating the use of visual images to provoke engagement and active learning in politics and international relations lectures" (2018) 38 Politics 232. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263395717717229
3. We draw heavily on our experiences teaching a variety of development-related subjects at Melbourne Law School and elsewhere, such as International Law and Development; Labour Law; Human Rights and Development; and Investment, Regulation, and Development.
4. Many of our students come from so-called "developing countries" and have some exposure to the development project. Some have worked in development institutions or NGOs, in various roles. At the risk of generalization, our students from "developed" countries often arrive with faith in development as the answer to a range of global problems. Given the class composition of tertiary students, most have not experienced extreme financial poverty in their lives.
5. This is a discourse of improvement and, as Jason Hickel suggests, a questionable one. See "The true extent of global poverty and hunger: questioning the good news narrative of the Millennium Development Goals" (2016) 37 Third World Q 749. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2015.1109439
6. See Thomas L Friedman, Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why we Need a Green Revolution - And How it Can Renew America, 1st ed (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008).
7. See e.g. William Easterly, The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good (Penguin, 2006); Joseph E Stiglitz & Andrew Charlton, Fair Trade for All: How Trade Can Promote Development (Oxford University Press, 2006); Arturo Escobar, Encountering Development: the Making and Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton University Press, 1995) [Escobar, Encountering Development].
8. See World Bank, "Inclusive Green Growth: The Pathway to Sustainable Development" (2012), online (pdf): https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/8fd533cc-8dd2-5a0a-820b-2de519108f52/content .
9. See e.g. the 231 indicators of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals. "SDG Indicators" (last visited 8 June 2021), online: Sustainable Development Goals https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/indicators/indicators-list. See also critical studies of the use of metrics, e.g. Ruth Buchanan, Kimberley Byers & Kristina Mansveld, "'What gets measured gets done': exploring the social construction of globalized knowledge for development" in Mosche Hirsch & Andrew Lang, eds, Research Handbook on the Sociology of International Law (Edward Elgar, 2018) 101; Sally Engle Merry, The Seductions of Quantification: Measuring Human Rights, Gender Violence, and Sex Trafficking (University of Chicago Press, 2016).
10. Before teaching the students anything, we elicit these imaginaries and assumptions through a neutrally presented brainstorming exercise about what students understand "development" to be. We are always surprised by the resilience of these imaginaries and assumptions, though we should not be.
11. Both authors engage with the development project when teaching both undergraduate and postgraduate students (in, variously, courses on international law, politics, and the environment).
12. Roberts, "Higher education lectures," supra note 1 at 63.
13. This is a vast literature. Some examples of key texts in the field include Escobar, Encountering Development, supra note 7; Gilbert Rist, The History of Development: From Western Origins to Global Faith, 4th ed, translated by Patrick Camiller (Zed Books, 2014).
14. See e.g. Jørgen Lissner, The Politics of Altruism: a Study of the Political Behaviour of Voluntary Development Agencies (Lutheran World Federation, 1977); Henrietta Lidchi, "Finding the Right Image: British Development NGOs and the Regulation of Imagery" in Heide Fehrenbach & Davide Rodogno, eds, Humanitarian Photography: A History (Cambridge University Press, 2015) 275; Nandita Dogra, Representations of Global Poverty: Aid, Development and International NGOs (IB Tauris, 2012); Siobhan Warrington & Jess Crombie "The People in the Pictures: Vital perspectives on Save the Children's image making" (March 2017), online (pdf): https://resourcecentre.savethechildren.net/node/12425/pdf/the_people_in_%20the_pictures.pdf. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107587694.012
15. INGO representations do, of course, have a pedagogical dimension that shapes how publics in the Global North imagine both poverty and the circumstances of the Global South.
16. Even the description of such images may be uncomfortable for some readers because the images themselves repeat both racist and paternalistic tropes. These are objectionable representations as this article makes clear.
17. Jørgen Lissner, "Merchants of misery" (1 June 1981), online: New Internationalist https://newint.org/features/1981/06/01/merchants-of-misery. We have not included these images in this article. Examples include the advertisement as part of the East African Emergency Campaign run by the UK charity, Disasters Emergency Committee, which between 1980 and 1984 reportedly brought in twenty-three million dollars for famine relief in Ethiopia. See Nayanika Chatterjee, "Poverty porn sells, but it isn't helping the poor," The Print (19 July 2018), online: https://theprint.in/opinion/poverty-porn-sells-but-it-isnt-helping-the-poor/90141/.
18. Ibid.
19. Dogra, supra note 14.
20. Kevin Carter, "The Vulture and the Little Girl," The New York Times (26 March 1993) 3 (image commonly referred to as "the vulture and the little girl" or "the struggling girl").
21. Ibid.
22. Arthur Kleinman & Joan Kleinman, "The appeal of experience; the dismay of images: cultural appropriations of suffering in our times" (1996) 125 Daedalus 1 at 4. https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520353695-003
23. For a discussion of both the context of this particular photograph and the circumstances of Carter's suicide shortly afterwards, see ibid. See also Yung Soo Kim & James D Kelly, "Photojournalist on the Edge: Reactions to Kevin Carter's Sudan Famine Photo" (2013) 20 Visual Communication Q 205. https://doi.org/10.1080/15551393.2013.849980
24. Warrington & Crombie, supra note 14 at v.
25. Warrington & Crombie, supra note 14.
26. Warrington & Crombie, supra note 14 at 6.
27. "The Narrative Project" (last visited 8 June 2021), online: The Narrative Project (archived at Wayback Machine).
28. Warrington & Crombie, supra note 14 at 5.
29. Ibid.
30. Related debates have occurred, although less publicly and with less anxiety, within multilateral organizations such as World Bank. One blog post quotes Antonio Lambino, then of World Bank, writing of the need to "help build capacity and efficacy at the local level…[by using] images that influence opinion, attitude, and behavior change toward these ends…[T]he process of producing and selecting these images should be audience and context specific - but we can probably agree that poverty porn should be the rare exception to the rule." "Exploiting the Poor Through the Images We Use?" (5 May 2010), online (blog): imaging-famine.org/blog/index.php/2010/05/exploiting-the-poor-through-the-images-we-use
31. Dogra, supra note 14 at 7.
32. See Susan D Moeller, Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War and Death (Routledge, 1999).
33. This includes texts which relate both to representations in text and visual representations. See e.g. Tim Mitchell, "America's Egypt: Discourse of the Development Industry" (1991) 169 Middle East Rep 18; David Lewis, Dennis Rodgers & Michael Woolcock, eds, Popular Representations of Development: Insights from novels, films, television and social media (Routledge, 2014); Mitu Sengupta, "A Million Dollar Exit from the Anarchic Slum-world: Slumdog Millionaire's hollow idioms of social justice" (2010) 31 Third World Q 599. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436591003701117
34. Dogra, supra note 14.
35. Stanley Cohen, States of Denial: Knowing about Atrocities and Suffering (Polity Press, 2001).
36. Dogra, supra note 14 at 8.
37. Harry Truman, Inaugural Address (delivered at the United States Capitol, 20 January 1949), published by the National Archives at the Harry S Truman Library and Museum, online: https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/public-papers/19/inaugural-address. See also Escobar, Encountering Development, supra note 7; Sundhya Pahuja, Decolonising International Law: Development, Economic Growth and the Politics of Universality (Cambridge University Press, 2011) [Pahuja, Decolonising].
38. World Bank, Press Release, 2019/030/DEC-GPV, "Decline of Global Extreme Poverty Continues but Has Slowed: World Bank" (19 September 2018), online: https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2018/09/19/decline-of-global-extremepoverty-continues-but-has-slowed-world-bank . Interestingly, we observe that the baseline generally used for such claims is 1990, when the collapse of the "Second World" saw the clear emergence of both US global dominance and the claim that, with the "end of history," remaining problems (such as poverty) could be addressed largely through technical solutions.
39. The Economist, "Towards the end of poverty" (1 June 2013), online: https://www.economist.com/leaders/2013/06/01/towards-the-end-of-poverty.
40. Jason Hickel, "Is global inequality getting better or worse? A critique of the World Bank's convergence narrative" (2017) 38 Third World Q 2208. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2017.1333414
41. See Ha-Joon Chang, Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective (Anthem Press, 2002); Richard Peet, Unholy Trinity: The IMF, World Bank and WTO (Zed Books, 2003); Michel Chossudovsky, The Globalisation of Poverty: Impacts of IMF and World Bank Reforms (Zed Books, 1997).
42. This is exemplified in the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. United Nations Department of Social and Economic Affairs, "17 Goals" (last visited 4 October 2021), online: https://sdgs.un.org/goals.
43. "Coltan Mining & Its Environmental Impacts" (19 April 2011), online: iphoneproj2011 https://iphoneproj2011.wordpress.com/2011/04/19/coltan-mining-its-environmental-impacts/.
44. "Jal Satyagraha: The first of its kind protest" (last visited 4 October 2021), online: Sify. com https://www.sify.com/news/jal-satyagraha-the-first-of-its-kind-protest-imagegallerynational-mjkmqtegaedsi.html.
45. Ibid.
46. For example, Gilbert Rist's definition of development is "a set of practices…which require…the general transformation and destruction of the natural environment and of social relations. Its aim is to increase the production of commodities (goods and services) geared, by way of exchange, to effective demand." Rist, supra note 13 at 13. See also Anne Orford, "Beyond Harmonization: Trade, Human Rights and the Economy of Sacrifice" (2005) 18 Leiden J Intl L 179. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0922156505002608
47. Jason Hickel, The Divide: Global Inequality from Conquest to Free Markets (WW Norton & Company, 2018) at 16 [Hickel, The Divide]. In some literature it is assumed that most of those above the poverty line are now "middle-class!" For a critique of this position, see Roger Southall, "The Poverty of the 'Middle Classing' of Development: Key Problems in Southern Africa" (2017) 39 Strategic Review for Southern Africa 211. The debatable proposition that those above the poverty line are "middle class" has even been promoted by Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences winners Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, who have defined middle class as a daily income between 2 USD and 10 USD (ibid at 213).
48. Rajendra Pachauri, "There's a silent killer in India's homes - but it's not an election issue," The Guardian (1 May 2014), online: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/01/silent-killer-india-homes-electionkerosene-biomass.
49. The image appears in Larry Elliott, "World's Eight Richest People have Same Wealth as Poorest 50%," The Guardian (16 January 2017), online: https://www.theguardian.com/globaldevelopment/2017/jan/16/worlds-eight-richest-people-have-same-wealth-as-poorest-50.
50. Martin Ravallion, "The Developing World's Bulging (but Vulnerable) 'Middle Class'" (2009) World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No 4816. https://doi.org/10.1596/1813-9450-4816
51. Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (Anchor Books, 2000).
52. See Thomas Piketty, Capital in the twenty-first century, translated by Arthur Goldhammer (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014). See also Jason Hickel, "Is global inequality getting better or worse? A critique of the World Bank's convergence narrative" (2017) 38 Third World Q 2208. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2017.1333414
53. Hickel, The Divide, supra note 47.
54. Interview of Tuca Vieira, "Inequality…in a photograph," The Guardian (29 November 2017), online: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/nov/29/sao-paulo-injustice-tuca-vieira-inequality-photograph-paraisopolis
55. Such readings may include, e.g., Jagdish Bhagwati & TN Srinivasan, "Trade and Poverty in the Poor Countries" (2002) 92 American Economic Rev 180; Michele Alacevich, The Political Economy of the World Bank: The Early Years (Stanford University Press, 2009). https://doi.org/10.1257/000282802320189212
56. Other texts might include Antony Anghie, "Nationalism, Development and the Postcolonial State: The Legacies of the League of Nations" (2006) 41 Tex Intl LJ 447; Meredith Woo-Cumings, ed, The Developmental State (Cornell University Press, 1999); John Robinson, "Squaring the circle? Some thoughts on the idea of sustainable development," Commentary,(2004) 48 Ecological Econ 369; Luis Eslava, "Decentralization of Development and Nation-Building Today: Reconstructing Colombia from the Margins of Bogotá" (2009) 2 L & Development Rev 283.
57. See Bono, "The good news on poverty (Yes, there's good news)" (February 2013), online (video): Ted https://www.ted.com/talks/bono_the_good_news_on_poverty_yes_there_s_good_news?subtitle=en.
58. "Poorest" in terms of GDP per capita.
59. World Economic Forum, "Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Thabo Mbeki, Tony Blair, Bono, Olusegun Obasanjo - World Economic Forum Annual Meeting Davos 2005" (27 January 2005), online: Flickr https://www.flickr.com/photos/worldeconomicforum/346665560.
60. See Anand Giridharadas, Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World (Alfred A Knopf, 2018).
61. Senatus, "'Every Journey Begins in Africa' by Bono for Louis Vuitton" (last visited 4 October 2021), online: https://senatus.net/article/every-journey-begins-africa-bono-louis-vuitton/.
62. See e.g. International Monetary Fund, IMF Governance - Summary of Issues and Reform Options (Policy Paper), (IMF, 1 July 2009). https://doi.org/10.5089/9781451828481.002
63. For examples of critical texts, see Giridharadas, supra note 60; Arturo Escobar, "Degrowth, postdevelopment, and transitions: a preliminary conversation" (2015) 10 Sustainability Science 451; Arturo Escobar, "Imagining a Post-Development Era? Critical Thought, Development and Social Movements" (1992) 31/32 Soc Text 20; Luis Eslava, "Corporate Social Responsibility & Development: A Knot of Disempowerment" (2008) 2 Sortuz: Oñati J Emergent Socio-legal Studies 43; Susan Marks, "Human rights and the bottom billion" (2009) 1 Eur HRL Rev 37; Heloise Weber & Mark T Berger, "Human (In)Security and Development in the 21st Century" (2009) 30 Third World Q 263.
64. See Pahuja, Decolonising, supra note 37 at 13-18.
65. Jennifer L Beard, The Political Economy of Desire: International law, development and the nation state (Routledge-Cavendish, 2007) at 125; Antony Anghie, Imperialism, Sovereignty, and the Making of International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2005) [Anghie, Making of International Law].
66. Ellen Sebring, "Civilization & Barbarism: Cartoon Commentary & 'The White Man's Burden' (1898-1902)" (2014), online: MIT Visualizing Cultures http://visualizingcultures.mit.edu/civilization_and_barbarism/cb_essay01.html.
67. Translation by authors.
68. Georges Dascher, "Les Colonies Françaises" (circa 1900), online https://gdascher.jimdofree.com/couvertures-de-cahiers-scolaires/les-colonies-fran%C3%A7aises (originally the cover of a French school textbook, reproduced here).
69. Sebring, supra note 66; for the text of the poem, see Rudyard Kipling, "The White Man's Burden" in Peter Faulker & Chris Brooks, eds, The White Man's Burdens: An Anthology of British Poetry of the Empire (University of Exeter Press, 1996) 307.
70. Sebring, supra note 66.
71. "The first step toward lightening the White man's burden is through teaching the virtues of cleanliness" (1899), Library of Congress (2002715038), online: https://www.loc.gov/item/2002715038 .
72. See e.g. Shane Chalmers, "The Mythology of International Rule-of-Law Promotion" (2019) 44 Law & Soc Inquiry 957. https://doi.org/10.1017/lsi.2018.32
73. See Beard, supra note 65.
74. See Anghie, Making of International Law, supra note 65.
75. Pahuja, Decolonising, supra note 37.
76. Escobar, Encountering Development, supra note 7.
77. Rist, supra note 13. A full syllabus of the course taught by Luis Eslava and Sundhya Pahuja is available on their respective Academia pages. Sundhya Pahuja & Luis Eslava, "International Law and Development" (2021), online: https://www.academia.edu/8191469/International_Law_and_Development .
78. For a critical account of this initiative, see Robert Keating, "Live Aid: The Terrible Truth" (July 1986, republished 13 July 2015), online: https://www.spin.com/featured/live-aid-the-terrible-truth-ethiopia-bob-geldof-feature . See also Suzanne Franks, Reporting Disasters: Famine, Aid, Politics and the Media (Hurst & Company, 2013).
79. Brian Aris, "Bob Geldof visiting refugee feeding centre in Ethiopia, 1987," online (photo): https://brianaris.com/images/portfolio/reportage/095-BA003148.jpg .
80. Independent Group of Scientists appointed by the Secretary-General, Global Sustainable Development Report 2019: The Future is Now-Science for Achieving Sustainable Development, UNDESA, 2019.
81. Pahuja, Decolonising, supra note 37.
82. Truman, supra note 37.
83. See Beard, supra note 65.
84. Pahuja, Decolonising, supra note 37.
85. Upendra Baxi, "Global Development and Impoverishment" in Peter Cane & Mark Tushnet, eds, The Oxford Handbook of Legal Studies (Oxford University Press, 2003) 455; John Linarelli, Margot E Salomon & Muthucumaraswamy Sornarajah, The Misery of International Law: Confrontations with Injustice in the Global Economy (Oxford University Press, 2018); Joseph Stiglitz, "Dealing With Debt: How to Reform the Global Financial System" (2003) 25 Harvard Intl Rev 54; Sundhya Pahuja, "Technologies of Empire: IMF Conditionality and the Reinscription of the North/South Divide" (2000) 13 Leiden J Intl L 749.
86. See Mitchell, supra note 33.
87. See e.g. Julie Matthews, "Visual Culture and Critical Pedagogy in "Terrorist Times"" (2005) 26 Discourse 203. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596300500143179
88. Lidchi, supra note 14 at 291-92.
89. For the critical benefits of teaching with images, see generally James H Madison, "Teaching with Images" (2004) 18 OAH Mag Hist 65 https://doi.org/10.1093/maghis/18.2.65 ; Paul Hunt, "A critical pedagogy approach to the use of images in the geography classroom" (2018) 43 Teaching Geography 124.
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