Disruptive Power: The Crisis of the State in the Digital Age (Oxford Studies in Digital Politics) by Taylor Owen

Author:Taylor Owen
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2015-01-26T14:00:00+00:00

The history of aid is rife with conflict among states, the institutions and people delivering assistance, and the people in need. The origins of humanitarian aid are often traced to Florence Nightingale’s treatment of the wounded in the Crimean War in the middle of the 19th century. Working with small groups of volunteer nurses whom she trained, Nightingale pleaded with the British government for a state solution—the creation of prefabricated hospitals that could be sent to the front lines. This notion of helping others while conquering them is of course closely tied to the economic and political history of European colonialism.

At around the same time, a non-government humanitarian movement was growing. The International Committee of the Red Cross was founded in Switzerland in 1863, and the American Red Cross 20 years later. Both experienced rapid growth and had massive humanitarian impact during World War I. In America alone, by 1918 the organization had 3,864 local chapters and 20 million members. It was a tangible way in which citizens could help in the war being fought a world away.

Following the Second World War, aid industrialized and notably became tied up in the development of global financial institutions. The creation of the United Nations, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD or World Bank), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as well as state development agencies came about with the mixed mandate of promoting Western economic growth and capitalist expansion while also raising incomes and creating economic stability, and assisting with the industrialization of the developing world. Aid and development were caught in the mixed motives of the state—and of what many would call a new form of economic colonialism.

At the same time, an entire industry of independent humanitarianism emerged. International organizations like Oxfam, Care, Save the Children, and World Vision grew into large bureaucratic organizations delivering aid mainly from citizens of the West to those in need in the developing world.

As human rights scholars Margaret Satterthwaite and Scott Moses argue, “The expansion of the [international non-governmental organization] INGO sector can be usefully understood as—among other things—a form of outsourcing by Western and Northern donor states. Where in the past, Western states governed directly via colonialism and indirectly via Cold War-era neocolonialism, now Western states outsource certain governance activities in the Global South to development and humanitarian INGOs.”8 Essentially, INGOs can act as de facto governments and agents of the Western countries that fund them. As they have large budgets and better resources, in countries like Haiti they can achieve more legitimacy than the actual government.

During the 1980s and 1990s, many developing countries had little choice but to follow economic policies imposed by donor countries. This frequently included the widespread deployment of Western technologies and IT infrastructure, often designed for purposes far different from the actual development priorities of the receiving country, such as improvements in agriculture, medicine, water and sanitation, energy, and ways to fight the spread of disease.9 It would of course be far more advantageous to incorporate local

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