Invested Interests: Capital, Culture, and the World Bank

310 Pages·2007·2.71 MB·English

by  Bret Benjamin

Invested Interests
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Invested Interests
Capital, Culture,
and the World Bank
Bret Benjamin
University of Minnesota Press Minneapolis / London
Copyright 2007 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior writ-
ten permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290
Minneapolis, MN 55401- 2520
http://www.upress.umn.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Benjamin, Bret.
Invested interests : capital, culture, and the World Bank / Bret Benjamin.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13 978-0-8166-4872-6 (hc : alk. paper)
ISBN-10 0-8166-4872-7 (hc : alk. paper)
ISBN-13 978-0-8166-4873-3 (pb : alk. paper)
ISBN-10 0-8166-4873-5 (pb : alk. paper)
1. World Bank—History. 2. World Bank—Infl uence. 3. World Bank—
Social aspects. 4. Economic assistance. 5. Globalization. I. Title.
HG3881.5.W57B456 2007
332.1'532—dc22
2006103039
Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper
The University of Minnesota is an equal- opportunity educator and
employer.
12 11 10 09 08 07 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Accounting for Culture xi
1. Imaginative Ventures:
Cultivating Confi dence at Bretton Woods 1
2. Imperial Burden: Selling Development to Wall Street 25
3. Uncomfortable Intimacies:
Managing Third World Nationalisms 55
4. Culture Underwritten:
Radical Critique and the Bank’s Cultural Turn 90
5. Success Stories:
NGOs and the Banking Bildungsroman 135
6. Literary Movements:
Impossible Collectivities in The God of Small Things 165
7. Minimum Agendas:
The World Social Forum and the Place of Culture 189
Notes 223
Index 263
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Acknowledgments
To be frank, I have many debts to settle. I plead for relief, as these
brief acknowledgments cannot begin to account for, never mind
repay, the generosity, support, and sustenance that so many people
provided me during the process of writing this book.
The University at Albany, State University of New York (SUNY),
and United University Professions provided research funds for my
travels to the World Bank Archives in Washington, D.C., to the
World Social Forums in Porto Alegre and Mumbai, and to numer-
ous scholarly conferences where I have presented versions of this
work. Even more important, my department secured time for writ-
ing leaves, which allowed me to complete the project. I was also
fortunate to participate as a faculty lecturer in a Fulbright program
in the Russian Federation, where I began to work out several of
the ideas contained in the following pages; my thanks to Fulbright,
and especially to Tatiana Venediktova at Moscow State University
and John Ryder at the Offi ce of International Programs–SUNY,
for providing me this opportunity.
It has been a genuine pleasure to work with the staff at the
University of Minnesota Press. My gratitude to Adam Brunner,
Laura Westlund, Emily Hamilton, Nancy Sauro, Paula Friedman,
and particularly Richard Morrison, a long -time champion of this
project, who has successfully helped shepherd it through many
phases.
I genuinely appreciate the professionalism and enthusiasm dem-
onstrated by the staff at the World Bank Archives who assisted me
vii
viii Acknowledgments
during my research time at that facility: Lucia McGowan, Maurizio
Gallerini, Sarvenaz Alikhani, Eva Kaminski, Vlada Alekankina,
Elisa Liberatori -Prati (Chief Archivist), Ian Ross McAndrew, Deirdre
Bryden, Chandra Kumar, Teti Goodarzi, Trudy Huskamp Peterson,
and especially Bertha F. Wilson and Steve Barrett. Likewise
the staff at Columbia University Oral History Research Offi ce
Collection, including David Loerke and Courtney Smith, were im-
mensely helpful.
I learned a tremendous amount from the challenging and buoy-
ing feedback provided by all of the scholars who reviewed this
manuscript in its various stages. Kate Bedford deserves special
plaudits here. A political scientist who could have easily dismissed
this book as the ravings of an English professor, Kate, through her
serious engagement, generous commentary, and detailed critique
of the manuscript pressed me to write far stronger, more nuanced
arguments. This book has benefi ted enormously from her involve-
ment. My heartfelt gratitude, as well, to Miranda Joseph, whose
guidance and encouragement were nothing short of indispensable
during my work. In addition to the countless revisions that resulted
from her lucid feedback on earlier drafts, the very fact that this
book exists in bound and printed form owes no small amount to
Miranda’s committed support for this project.
I can scarcely type the word “committed” without thinking
of my friend and mentor Barbara Harlow, who has played such a
formative role in my intellectual, professional, and political devel-
opment. This work is a refl ection of, and a tribute to, her expan-
sive conception of the possibilities for scholarship within English
studies, her precise attention to the textual details of the colonial
archive, and her utterly principled political commitments.
A thanks to all my colleagues at the University at Albany,
SUNY, who have been universally supportive, and who have fos-
tered an atmosphere of intellectual rigor and creativity that has
been enormously productive for me during my time at this institu-
tion. It is a great pleasure working with Liz Lauenstein, Regina
Klym, Connie Barrett, and Kelly Williams. Steve North, Jeff
Berman, Tom Cohen, Lana Cable, Doug Payne, David Wills, Helen
Elam, Teresa Ebert, Rosemary Hennessy, Randal Craig, Pierre
Joris, Glyne Griffi th, Richard Barney, Charles Shepherdson, and
Don Byrd, each in her or his own way, made valuable contributions
to this book. Special mention is due to Gareth Griffi ths, Marjorie
Acknowledgments ix
Pryse, and Helene Scheck, who read my manuscript with care and
acuity.
I also would like to name the extraordinary cohort of junior
faculty with whom I have had the pleasure of working during
my time in the Albany English department: Mike Hill, Dina Al -
Kassim, Paul Kottman, Mark Anthony Neal, Branka Arsic´, Ed
Schwarzschild, Lisa Thompson, McKenzie Wark, Helene Scheck,
Eric Keenaghan, Hoang Phan, Jennifer Greiman, Laura Wilder,
and Ineke Murakami. Even now, as I look over this list of amazing
colleagues, I smile at my great fortune.
My thanks as well to the many undergraduate and graduate
students, too numerous to list, with whom I have worked out so
many of the ideas contained in this manuscript; most directly, this
book draws heavily on what I learned from students who took my
“Bandung at 50” seminars. Special thanks to the members of our
Marxist reading group, from whom I continue to learn a great deal
each week. I am grateful to Tara Needham in particular for her
provocative responses to a draft of chapter 6, her suggestions for
relevant research materials about Arundhati Roy, and her perpetu-
ally challenging engagement with the questions of transnational
culture study, all of which have contributed substantively to this
book.
Early versions of this project benefi ted from the support and
critical attention of, among many others, Amitava Kumar, Lester
Faigley, Chuck Rossman, Phil Doty, Toyin Falola, John Slatin, Bill
Holt, Ailise Lamoreux, Gina Siesing, Sandy Soto, Paige Schilt,
Lois Kim, Nick Evans, Jennifer Bean, Daniel Anderson, Vimala
Pasupathi, Aimé Ellis, Rebecca Dyer, Katie Kane, Salah Hassan,
David Alvarez, Joseph Slaughter, Jennifer Wenzel, and Mary
Havan.
Fond thanks to the fellow forumistas with whom I traveled to
the World Social Forums in Brazil and India: Mike Hill, Tanya
Agathocleous, and Mike Rubenstein. A special abração in this re-
gard to Johnny Lorenz, with whom I twice traveled to Porto Alegre
and with whom I have talked and thought about the complexi-
ties of this research project for many years. Johnny deserves much
credit for sparking my interest in the WSF.
A warm note of thanks to those friends inside and outside the
university who made my life in Albany so rich while I completed this
project. The book owes much to the many meals, drinks, and laughs