The Millennium Development Goals and Ambitious Developmental Engineering

Clive Gabay

Third World Quarterly, 2012, vol. 33, issue 7, 1249-1265

Abstract: Donor governments have been accused of not doing enough to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (mdgs), while the mdgs have been accused from other quarters of not doing enough for development. The former position takes the mdgs as an unquestionable good, while the latter posits them as a Western ruse for the sedimentation of core–periphery relations. This paper transcends this debate, identifying in the goals a logic of ambitious social, cultural and spatial engineering. Inspired by Foucauldian development anthropology, the paper highlights three themes implicit in mdg texts, requiring biopolitical interventions on bodies, societies and spaces, namely risk, sex, gender and family; Homo Economicus; and the city. The paper concludes with a reflection on the likelihood of resistance to such interventions.

Date: 2012
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DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2012.691829

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