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Economic Ideology and Politics in the World Bank: Defining Hunger

2007; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 12; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13563460701661520

1469-9923

Devi Sridhar,

Income, Poverty, and Inequality

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size I would like to acknowledge helpful comments by David Gellner, Ngaire Woods, Stanley Ulijaszek, Gerhard Anders, the editors of this journal and two anonymous referees. I am also grateful to my informants on the World Bank for their candidness and generosity with their time. Notes 1. Alan Berg, The Nutrition Factor: Its Role in National Development (Brookings Institute, 1973), p. 14. 2. Phillip Musgrove, ‘Ideas Versus Money: A Conversation with Jean-Louis Sarbib’, Health Affairs, Vol. W5, No. 341 (2005), p. 352. 3. Robert Wade, ‘Greening the Bank: The Struggle over the Environment, 1970–1995’, in Devesh Kapur, John Lewis & Richard Webb (eds), World Bank: Its First Half Century (Brookings Institute, 1997), pp. 611–734. Gerhard Anders, ‘Good Governance as Technology: Towards an Ethnography of the Bretton Woods Institutions’, in David Mosse & David Lewis (eds), The Aid Effect: Giving and Governing in International Development (Pluto Press, 2005), pp. 37–61. See also Diane Stone & Christopher Wright (eds), The World Bank and Governance: A Decade of Reform and Reaction (Routledge, 2007); Michelle Miller-Adams, The World Bank: New Agendas for a Changing World (Routledge, 1999); Morten Boas & Desmond McNeill (eds), Global Institutions and Development: Framing the World (Routledge, 2004). 4. Alan Berg, ‘Malnutrition in National Development’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 46, October (1967), pp. 126–36 5. Alan Berg, Malnutrition: What can be done?: Lessons from World Bank Experience (World Bank, 1987). This relates to the difficulty in evaluating nutrition, showing quantified outcomes and moving money fast. 6. David Wilson, ‘Economic Analysis of Malnutrition’, in Alan Berg, Nevin Scrimshaw & David Call (eds), Nutrition, National Development and Planning (MIT Press, 1973), pp. 129–44. 7. Ibid. 8. Berg, The Nutrition Factor, p. 30. 9. Although a major shock to economists, it was also of grave concern to nutritionists as the price of food increased dramatically. 10. Margaret Phillips & Tina Sanghvi, The Economic Analysis of Nutrition Projects: Guiding Principles and Examples. Nutrition Toolkit 3 (World Bank, 1996), p. 15. 11. William Jack, Principles of Health Economics for Developing Countries (World Bank Institute, 1999), p. 271. 12. Phillips & Sanghvi, The Economic Analysis, p. 15. 13. World Bank, Repositioning Nutrition as Central to Development (World Bank, 2006), p. 9. 14. Jere Behrman, ‘Household Behavior, Preschool Child Nutrition, and the Role of Information’, in Per Pinstrup-Andersen, David Pelletier & Harold Alderman (eds), Child Growth and Nutrition in Developing Countries (Cornell University Press, 1995), pp. 32–52; World Bank, Nutrition and Economic Sector Work (draft) (World Bank, 2005). 15. World Bank, Repositioning Nutrition, p. 9. 16. Berg, Malnutrition, p. 6. 17. Marcia Griffiths, Kate Dicken & Michael Favin, Promoting the Growth of Children: What Works? Rationale and Guidance for Programs. Nutrition Toolkit 4 (World Bank, 1996). 18. Jack, Principles of Health Economics, p. 55. 19. Ibid., p. 50. 20. John Davis, The Theory of the Individual in Economics: Identity and Value (Routledge, 2003), p. 55. 21. Musgrove, ‘Ideas Versus Money’. 22. Alan Berg, Malnourished People: A Policy View (World Bank, 1981), p. 17. 23. Berg, The Nutrition Factor, p. 18. 24. Berg, Malnourished People, p. 95. 25. Berg, The Nutrition Factor, p. 22. 26. Wilson, ‘Economic Analysis’. 27. World Bank, To Nourish a Nation: Investing in Nutrition with World Bank Assistance (World Bank, 2005), p. 1. 28. Ibid., p. 2. 29. Ibid., p. 2. 30. Ibid., p. 11. 31. Anthony Measham & Meera Chatterjee, Wasting Away: The Crisis of Malnutrition in India (World Bank, 1999), p. 4. 32. See Michael Cernea, ‘Culture? At the World Bank?’, Letter to a Friend, Paris, 2004, p. 7, available at http://www.cultureandpublication.org/pdf/cernealet.pdf 33. See Phillips & Sanghvi, The Economic Analysis, p. 34. 34. World Bank, To Nourish a Nation, p. 9. 35. Ibid., p. 9. 36. World Bank, Nutrition and Economic Sector Work, p. 1. 37. Leslie Elder, Linda Kiess & Joy de Beyer, Incorporating Nutrition into Project Design: Nutrition Toolkit 1 (World Bank, 1996), p. 25. 38. Other determinants include smoking and alcohol use by mother, genetics, congenital abnormalities or infections, and age of mother. 39. Elder et al., Incorporating Nutrition, p. 29. 40. Felicity King & Ann Burgess, Nutrition for Developing Countries, 2nd edn (Oxford University Press, 1993). 41. Hernan Delgado, Aaron Lechtig, Reynaldo Martorell, Elena Brineman & Robert Klein, ‘Nutrition, Lactation, and Postpartum Amenorrhea’, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 31, No. 2 (1978), pp. 322–7. Sandra Huffman, A. K. Chowdhury & W. Henry Mosley, ‘Postpartum Amenorrhea: How is it Affected by Maternal Nutritional Status?’, Science, Vol. 200, No. 4346 (1978), pp. 1155–7. 42. Semen refers to the substance that both women and men release during intercourse. 43. Mark Nichter & Mimi Nichter, Anthropology and International Health: Asian Case Studies (Gordon and Breach, 1996), p. 16. 44. Ibid., p. 121. 45. Musgrove, ‘Ideas Versus Money’, p. 343. 46. World Bank, To Nourish a Nation, p. 8. 47. Susan Horton, Unit Costs, Cost-Effectiveness, and Financing of Nutrition Interventions (World Bank, 1992), p. 24, quote from p. 5. 48. World Bank, Enriching Lives: Overcoming Vitamin and Mineral Malnutrition in Developing Countries (World Bank, 1994), p. 62. 49. Ibid., p. 62. 50. For nutrition, other indicators used include ‘cost per case of child stunting averted’, ‘cost per 0.1 kg increase in birth weight’, ‘cost per child removed from third degree malnutrition’, and so on. See F. James Levinson, Beatrice Rogers, Kristen M. Hicks, Thomas Schaetzel, Lisa Troy & Collette Young, Monitoring and Evaluation: A Guidebook for Nutrition Project Managers in Developing Countries. Nutrition Toolkit 8 (World Bank, 1999), p. 121. 51. Joy de Beyer, Alexander Preker & Richard G. A. Feachem, ‘The Role of the World Bank in International Health: Renewed Commitment and Partnership’, Social Science and Medicine, Vol. 50, No. 2 (2000), pp. 169–76. 52. Horton, Unit Costs, p. 3. 53. See Sandra Huffman & Adwoa Steel, Do Child Survival Interventions Reduce Malnutrition? The Dark Side of Child Survival (Centre to Prevent Childhood Malnutrition, 1990). 54. Alice Sindzingre, ‘Truth, “Efficiency”, and Multilateral Institutions: A Political Economy of Development Economics’, New Political Economy, Vol. 9, No. 2 (2004), pp. 233–49. 55. William Ascher, ‘New Development Approaches and the Adaptability of International Agencies: The Case of the World Bank’, International Organization, Vol. 37, No. 3 (1983), pp. 415–39. 56. Sindzingre, ‘Truth’, p. 233. 57. Paul Nelson, The World Bank and Non-Governmental Organizations: Limits of Apolitical Development (MacMillan, 1995), p. 112. 58. World Bank, Repositioning Nutrition. 59. Ibid. 60. Ngaire Woods, The Globalizers: The World Bank, the IMF and their Borrowers (Cornell University Press, 2006). 61. This phrase is from Michael Cernea, who was the Bank's first in-house sociologist in 1974. Cernea, ‘Culture?’, p. 9. 62. This paragraph is based on information given in Ngaire Woods, ‘The Challenge of Good Governance for the IMF and the World Bank Themselves’, World Development, Vol. 28, No. 5 (2000), pp. 823–41. 63. Early in the history of the international financial institutions, the USA ensured there would be no national quotas for hiring and that English would be the working language. Ngaire Woods, ‘The United States and the International Financial Institutions: Power and Influence Within the World Bank and the IMF’, in Rosemary Foot, Neil MacFarlane & Michael Mastanduno (eds), US Hegemony and International Organizations (Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 92–115. 64. Quote from Woods, ‘The Challenge of Good Governance’, p. 834. 65. Stern and Ferreira, ‘The World Bank as an intellectual actor’ Development Economics working paper no. 50, STICERD, London School of Economics, 1993, cited in Woods, ‘The Challenge of Good Governance’, p. 834. 66. Ascher, ‘New Development Approaches’, p. 437. 67. Richard Heaver, Good Work But Not Enough of It: A Review of the World Bank's Experience in Nutrition (World Bank, 2006), p. 11. 68. Taken from transcript of Bank meeting. 69. Heaver, Good Work, p. 18. 70. Woods, The Globalizers, p. 56.