Diverse development models and strategies revisited A special contribution to the 12th AWID International Forum IDeA Debate Article #1, 2012
Editorial
Editorial
1
Latin America 2 An Overview Food Sovereignty Agroecology Buen Vivir as a Concept Buen Vivir in Economics
South Asia
17
Asia Pacific
21
An Overview
Diverse Economies
Africa 23 An Overview Challenging Land Grabbing
Europe 29 Reflections on De-growth
MENA Region 32 Democracy as an Alternative
As many women’s rights and feminist groups have noted, we continue in a context of converging global crises. Economic and financial crises cannot be seen in isolation from the food, energy, water, environment, climate, human rights, and care crises. These interlocking crises are part of a failed development model: a model which, at its core, is largely gender blind, patriarchal, and indifferent to human rights, including women’s rights. Women have extensive experience in survival and resistance strategies to failed development models and the recurring crises these have caused. Over the past three years, AWID has been examining the impact of and responses to the systemic crisis from a feminist and women’s rights perspective. This collection builds on that work to explore diverse alternative development visions—indeed alternative ways to organize economies. The articles that follow do not presume to offer a comprehensive or a complete alternative model to the mainstream economic system. The aim is to share and promote critical analysis on a range of alternative visions and practices that progressive social movements and feminist groups are putting forward across the world. Given the difference in levels of fulfillment of basic rights across regions, struggles for changes in the development model are shaped in some cases by the need to achieve rights that are already at a higher level of fulfillment in other contexts. We have reached out to key groups, pioneers, and in some cases the creators of the concepts covered in this series, to share their visions and
practices. These groups continue to work with, nuance, and adapt the concepts in alliance with others. This work on feminist perspectives towards transforming economic power contributes to the dialogue, debate, and action on the crisis of the dominant development and economic model as well as sustainable ways forward that work for all people—women and men—and the planet. We believe that unpacking, analyzing, and grappling with the very concept of development is a key pillar for thinking about social transformation of all kinds, and specifically in relation to transforming economic power. At the 2012 AWID Forum and beyond we will continue to explore the specific realities of communities and peoples who are, in their day to day life, struggling to overcome poverty, inequality, and injustice. We will also hear stories of wisdom, resistance, and diverse models of “another form of development.” Debates around alternative models of development and alternative models to development have been happening in different ways in different places for decades—and the discussions continue. This compilation of articles contributes to these ongoing debates and provokes further thinking on other ways to think about development and organization of the economy. These pieces highlight the need to unpack the understanding that development (in both theory and practice) is neither a rigid nor monolithic concept—but rather, an economic, social, political, and cultural process that people can recreate, reformulate, and rethink in their own ways and realities. AWID 2012 • 1