Abstract
When and how did the Third World transform into an emerging market in the global economy? This chapter addresses the ongoing re-inscription of the old Third World as a market, unpacking new modes of imagination and knowledge at the heart of this historical shift. It argues that if the quest for valuable commodities led to the discovery of the new world in an earlier age, the early twenty-first century is characterized by the rediscovery of that familiar world along the speculative index of untapped national enclaves rapidly opening up across continents. The world-as-commodity captures and encloses entire territories to be transformed into branded sites of unlimited commodification and exchange and to actualize the capitalist dream of unending growth. A world grasped and imagined in commodity form is what can eventually be put at the disposal of investors. Dressed up as branded commodities, Third World nations become visible as attractive investment destinations in the global publicity.
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Notes
- 1.
This chapter expands upon a previous version published as “World as Commodity: Or, How the ‘Third World’ became an ‘Emerging Market’”, Comparative Studies in South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 38, no. 2 (2018): 377–395.
- 2.
Comaroff and Comaroff, Ethnicity, Inc. (Chicago, Chicago University Press: 2009), 117–120.
- 3.
Mitchell, Colonising Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 13.
- 4.
Jim O’Neill. The Growth Map: Economic Opportunity in the BRICS and Beyond (New York, Penguin Portfolio: 2012), 7.
- 5.
International Finance Corporation, IFC: The First Six Decades: Leading the Way in Private Sector Development, 2nd ed., https://www.ifc.org/wps/wcm/connect/6285ad53-0f92-48f1-ac6e-0e939952e1f3/IFC-History-Book-Second-Edition.pdf?MOD=AJPERES (accessed March 26, 2019).
- 6.
“Decade 2: 1970s—Broadening Our Scope,” International Finance Corporation, https://www.ifc.org/wps/wcm/connect/corp_ext_content/ifc_external_corporate_site/about+ifc_new/ifc+history/1970s (accessed March 26, 2019).
- 7.
Agtmael. The Emerging Markets Century: How a New Breed of World-Class Companies Is Overtaking the World (London, Simon & Schuster: 2007). 4.
- 8.
Ibid., 5.
- 9.
Comaroff, and John Comaroff. Theory from the South: Or, How Euro-America Is Evolving toward Africa (Boulder, CO, Paradigm Publishers: 2012), 1–7.
- 10.
Agtmael, The Emerging Century, 5.
- 11.
International Finance Corporation, “Who Coined the Phrase ‘Emerging Markets’?,” September 8, 2011, YouTube video, 1:05, www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DdoiI2PFmo (accessed March 26, 2019).
- 12.
Transcript, “Emerging Market Hunters,” episode 3, chap. 6 of The Commanding Heights: The Battle for World Economy, directed by William Cran, PBS, 2002, www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/shared/minitextlo/tr_show03.html (accessed March 26, 2019).
- 13.
Mark Mobius, quoted in ibid.
- 14.
“Technical Cooperation and Capacity Building,” Doha WTO Ministerial 2001, adopted November 14, 2001, World Trade Organization website, www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/minist_e/min01_e/mindecl_e.htm#cooperation (accessed March 26, 2019).
- 15.
World Trade Organization, “Aid for Trade Fact Sheet,” World Trade Organization, www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/devel_e/a4t_e/a4t_factsheet_e.htm (accessed July 15, 2016).
- 16.
DANIDA. Transitional Strategy for Denmark’s Multilateral Aid for Trade Activities 2014–15. (Copenhagen, DANIDA, Ministry of Foreign Affairs: 2014), 5.
- 17.
WTO, Aid for Trade at a Glance, 2015 World Trade Organization, www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/devel_e/a4t_e/aid4trade_e.htm (accessed July 14, 2016).
- 18.
Ibid.
- 19.
Logue, Anne. Emerging Markets for Dummies (Indianapolis, IN: Wiley, 2011), 9.
- 20.
Mark Mobius. The Little Book of Emerging Markets: How to Make Money in the World’s Fastest Growing Markets (Singapore, John Wiley & Sons: 2012), 12.
- 21.
Ibid.
- 22.
Logue, Emerging Markets for Dummies, 10.
- 23.
Ravinder Kaur and Thomas Blom Hansen. “Aesthetics of Arrival: Spectacle, Capital, Novelty in Post-Reform India.” Identities: Global Studies in Power and Culture 23, no. 3 (2016): 265. Ravinder Kaur. “Post-exotic India: On Remixed histories and smart images.” Identities: Global Studies in Power and Culture 23, no. 3 (2016): 307–326.
- 24.
Franklin Templeton. States of Emergence: The Evolution of Emerging Markets Investing (New York, Franklin Templeton Investments: 2014), 2.
- 25.
“MSCI Emerging Markets Horizon Index Methodology, July 2014,” PDF file, www.msci.com/eqb/methodology/meth_docs/MSCI_Emerging_Markets_Horizon_In dex_Methodology_Jul14.pdf (accessed July 14, 2016).
- 26.
These parameters form the basic indicators deployed to identify BRICS as the most lucrative territories. See O’Neill, The Growth Map, 25–40.
- 27.
Ernst Young, Ready, Set, Grow: Ernst Young Attractiveness Survey: India 2015. Mumbai: EYGM Ltd. https://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/ey-2015-india-attractiveness-survey-ready-set-grow/$FILE/ey-2015-india-attractiveness-survey-ready-set-grow.pdf (accessed on March 26, 2019).
- 28.
Ibid., 3.
- 29.
On the politics of economic reforms, Ravinder Kaur. “Good Times, Brought to You by Brand Modi.” Television and New Media 16, no. 4 (2015): 323–330.
- 30.
This section is based on my fieldwork at the World Economic Forum in Davos conducted during the WEF Annual Meetings in 2012, 2013, and 2015. The “India Adda” is the site where investors, policymakers, journalists, and celebrities get together to partake in India’s commercial culture.
- 31.
Building on the word ad, a variation of the Sanskrit root ardh or aadh in Hindi, adda denotes on the one hand division into two parts and, on the other, an assemblage of different parts.
- 32.
Dipesh Chakrabarty has traced the genealogy of the modern form of adda through nineteenth- and twentieth-century Bengal. See Dipesh Chakrabarty. “Adda, Calcutta: Dwelling in Modernity.” Public Culture 11, no. 1 (1999): 109–145.
- 33.
“IBEF—Leading the Brand India Initiative at Davos 2013,” IBEF Press release, Davos, January 21, 2013, https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ibef%2D%2Dleading-the-brand-india-initiative-at-davos-2013-187713571.html (accessed March 26, 2019).
- 34.
India Brand Equity Foundation blog, www.india-davos-blogs.ibef.org/India%2D%2D-Innovates (accessed July 12, 2016—link no longer active).
- 35.
Ibid.
- 36.
IBEF. “Brand India: At the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Meeting, January 27–30, 2013, Davos” (New Delhi, India Brand Equity Foundation: 2013), 4.
- 37.
Ibid., 16.
- 38.
Harish Damodaran. “‘Cool’ India Offers Inclusive Growth for All.” Hindu Business Line, January 26, 2011. www.thehindubusinessline.com/todays-paper/cool-india-offers-inclusive-growth-for-all/article2327296.ece (accessed on March 26, 2019).
- 39.
The termglobalization is often used as a proxy for capitalism without naming the thing, and Sloterdijk puts it to use precisely in this vein. Sloterdijk, Peter. In the World Interior of Capital: For a Philosophical Theory of Globalization. Translated by Wieland Hoban (Cambridge, Polity Press: 2014), 175.
- 40.
Sloterdijk draws upon Dostoyevsky’s account of his 1862 London visit, “Notes from the Underground,” to describe the Crystal Palace as a hubristic construction. See ibid., 167–169.
- 41.
Ibid., 10.
- 42.
Walter Benjamin. The Arcades Project. Translated by Howard Eilan and Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press: 2003), 18.
- 43.
Jerome Adolphe Blanqui, a French political economist, wrote a series of letters describing the 1851 exhibition. Quoted in Lara Kriegel. Grand Designs: Labor, Empire and the Museum in Victorian Culture (Durham, NC, Duke University Press: 2007), 86.
- 44.
The Great Exhibition: London’sCrystal Palace, The Great Exhibition: London’s Crystal Palace Exposition of 1851 (New York, Gramercy Books: 1995), 7. Also Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, 1851: Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue (I–III) (London, William Clowes & Sons: 1851).
- 45.
William Mazzarella. Shoveling Smoke: Advertising and Globalization in Contemporary India (Durham, NC, Duke University Press: 2003), 186.
- 46.
Alistair Maeer. “The New World as Commodity: Understanding the Drake Manuscript or Histoire Naturelle des Indes and Samuel de Champlain’s A Voyage to the West Indies and Mexico as Expressions of Commercialization in Early Modern Europe.” Terrae Incognitae 39 (2013): 38–51.
- 47.
On the question of objectification in the capitalist order, see Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 18–19.
- 48.
For example, Detroit is often offered as an example of this phenomenon—of rising poverty and falling standards of education and health. See Todd Meyers, and Nancy Hunt. “The Art of Medicine: The Other Global South.” Lancet 384 (2014): 1921–1922.
- 49.
Comaroff and Comaroff, Theory from the South, 1.
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Kaur, R. (2019). Third World Inc.: Notes from the Frontiers of Global Capital. In: Christiansen, C.O., Jensen, S.L.B. (eds) Histories of Global Inequality. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19163-4_13
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