{"title":"Emergency Responses Under COVID-19: Development Assistance, ‘Structural Violence’, and ‘Interpretive Labour’ in Samoa","authors":"P. Blunt, Cecilia Escobar, Vlassis Missos","doi":"10.1177/02601079221121903","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Data gathered in Samoa before and after the declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic on 11 March 2020 compare and contrast the nature and extent of ‘structural violence’ perpetrated by ‘egoistic’ bilateral development assistance. Despite much higher risks and costs to aid recipients than under normal circumstances, during the pandemic, donor control in ‘increasingly detailed and encompassing ways’ and donor use of ‘technical discourse’ to conceal ‘hidden purposes of bureaucratic power or dominance’ both increased significantly. Pandemic-induced opportunistic abandonments by donor governments of neoliberal policy principles did not ameliorate such structural violence. Individual differences among donor officials affected how control was exercised and whether host-government ‘ownership’ and ‘leadership’ of development assistance was flouted peremptorily, or denied more subtly and politely (with ‘warm regards’); and they influenced the volume and complexity of ‘interpretive labour’ required of resistance. But donor domination and control were undiminished by any of this. ‘Bullshit’ jobs and the blind allegiance of their (donor) incumbents were crucial to the realisation of such ends. The findings reconfirm the embeddedness of the neoliberal order and shed light on the character of its deep-seated bureaucratic resistance to change. JEL: F35, F54, F55, O19, O20, O22, P48","PeriodicalId":42664,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Interdisciplinary Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4000,"publicationDate":"2022-10-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Interdisciplinary Economics","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02601079221121903","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q4","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
Data gathered in Samoa before and after the declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic on 11 March 2020 compare and contrast the nature and extent of ‘structural violence’ perpetrated by ‘egoistic’ bilateral development assistance. Despite much higher risks and costs to aid recipients than under normal circumstances, during the pandemic, donor control in ‘increasingly detailed and encompassing ways’ and donor use of ‘technical discourse’ to conceal ‘hidden purposes of bureaucratic power or dominance’ both increased significantly. Pandemic-induced opportunistic abandonments by donor governments of neoliberal policy principles did not ameliorate such structural violence. Individual differences among donor officials affected how control was exercised and whether host-government ‘ownership’ and ‘leadership’ of development assistance was flouted peremptorily, or denied more subtly and politely (with ‘warm regards’); and they influenced the volume and complexity of ‘interpretive labour’ required of resistance. But donor domination and control were undiminished by any of this. ‘Bullshit’ jobs and the blind allegiance of their (donor) incumbents were crucial to the realisation of such ends. The findings reconfirm the embeddedness of the neoliberal order and shed light on the character of its deep-seated bureaucratic resistance to change. JEL: F35, F54, F55, O19, O20, O22, P48
期刊介绍:
The explosion of information and research that has taken place in recent years has had a profound effect upon a variety of existing academic disciplines giving rise to the dissolution of barriers between some, mergers between others, and the creation of entirely new fields of enquiry.