Book Review: JENNIFER L. BEARD, The Political Economy of Desire: International Law, Development and the Nation State. Abingdon: Routledge-Cavendish, 2007. ISBN 0415420008, £31.99 (pbk)
| Author | Doris Buss |
| Published date | 01 December 2009 |
| DOI | 10.1177/09646639090180040702 |
| Date | 01 December 2009 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
appears to be the book’s central preoccupation (and main strength, in my view) with
social and material inequality. Some of these essays will, however, give some comfort
to reconciliation enthusiasts.
That said, the value of this book lies in its critique of justice and reconciliation
practices within and beyond the TRC, because it is in this analysis that we glimpse
the social and political profundity of the notion of reconciliation in South Africa in
terms of both its promise and limitations. Both books, but the excellent Transitional
Amnesty in South Africa in particular, make important contributions to a now rich
seam of more critical theoretical enquiries into the norms and practices of reconcili-
ation in South Africa.
CLAIRE MOON
London School of Economics, UK
JENNIFER L. BEARD, The Political Economy of Desire: International Law, Develop-
ment and the Nation State. Abingdon: Routledge-Cavendish, 2007. ISBN 0415420008,
£31.99 (pbk).
International law is not, alas, a field rich with critical scholarship. Sure, there are
‘green shoots’ pushing through the brick-work of the international legal academy.
Feminist international lawyers have produced an engaged critique of the masculine
boundaries of the discipline of international law (Charlesworth and Chinkin, 2000;
Buss and Manji, 2005), while the so-called ‘Third world approaches to international
law’ (‘TWAIL’) have brought a post-colonial reading to some of the historical and
doctrinal claims of the discipline (Anghie et al., 2003; Anghie, 2005). And, from within
the corridors of international law, one can find a critique of the discipline’s rhetorical
architecture (Kennedy, 1988; Koskenniemi, 1989).
Jennifer Beard’s The Political Economy of Desire is, at the very least, a significant
contribution to the nascent critical project in international law. But this book is much
more profound than such a limited claim suggests. Beard provides a genealogy of
development that connects current international order and state forms to early Chris-
tian thought and practices. In Beard’s words, this book is ‘about how the promise of
development might be conceived in the same way that the Word of God was used to
call Christian subjectivity into being with a promise’ (p. 7). The argument she builds
throughout the pages of this book is that development ‘is a discourse of salvation
based on practices of repentance, sacrifice and conversion’ (p. 174). The subject of
development – the under-developed – is visible and comes into being as ‘that debt
which is preventing humanity as a whole from reaching salvation’ (p. 177).
Beard’s ultimate aim in this book is to move away from a preoccupation with ‘what
is development’ to consider instead how the ‘discourse of development came to be’
and to show that development is predicated upon, and requires the ongoing division
of the world into two: the developed/western/civilized/Christian world and the
under-developed/Third World/barbaric/savage world. Development, Beard shows, is
not about a ‘reallocation of capital, technology and resources’, which may in fact be
needed. Rather, it is ‘a form of assistance’ that leaves in place (and constitutes anew)
‘the international division of worlds’ (p. 63).
A recurring argument in Beard’s analysis is the significance of this division of
worlds for western self-definition. This argument – about the ways in which the West
is defined in and through its (colonial/underdeveloped) other – will be familiar to many
readers of Social & Legal Studies. But Beard’s treatment of this argument, I suggest,
is a much richer and more compelling exploration of the roots of subjectivity in
564 SOCIAL & LEGAL STUDIES 18(4)
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