Transcript L911 Contemporary Perspectives

The Coming Anarchy:
Urbanization &
The Developing World
World Urban Patterns
Ambler Campus
Fall 2004 Semester
Main Themes
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The world in the 21st century will be a
more dangerous place
Political ideology no longer the main
conflict
Ethnic, religious, tribal conflict will
predominate
Less adherence to the notion of the
nation-state – more ID with ethnicity,
religion, and tribal association
Still a world of haves & have-nots:
some healthy, well-fed and pampered
by technology and others living a poor,
brutish, short life
“The Coming Anarchy”
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Major threats for the 21st century
Environmental degradation
Rampant, unchecked, urban crime and
drugs
Continuing erosion of nation-states and
international borders
Empowerment of private armies
(Friedman’s “super-empowered angry
men”)
Environmental distress may be the cause
of future wars and civil violence
Kaplan and
Environmental Distress
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The threat of disease
Scarcity of resources
Refugee migrations (carrying with
them the threat of disease and
increased use of resources)
HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa and
Russia
Maybe the African continent is the
best prism for where this is currently
taking place
The Urban Milieu
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Kaplan argues that
urban areas provide
an excellent view of
the Third World and
its problems
Describes a country’s
innate cultural
strengths and
weaknesses
Urban poverty - socially destabilizing
Islam appeals to the
poor and will only
continue to fester
“The Lies of Mapmakers”
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Doesn’t really show the real story of
what’s happening in countries & cities
Doesn’t show proximity, strength of tribal
groups, guerrilla groups, and shantytowns
(informal cities)
Distorts demographic trends
Cultural groups cross borders – witness
the Kurds in Turkey and Northern Iraq
Sierra Leone
A Case Study Still Underway
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Kaplan’s article, while ten
years old, still holds for
events in Sierra Leone
Ongoing civil war –rebels
advancing on capital of
Freetown
UN troops threatened
No substantive UN relief
Former colonial ruler,
Britain, to pull out
Massive env degradation
Some cities are simply
large displaced persons
camps
Urbanization & The Developing World
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See statistical tables in UN Report,
page 271
MDEs: 76% urbanized
LDEs: 40% urbanized
Global: 47% urbanized
Projected trends show growth
towards urbanization across the
board – growth rates larger in LDEs
Latin America & Caribbean
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75% urbanized
Historical
antecedents:
conquest and
colonialism
Some megacities:
• Mexico City, Mexico
• Sao Paulo, Brazil
Somalia in the 1990s
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“Black Hawk Down”
A very good description of an urban
area governed essentially by anarchy
The city divided, literally, and
governed accordingly
Cell Phones – communicating troop
movements
Africa
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30% urbanized
Historical
antecedents:
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Colonialism
Tribalism
Dictatorships
Apartheid (South
Africa)
Asia
Asia
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Focal point for urban growth in 21st
century
By 2015, 153 of the world’s 358
cities with 1 million or more
Of 27 megacities, 15 in this continent
Expansion of megacities
Extreme population density,
environmental stresses
Additional Delimitations
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Breakdown of law
and order
Ethnic Cleansing
Civil wars; tribal
wars
Intensification of
religious
fundamentalism
Kaplan and West African cities
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“The cities of West Africa are some of
the unsafest places in the world.
Streets are unlit; the police often
lack gasoline for their vehicles;
armed burglars, carjackers and
muggers proliferate”.
Rural-Urban Migration/Culture Clash
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“In the villages of Africa it is perfectly
natural to feed at any table and lodge in
any hut. But in the cities this communal
existence no longer holds. You must pay
for lodging and be invited for food. When
young men find out that their relations
cannot put them up, they become lost.
They join other migrants and slip
gradually into the criminal process”.
Consider “Chicago”
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A slum district in Abidjan (Ivory Coast)
A slum in the bush
A “checkerwork of corrugated zinc roofs and walls
made of cardboard and black plastic wrap. It is
located ib a gully teeming with coconut palms
and oil palms and is ravaged by flooding. Few
residents have access to electricity, a sewage
system, or a clean water supply…Children
defecate in a stream filled with garbage and pigs,
droning with malarial mosquitoes. In this stream,
women do the washing”.
Ecological Timebombs
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Malaria is easy to catch
“Defending oneself against malaria in
Africa is becoming more and more like
defending oneself against violent crime.
You engage in “behavior modification”; not
going out after dark, wearing mosquito
repellent all the time”.
Delhi, Calcutta, Beijing – some of the
worst air quality in the world
Poverty
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Urban poverty is socially destabilizing. “As
Iran has shown, Islamic extremism is the
psychological defence mechanism of many
urbanized peasants threatened by the loss
of traditions in pseudo-modern cities
where their values are under attack,
where basis services like water and
electricity are unavailable, and where they
are assaulted by a physically unhealthy
environment”
But in Iran, the cities are the focal point
for internal “reform”.
Religion Becoming More Important
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Everywhere in the developing world at the
turn of the 21st Century these new men
and women, rushing into the cities, are
remaking civilizations and redefining their
identities in terms of religion and tribal
ethnicity which do not coincide with the
borders of existing states”
Growth of Christianity in the global South;
in some senses debunking the idea of the
triumph of Islam
Religion in the Global, Urban South
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A focal point for migrants
A provider of social welfare services, in the
absence of a social welfare infrastructure
Rio de Janiero, Sao Paulo Brazil
Lima, Peru
Santiago, Chile
Lagos, Nigeria
See The New York Times articles posted on
Blackboard
Philip Jenkins. The Next Christendom: The
Coming of Global Christianity (Oxford U Press)
“The Clash of Civilizations”
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A controversial piece
Huntingdon argues that we are
moving from conflict between nationstates to conflict between
“civilizations”
This may make national boundaries
irrelevant
The real borders relate to culture and
tribal adherence
Issues for Urbanization in the
Developing World
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Legacies of colonialism and conquest
Primacy
Health & Environment
• Unchecked fertility rates
• Higher mortality rates
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Weaker Globalization Infrastructure
• Less rule of law
• Less stable financial systems
• Less “wired”
Assumptions
at the End of the Cold War
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The world would
coalesce into a
“universal
civilization”
Dominated by
western democratic
political notions
Dominated by
capitalistic
economics
Why Civilizations Will Clash
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Differences between civilizations are
real and basic: language, history, culture,
tradition, history
Globalization -- The world is becoming a
smaller place
Economic modernization and social
change are exporting people for longstanding local identities – also over
nation-states (religion transcends borders;
diasporas)
Universal Civilization Values?
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Some sense of similar,
basic values (right v.
wrong, a moral sense)
Civilized societies
have cities and
literacy
Could refer to
assumptions, values,
and doctrines held in
Western civilization
Could also refer to
pop culture:
McDonald’s, Coke,
consumer goods
Different Directions
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Democracy and
capitalism, while
dominant, have not
totally triumphed
Neo-communism
and neo-fascism
have reemerged
A conservative
climate has
dominated western
democratic states
More Reasons
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The Dual Role of the West – the
triumph of the West (democracy,
capitalism, pop culture) and the
reaction against it
Cultural characteristics – the
question, “what are you?”(ethnicity,
religion, etc.) – is exacerbated with
the end of the Cold war and the
battle over political ideology
Economic regionalism is increasing
Quote from Huntingdon
“The end of ideologically
defined states permits
traditional ethnic identities
and communities to come to
the fore” (p. 29)
The New Paradigm for War
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The concept of
national defence
may change
Wars may be fought
to establish control
over environmental
resources
Peacekeeping may
have to be redefined
May be fought more
in urban areas
Other Global Flash-Points
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The Middle East
(Israel-SyriaPalestinians-Syria and
Iranian-backed
Islamic
fundamentalists)
Indian Peninsula
(India-Pakistan – i.e.,
Kashmir)
China (China-TaiwanTibet)
The Central Asian
Republics of the
former USSR (the
“stans”)
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Central America –
historically was a
major focal point of
the Cold War
The Balkans (the
former Yugoslavia) –
“a powder keg for
cultural war between
Orthodox Christianity
(Serbs), Greeks,
Russians, Romanians,
and the House of
Islam”