Customer Reviews

Imperial Nature: The World Bank and Struggles for Social Justice in the Age of Globalization (Yale Agrarian Studies Series)

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Michael Goldman's Imperial Nature provides a compelling account of the ongoing struggles between the World Bank and its borrowers. It is unbiased in analyzing World Bank activities and their effects on the global South. The Bank's financial support for various projects merits applause from authoritative figures in diverse intellectual fields. However, its dealings in implementing policies stemming from this support can be viewed as less than wholesome. Goldman provides a good deal of history behind this, from American involvement in 19th century world development to the creation and expansion of the World Bank in the mid-twentieth century.
Goldman describes Robert McNamara's reign as a period of change for the World Bank. It was made both highly efficient and hegemonic. The efficiency factor allowed the World Bank to accrue funding from many international sources, and complete projects within short time spans. However, this same efficiency set the standard for future projects- that those researchers who wanted project funding and promotions would abide by bank rules. Important information involving local peoples would be excluded, adding to the bank's increasing hegemony. Negative consequences for the environment would also be ignored, so long as a neoliberal agenda for development was promoted.
The World Bank wields enormous power over the global South, as many national governments rely on it for economic prosperity. It has no system of checks and balances, nor is there another entity fit to replace it. As Goldman states, "A few well timed political victories could send tidal waves through the international financial system and create many new opportunities for social movements to create alternative structures." Thus we are left with the question: is there an alternative to promote economic development while maintaining environmental and social sustainability?

Michael Goldman's Imperial Nature provides a concrete basis for the understanding of the World Bank's infrastructure and policies. Not only does Goldman explain how the World Bank functions, but he gives specific examples of projects from around the world such as the Nam Theun 2 dam in Laos. Goldman attempts to explain how the bank achieves its powerful status and remains a dominant structure worldwide. A passage reads, "From this perspective, the World Bank functions by borrowing capital from a global bond market (that it helped to create), lending it to governments that are deemed in need, and then requiring these governments to spend a substantial percentage of these loans to procure goods and services from firms of the Big Five creditor countries" (Goldman 155). Previously unaware of the World Bank's actual workings, passages like these opened our eyes to a somewhat startling power relationship the World Bank attains with underdeveloped nations. Although the World Bank is portrayed as a dominant "bully" in a way, they are a money lending institution similar to other businesses around the globe.

For somebody who has hardly any previous knowledge regarding the World Bank and its operations, this book will give you the basic understanding of how it works. For somebody who understands the inner-workings of the dominant World Bank, this book might seem monotonous and vaguely informative. But overall, the book is fairly entertaining and revealing.

Michael Goldman's Imperial Nature presents a well-grounded, in-depth analysis of the structure, formation, and implementation of World Bank development policies and the political, economic, social, and environmental ramifications for those who seek to benefit from them. The time Michael Goldman spent researching and working within the World Bank itself provides the reader with a critique that is well-informed and thorough as it brings together anecdotes and arguments from those working within and outside the World Bank. Throughout the book, Goldman emphasizes the complexity of the process of development and how one of the World Bank's primary flaws is its simple measurement of increase in yields or gross domestic product (GDP) as adequate assessments of development progress. The combination of this neoliberalism, promoted by the finance ministry, and civil society's pressure to be more socially just and environmentally sustainable has created a new developmental doctrine, what Goldman calls "green neoliberalism." The central tenet of green neoliberalism, environmentally sustainable development in combination with export-led capitalist growth, has allowed the World Bank to spread its influence and hegemony throughout the globe, primarily due to its efficacy in producing systems of knowledge and ideas that have since become the framework for development policies. Goldman traces the history of the World Bank from its first inception after World War II to the present day, noting how its "development for the poor" through providing financial loans more frequently benefits the Northern corporate investors and firms from which the World Bank borrows its money rather than the poor who really need it. Goldman, in a clear, effective style, reveals the World Bank as an institution concerned more with funding and profit than providing for basic human needs and a sustainable environment, with ensuring the completion and implementation of its projects over their efficacy and benefit for the poor, and with maintaining a status quo and contradictory public image over allowing critique, dissent, and reform.

Michael Goldman's Imperial Nature is not the page-turner of Stiglitz's Globalization and it's Discontents. That isn't - necessarily - a criticism; Goldman's work is significantly more academic, and involves a fairly comprehensive history of the World Bank and an in depth case study. Unfortunately, the criticisms that Goldman levies are not based on systematic analysis but on anecdotal arguments. Which can only be overlooked in light of the fact that the approach he took was one of immersion, not of external analysis. This forces Goldman, seemingly, to walk a fine-line of making generalized criticisms from relatively specific and isolated information. Given the limitations of his approach, however, the book does a surprisingly good job of pointing out the structural problems that are hindering the World Bank's performance, and, furthermore, it addresses these issues with a much more convincing, open-minded and balanced approach than much of the polemical arguments that claim the World Bank is Satan and starving little children.
One particularly interesting element of Goldman's book is his examination of the World Bank's dominate role "[a]s a producer of scientific knowledge," (Goldman, p. 101). This less frequently heard criticism of the bank is well, if anecdotally, discussed in Imperial Nature. In chapter 3, Goldman addresses the Bank's institutional impediments to creating unbiased information. By examining the organizational structure limitations, skewed staff incentives, top-down internal political limitations, and time constraints, Goldman makes a fairly compelling case that there are serious structural problems that can bias the Banks panoply of research.
The rest of the book, and even the chapter on knowledge production, however, could have been better served by a more systematic analysis. In Goldman's defense, he did not intend to write an empirical critique of the bank. In the preface, he writes that his book can "be read as an adventure travelogue," or as a "sociological inquiry," (Goldman, p. xvii). Judged on those grounds, the book may take a different shape, but it still does not satisfy one looking for a compelling and empirical analysis of the World Bank's institutional failures.

Michael Goldman's Imperial Nature would best serve those readers who are unfamiliar with the World Bank and looking for a basic introduction, especially Chapter 2. In this chapter, Goldman details the four distinct periods that relate the history of the World Bank. Perhaps, a better title for his book would be Imperial Knowledge as the real highlight of his discussion focuses on how the World Bank produces knowledge to achieve its interests. For example, the World Bank gives the project evaluators inadequate amounts of time to properly evaluate the situation/project. And if they disagree with the World Bank, someone else can be brought in who will agree.

For the reader with more knowledge of the World Bank, however, this book will seem repetitive, boring, and leave you wondering why Goldman did not delve further into his research to answer some of the questions he poses. First, the information he offers on Laos and the privatization of water can easily be found elsewhere in numerous articles. The analysis does not "shed new light" on this material. Second, he makes sweeping generalizations like "From Mexico to Nigeria, the World Bank's green neoliberalism framework finds resonance in diverse ways in different institutional settings" (220). It would have been better if he actually explored and expanded on this statement. Third, green neoliberalism, which Goldman seems to pass off as something new, is really structural adjustment as applied to loans, policies, and projects that involve the environment in some way. Finally, Goldman often asks questions such as, "why has the process of networking become the privileged site of transnational social relations for political civil society actors, and what other types of political processes are erased, undermined, and subordinated by this privileging?" (270-71). These questions leave the reader asking, "Why does Goldman leave it up to others to provide further analysis?"

The bottom line is that Goldman's book will only benefit you if you have no or little knowledge of the World Bank. Otherwise, look for another book that will offer new insights and better analysis.

This book provides a history of the 'World Bank' and a description and critique of its major operating practices. According to Goldman the 'World Bank's operations often fail to achieve their stated goals, and may do more harm than good.
Goldman analyzes the way the agenda of the major fund- providers for the World Bank, the leading industrial states impinges upon the operation of the 'Bank'. He describes the World Bank philosophy which places emphasis on green environentalism and capitalist neo- liberalism. He shows how the World Bank's institutions produce the information and knowledge which often leads their policies in the wrong direction. He goes into great detail in describing and analyzing a World Bank water project in Laos which causes more harm than good.
Is this overall a fair critique? Does it do justice to the full variety of the work, the 'World Bank' has done in the more than sixty years since its inception?
I don't consider myself knowledgeable enough to answer.
But that the World Bank does have in many areas a good need for soul- searching is made extremely clear in this fine book.

Michael Goldman's Imperial Nature is a wonderful introduction to the methods, practices and history of the World Bank. It is well written and very easy to read and comprehend. It is arranged logically and most questions that a reader with little prior knowledge of the bank would have are answered early on. The book uses both general history and contemporary examples to explore the evolution of the bank's purpose and methodology. However Goldman tends to make generalizations without expounding on examples he casually mentions, or after providing only one detailed example.
Imperial Nature is excellent at explaining how the bank creates and controls information, exploring an area of power often overlooked. Imperial Nature documents how the World Bank, ostensibly a "development" organization can in fact further impoverish a borrowing nation, leave many of its people destitute and then manipulate the data so that it appears to have in fact accomplished something good. Goldman's exploration of the process by which the Bank produces information and regulates what information is published, both before a project is begun and after it is finished, is the best feature of this book.
Despite the title environmental concerns seem rather peripheral. The book is a promotion of social justice and an exploration of the bank's imperialist control over nations and peoples, but environmental effects are rarely mentioned, excepting how they directly affect native peoples. Overall the book is a good and easy to understand overview of the World Bank in the world today, but it would not provide a great deal of information to someone with prior knowledge of the bank.

Imperial Nature by Michael Goldman provides a good source of information about the World Bank. This book doesn't require the reader to have prior knowledge about the World Bank and it is not overwhelming in terms of how much information is presented. It presents the history of the Bank and allows the reader to understand its structure and functions. Goldman's goal was to show the negative aspects of the World Bank's influence in the world. He is a valid candidate to write about this subject because he made observations from within the World Bank headquarters. Goldman gave both views of the development projects by presenting interviews with World Bank officials and the people in developing countries. He presented the reader objective information but it made us more skeptical of the institution and its motives.

In the beginning, the author described broad topics such as how the World Bank functions. This made it easier to understand the specific cases that were presented later in the book such as the case study on the Nam Theun 2 dam in Laos. Some issues addressed by Goldman include water privatization. This topic is a good example of the classic tragedy of the commons and how as a common pool resource it needs to be regulated.

The book made us question who is benefiting from the projects. It described how the World Bank treats the people in developing countries with a neocolonial attitude since most of the lesser-developed countries are former colonies. We considered the question of whether the World Bank should continue to exist with the same power. In our opinion, the World Bank should consult with the people who will be affected by development projects. This will provide a system of checks and balances that is necessary to prevent corruption. Overall, we recommend this book because it succeeded in making us think differently about the Bank.

Michael Goldman's Imperial Nature: The World bank and Struggles for Social Justice in the Age of Globalization takes the stance of the activists that frequently protest at world bank meetings claiming the bank's development projects do more ham than good in developing countries. The book offers more insight into the World Bank than is normally available to such anti-bank activists, however, because Goldman was able to spend a significant amount of time within the bank itself. Goldman gives a unique historical overview of how the bank came to be as it is, as well as specific case studies that provide a detailed understanding of the inner-workings of the bank that are necessary to critique it. Perhaps the most useful - and surprising - part of this critique is Goldman's description of how the bank acts as a knowledge-producer. He argues that officials at the bank commission reports that spin results of development projects to favor the image of the bank. Goldman also argues that in order to quell protests that the bank's projects were harmful to people living in developing countries, the bank absorbed NGOs, scientists, and other protestors into itself. The result is a bank with the same problems, and less credible people willing to speak out against it. While Michael Goldman has certainly been successful in critiquing the policies and procedures of the World Bank, he has not taken the next step by proposing an alternative. Without suggestion of how an ideal institution would function, to whom such an institution would be held accountable, or examples of `good development', Michael Goldman's book will likely not have any more effect than the protestors at World Bank meetings.

Michael Goldman's Imperial Nature is an interesting and thought provoking introduction to issues surrounding the World Bank. Throughout the book, Goldman illustrates how the World Bank agenda is concerned more with increasing profits for its investors than actually focusing on the needs of the area which it claims to help. This proves to be a major problem because the World Bank is also a forerunner in knowledge production and is seen as an authority. As a result, through the combination of their brand of knowledge and their funding, the World Bank determines the development of the global south.

According to Goldman, there is some resistance to the World Bank from other organizations and from within these developing countries as well. However, the World Bank effectively silences this resistance. As a result, the reader is compelled to ask whether or not there is really a need for the World Bank and if there are suitable alternatives which take into account the concerns of these countries.

All in all, I enjoyed this book. However, one of my biggest critiques of Goldman is that he is very repetitive. While it starts off as an interesting read, about halfway through, the book becomes a bit boring and tiresome.