Imperial Nature: The World Bank and Struggles for Social Justice in the Age of Globalization

This probing study of the World Bank examines not its brute financial muscle but its ""hegemony""-the rhetorical strategies, training programs and patronage networks that let the Bank frame debate and cajole even critics into endorsing its agenda. Sociologist Goldman focuses on what he calls the Bank's ""green neoliberalism,"" a fashionable development ideology that packages poor nations' public services, natural resources and environmental diversity as undervalued economic assets to be profitably managed and conserved through the market. He explores this creed through interviews with Bank employees and onsite studies of Bank-financed projects, looking at the Bank's Policy Research Department, a project in Laos that links construction of hydroelectric dams with the set-aside of nature preserves, and an ambitious initiative to privatize water utilities. Goldman levels a biting but nuanced account of the Bank's dubious scientific studies, its cooptation of environmentalists and the ""neocolonialism"" of its new enthusiasm for pristine eco-tourism zones that are often as disruptive to traditional communities as old-style development. Unfortunately, he overlays it with a great deal of dense theory, heavily indebted to Gramsci and Foucault, about ""power/knowledge regimes,"" adding little insight but lots of jargon. That's a shame, since this clumsy rhetorical strategy partly obscures an excellent critique of the Bank's inner workings and external image-making. Photos.