Changing truths about East Asian industrialisation: an analysis of the discursive strategies of the international financial institutions

Abstract

The effects of the ongoing 'modernist project' continue to dominate contemporary world affairs. Perhaps the most dominant values and ideas within this 'project' are those formed and articulated via the discourse of liberalism. This thesis outlines a critical analysis of the discourse of liberalism in its current neo-liberal form, which draws from a range of theoretical perspectives, but uses post-structuralist ideas in particular. This study examines how neo-liberal discourse has been used in order to go about knowing the 'truth' about East Asian industrialisation in rationalist terms. The central question this thesis attempts to answer is: how did certain industrialisation experiences in East Asia come to be articulated in terms of a liberal miracle? The focus here is on the discourse of neo-liberalism as it has been institutionalised by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and this thesis attempts to demonstrate how the knowing practices of these organisations function to limit and distort what is analytically 'seen' when these methods are used to observe and interpret specific phenomena. Rather than seeing these knowing practices as neutral and value-free, it is argued here that the knowledge strategies of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund further some purposes and structure agendas in particular ways, rather than others. In order to analyse the effects of the limits and distortions of the discourse of neo-liberalism, these are examined through an analysis of how the World Bank evaluated the idea of an 'East Asian miracle' in the early 1990s, and an analysis of the role played by the IMF during the 'Asian crisis' in 1997-98.