The ideology of improvement and innovation serves as justification for colonialism and racial capitalism

Improvement was thus a key ideology in the formation of what Cedric Robinson () terms racial capitalism. Through his historical analysis, Robinson argues that the formation of racialized subjects was critical to the development of capitalism. Racism enabled both the exploitation of labor and the colonial expropriation of land. As Robinson puts it, ‘the development, organization, and expansion of capitalist society pursued essentially racial directions, so too did social ideology’ (, 2). With this insight, scholars have excavated how racism operated in the formation of liberal legal concepts. Building on the foundational work of Cheryl Harris () who described the co-construction of whiteness and private property in the United States, Brenna Bhandar analyzes the shared conceptual logics underpinning race and private property. She argues that the ideology of improvement served to legitimate claims for private property based on particular agricultural practices, racialized bodies, and culturally contingent visions of the natural world. As she puts it, ‘Colonialism took root on the grounds of this juridical formation, twinning the production of racial subjects with an economy of private property ownership that continues to prevail over indigenous and alternate modalities of relating to and using land and its resources’ (, 7). This ideology of improvement was also institutionalized in the emergent global legal order. Public international law was constituted during the colonial encounter (Anghie ). European legal theorists justified the extension of European sovereignty to occupied colonies because they argued that Indigenous peoples ‘lack[ed] recognizable institutions of sovereign authority’ to protect private property (Ince , 45). As Ntina Tzouvala () recounts, the rights and privileges associated with membership into the family of sovereign nations were only bequeathed to non-European peoples if they met a ‘standard of civilization.’ She describes how the standard of civilization oscillated between the ‘logic of biology’ and the ‘logic of improvement.’ Whereas the former posited immutable differences between Europeans and their colonial subjects, the latter ‘conceptualized and promoted the historically contingent form of capitalist modernity had assumed in the West as the only morally acceptable state of being and equated any deviation from it with collective moral failure’ (, 55). The ideology of improvement linked the micro-practices of land use to the racialized international order. The ideology of improvement has remained embedded in the structure of legal argument around self-determination (Tzouvala ) and continues to operate as an important discourse in projects of development (Li ), but its explicit mobilization as the ideology of capitalism has receded. Neoliberalism discursively displaced the overtly paternalist and racist tropes of improvement with a vision of progress and freedom through the marketplace. Nonetheless, neoliberalism has effectively reproduced unequal integration in the global economy established during the colonial era. Like the ideology of improvement, neoliberalism is fundamentally concerned with the construction and protection of private property rights, which it identifies as the state’s raison d’être. In the face of postcolonial nations’ call for permanent sovereignty over natural resources and a new international economic order, neoliberal trade agreements effectively ‘encased’ the market to protect property from the threat of democracy (Slobodian ). Yet as discontent over global inequality has expanded, especially since the 2007–2008 global food and financial crisis and the global pandemic, even the captains of global capital have begun to recognize that neoliberalism is failing to provide them with legitimacy. Klaus Schwab, the Chairman of the World Economic Forum, recently described the COVID-19 pandemic as the ‘death knell of neoliberalism’ (Malleret and Schwab , 78). In its wake, powerful actors are turning to a new ideology to promote capitalist development, environmental transformation, and sustainable global governance: innovation. The ideology of innovation Innovation emerged as a key framework for conceptualizing capitalist development beginning in the early twentieth century. The term comes from the Latin ‘to restore’ or ‘to renew.’ Joseph Schumpeter, with whom the concept of innovation is often identified, described innovation as ‘doing things differently in the realm of economic life’ ([] ). Writing in the 1930s, Schumpeter’s analysis of innovation marked a significant shift in dominant understandings of innovation – from a process that was seen by political elites as a threat to their hold on power to a necessary process for economic growth (Godin ). Building on the liberal tradition, Schumpeter attributed the products of innovation to the sociological persona of the entrepreneur. Though even at the time of his writing, critics charged that this individualistic approach failed to account for the collective processes through which ‘new’ ideas and technologies are developed (Sweezy ), innovation nonetheless became a credo of capitalist modernity within the context of shortening business cycles. Although economists now describe innovation as a critical element of economic growth, there is significant variation in how they understand the term. Many approach innovation as a technology-driven process of economic development and promote it as part of a package of macroeconomic policies that emphasize market liberalization. In turn, a growing number of scholars are developing approaches to innovation that are more centered on equitable or sustainable growth. For example, some economists challenge the neoliberal interpretation of innovation, elaborating a critical role for the state in promoting innovation and more equitable economic development (Mazzucato ; Papaioannou ). Others have developed concepts such as ‘inclusive innovation’ to center the role of marginalized communities in processes of social and economic transformation (George, McGahan, and Prabhu ; Pansera and Owen ). These debates increasingly take place through the emerging field of ‘innovation studies’ (Fagerberg and Verspagen ). Yet beyond these nuanced academic debates, innovation has taken on a life of its own – serving as what Benoît Godin describes as ‘a panacea for every social problem’ (, 8). As he argues, ‘Innovation has an attractive and unifying force because it has legitimacy and authority and is an incontestable value or ideology. Innovation itself is the criterion of judgment: Action is undertaken in the name of innovation’ (, 3).