Read chapter 1 and watch the clips from Life and Debt before doing the assignment.

Read: Vijay Prashad, Chapter 1, “The Demise of Northern Atlantic Liberalism,” in Vijay Prashad The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South, Verso, 2012.

Watch: Life and Debt, Stephanie Black (director), 2001. Since the full documentary is not available for free, I posted links to short 10-minute clips on Brightspace. Watch them in the order I posted. Our library has the documentary, so if you want to watch the entire documentary you can watch it there.

Answers the following two questions. At the end of each answer write the page number(s) to which you are referring to:

Question 1: In one part of this chapter Prashad argues that the debt crisis of the 1970s and 80s led to the destruction of the Third World Project. Explain the debt crisis by summarizing his analysis. You may also refer to the documentary.

Question 2: Countries in debt had to accept International Monetary Fund’s Structural Adjustment Programs in order to receive loans. What were the specific loan conditionalities? Hint: one of them was that a country had to privatize publicly owned companies. What were the other conditionalities?