Post-Development Thinking

Paper Summary:

The paper provides an historical, analytical and critical analysis of development theories. It traces development from modernization, as a globalization project and as a post-structuralist construction. The paper argues that post-structuralism in development studies has opened a wider debate in critically understanding development theory and practice, but the paradigm falls short as a historical project for emancipation and empowerment.

Table of Contents:
Introduction
Modernism, Marxism and Neoliberalism vs. Post-Structuralism
What has Post-Structuralism done in the Development Debate?

From the Paper:

"The crisis of development theory and practice dates back in the 1980s when development as a project failed to alleviate majority of the people from poverty, the crisis of alternatives to neoliberalism due to the collapse of socialism, and the claims of diversity and rejection of homogenisation of the category "Third World" (Simon 1997). The rise of the neoliberal discourse - roughly the emphasis on the market over the state in governance - reached its global scope as hegemonic states and international institutions implemented the Washington Consensus across regions: structural adjustment programs (SAPs) in Latin America and Africa, 'shock therapy' liberalisation and privatisation in post-communist countries, and financial liberalisation coupled with currency devaluation in Asian developmental states as a response to the 1997 Asian Crisis. This interventionist prescription resonating from the international down to the local levels represent what critiques of this development paradigm call modernist or structuralist view on development. Post-development discourse is founded on three critiques to modernization theory: the failure of the development process to alleviate the poor and the marginalised from poverty and hunger; the exclusion of the participants themselves from the formulation of these development strategies; and the over-emphasis of Marxist and Modernist theories on structures rather than agency towards social change."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Brigg, M. 2002. "Post-development, Foucault, and the colonisation metaphor", Third World Quarterly, 23 (3), 421-436.
• Corbridge, S. 1998. "'Beneath the pavement only soil': the poverty of post-development", Journal of Development Studies, 34 (6), 138-48.
• Crush, J. 1996. The Power of Development, London: Routledge.
• Dragsbaek Schmidt, J. and J. Hersh. 2000. Globalization and Social Change, London and New York: Routledge.
• Escobar, A. 1995. Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

More papers on Post-Development Thinking :

• Descriptive Essay # 111814 : "Post Modern Architects"
• Analytical Essay # 24471 : "Modernism and Post-Modernism"
• Research Proposal # 98606 : "Computer-Supported-Collaborative-Learning (CSCL) Tools"

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