Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
reasons why modernity would continue its dominance as the most influ-
ential economic structural force in the global South and across the
globalizing world that came into being from the 1980s onward.
The arguments provided in the chapters of Section 1 have already
demonstrated that the modern era of development did not, in fact, bring
about the development and societal transformations that the theories
reviewed in Chapter 2.1 promised. Before continuing with further chap-
ters that provide more detailed economic explanations of how this dis-
appointing situation came about, however, a review of alternative,
radical approaches is provided in Chapter 2.2. This enables the two
chapters to provide a comparative global picture of conventional versus
alternative models and ideologies of what might be construed as 'Third
World development'. More specifically, Chapter 2.2 focuses attention on
people's ideas and writings on radical and alternative approaches to
development. Because many of these approaches represented Third
World/global South 'voices from below', this review assesses the devel-
opment potential of various alternative models of 'grassroots develop-
ment' that were people-centred, humanitarian, socially just, and ethical
as well as environmentally sensitive.
This Section's coverage then returns to the documentation of the
temporal changes underway by offering a more detailed account of how
the global political and economic systems of both the global North and
global South were fundamentally transformed after the global economic
downturn of the early 1980s. Focusing on economic changes, neoliberal-
ism's ascendency - by which we mean the renewed faith in the effi-
ciency of the free market - is first explained in Chapter 2.3. Then the
all-encompassing widening scale and scope of globalizing forces during
the post-1980s era of globalization are detailed. As an accompanying
feature of neoliberal capitalism's dominance in geo-economic and
geo-political affairs, the overview provided in Chapter 2.3 illuminates
how the many changes brought about by globalization's influences
range from positive to negative and from destructive to constructive in
what Giddens (2003) has characterized as a globalizing 'runaway
world'.
Chapter 2.4 then documents how, for many in the 'development
establishment' such as development banks, international aid agencies,
and international financial institutions, the outlined conventional capi-
talist practices and development solutions were always preferred - despite
the counter-arguments of alternative, people-centred, 'development
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