Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
colonization, and found them destructive and disastrous consequences
of that continent's peripheral capitalist condition. His writings, span-
ning the 1970s to the present, are too voluminous to summarize here
but together they provide a comprehensive and persuasive case for the
failure of the 'development project' all over Africa (Amin, 2007). Amin
goes so far as to propose extreme measures to overcome the decades of
failed 'Eurocentrism' and its modernization approaches, such as
'delinking' from Europe and starting afresh (Amin, 1990).
'Development from Below' as an Answer to
'Development from Above'
Western modernity's externally driven strategies to bring about eco-
nomic, social, political and cultural changes in the underdeveloped cli-
ent states of the Third World came to be characterized as development
from above by its radical critics. They criticized its 'import-substitution
industrialization' and its monolithic and uniform value systems, which
lauded capitalist entrepreneurialism, urban living and intellectual
modernity. Such externally directed economic development commonly
perpetuated
dependencia
and reduced the effectiveness of internally
directed initiatives. As a result, national authority and endogenous
autonomy were inevitably compromised.
In contrast, development from below sought to replace such exter-
nally driven dependent and subordinate relations. It sought the crea-
tion of dynamic development impulses within less-developed areas,
such as those regions less favourable to urban-industrial growth and
'growth pole' development, like rural peripheries and the more remote
hinterlands. Thus, development from below was expected to increase
equity rather than inequity across regions.
From its inception in the 1970s, development from below was an
activist agenda with a progressive message on the need for radical
change in policy formulation and implementation. Succinctly, it was
maintained that economic '
growth
from above' needed to be supplanted
by '
development
from below' for people's basic, human needs to be met,
rather than the former's focus on the needs of elite minorities and the
powerful classes. Policy emphases needed to be reoriented towards ter-
ritorially organized basic-needs service provision. Rural and village
development should be as much a focus as urban-located development.
Labour-intensive activities and microeconomic small businesses and
projects should be favoured over high-technology entrepreneurialism.
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