Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
and the rise of post-developmental or anti-developmental arguments. We may
explore briefly the last of these elements here.
In the 1990s, there is a rising tide of criticism about development which
argues that the main thesis of development, largely from “us” to “them”, is itself
merely a thesis, a set of ideas, rather than a real process. Escobar (1995), for
example, writes of the “invention of development”, implying that the concept has
been produced out of the minds of politicians or academics, rather than out of an
actual process existing either now or in history. In this topic we will assume the
reality of the developmental process and the objective value of efforts now being
made. However, it is worth examining the opposing case which has been made
over the last ten years or so.
Escobar's view, to cite one foremost writer in this idiom, is that there is a
“discourse of development”, a set of ideas and propositions which are accepted
and which link logically together. This discourse starts with the proposition that
the development problem was discovered, perhaps as late as the end of the
Second World War, and stated as being the problem of poverty, linked to such
processes as population growth, the small farm size of the poor countries, and the
problem of the landless. This then is seen as a technical problem, which may be
overcome with technical means requiring special knowledge. In turn, this leads
on to the statement that the developed countries have the necessary skills and
knowledge in order to be able to solve the poverty problem, in their public
agencies and universities, together with the capital that is to be used in the
development process. This leads on flnally to the need for the developed
countries to intervene in the poor countries in order to sponsor their
development. There are other versions of the discourse. Some writers have traced
the development concept back to the 1920s or 1930s; the point is that the
concept is relatively new and in no way innate to human society. Emergence in
the 1930s may be presented as an exercise in legitimation. For those countries
such as Britain with a large empire, or the USA with an informal empire,
development needs provide a legitimation of their continued intervention in their
colonies or in countries where they held strong influence. For Slater (1995), the
discourse of importance is that of modernity, which begins with the
Enlightenment, the period in the eighteenth century when restrictions on rational
and scientific writings and research were generally lifted, and when many writers
discussed the possibilities of a continuous advance of humanity. Development is
thus seen as part of this movement towards modernity.
The idea that such a discourse should exist, independently of the facts, comes
from a number of French linguistic philosophy writers of the 1960s and 1970s
(Peet & Watts 1993). For them there is no necessary correspondence between
discourse and objective truth. The challenge to modernity comes from a school
of thought that has taken the period from the Enlightenment to the present as one
of modernity or modernization, and thus places itself as the school of post-
modernist writers. A broader view is taken by Cowen & Shenton (1996), in
looking at development in many different countries, and the statements of
Search WWH ::




Custom Search