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In-Depth Information
The Impasse in Development Studies
and Post-development
Until the mid-1980s, post-World War II development shared at least three
characteristics and these included:
(1) The essentialisation of the Third World and its inhabitants as homoge-
neous entities.
(2) The unconditional belief in the concept of progress and the makeability
of society.
(3) The importance of the (nation) state as an analytical frame of reference
and a political and scientific confidence in the role of the state to realize
progress. (Schuurman, 2000: 8)
However, frustration developed around these characteristics, leading
to what has become known as the impasse in development studies. Writing
in 1993, Schuurman identified seven reasons for the impasse in develop-
ment studies:
(1) realisation that the gap between rich and poor nations was continuing
to widen;
(2) recognition that developing countries were more concerned with short-
term policies to keep their heads above water in terms of debt and not
able to implement policies on intermediate or long-term bases;
(3) economic growth was having major impacts on the environment and
advocates of sustainable development called for reduced growth which
does not correlate with existing development theories;
(4) socialism was no longer seen as viable politically to solve development
problems;
(5) with world markets and globalisation there was recognition that tradi-
tional development theories that focused on the role of the state did not
coincide with the reduction in state power;
(6) recognition that a homogeneous 'Third World' did not exist;
(7) rise of postmodernism in social science undermining grand narratives.
(Cited in Telfer, 2009)
Other authors also identified related causes for the impasse. Binns and Nel
(1999) argued that the general failure of grand development narratives in the
post-World War II era, the theoretical vacuum left with the collapse of state
socialism in the 1980s and dubious results of structural adjustment combined
to create the impasse in development thinking in the 1990s. In fact, the 1980s
have been referred to as the lost decade of development. Schuurman (1993,
cited in Hettne, 2009) also identified the three main causes for the paradigm
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