Introduction to Development Studies CoConvenors A Pereira and

Introduction to Development Studies Co-Convenors: A. Pereira and A. Evans Module 4 YYD 0001 Term 1 Lecture 2 Postdevelopmentalism

Questions • What is postdevelopmentalism? • What are the postdevelopmentalists’ proposed alternatives to conventional development theory and practice?

Outline • • Basic ideas in postdevelopment Intellectual roots Proposed solutions Debate: should we all be postdevelopmentalists now? • Criticisms • Conclusion

Movements cited by postdevelopmental theorists • • • World Social Forum The EZLN (Zapatistas) The Chipko movement Via Campesina MST

Basic ideas • Development “does not work”, “has gone obsolete”, “stands like a ruin in the intellectual landscape” and “the time is ripe to write its obituary” (Sachs 1992). • A “train going nowhere” (Rahnema 1997: 383). • Development is a solution to something which is not a problem (relative vs absolute poverty).

Basic ideas (2) • President Truman’s Four Point Speech (1949) symbolically created “underdevelopment”. • The development machine creates a type of knowledge that enables the exercise of power. • Development creates categories such as “poor”, “illiterate” and “underdeveloped” and then proceeds to normalize them. • It is not that different from colonialism.

Basic ideas (3) • Catching-up with the west is an imposition. • Common men and women of the non. Western world do not want to be the ‘economic man’ of the West. • Catching-up would spell ecological disaster for all (resource pessimism).

Basic ideas (4) • Post-developmentalists (Escobar, Shiva, Sheth and Nandy) place their faith in social movements or grassroots initiatives that seek ‘fundamental social, political and economic transformation (Escobar 1995). • These refer to ‘new’ rather than ‘old’ social movements in which the emphasis is on what actors can do in their daily lives rather than any reformation of massive structures through class action. • New social movements include environmental and ecofeminist movements around the world. • The hope is for an era of ‘post-development’: ‘free of illusions, ideological perversions, hypocrisy and falsehoods’ (Rahnema 1997) and a return to all that development seems to have destroyed: idyllic communities, the simple life and cultural pluralism.

Basic ideas – three broad strands • Against neoclassical (liberal) economics and “economism” (prioritizing economic considerations). • Against Western projects of modernity and modernization. • Against the Enlightenment values of rationality and universalism, as well as “meta-narratives” (postmodernism) of economic, political and social change.

Intellectual roots – against liberal economics and economism • Against neoclassical economics and economism. • Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (1944). • Markets are not natural but were and are politically imposed. • Social movements and political parties committed to “de-commodifying” parts of social life are legitimate.

Against Western projects of modernity • • • Mahatma Gandhi (1869 -1948). Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society (1971). E. F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful (1973). Edward Said, Orientalism (1978). Ranajit Guha, Elemental Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India (1983). • J. Bandopadhyay and Vandana Shiva, Chipko: India’s Civilisational Response to the Forest Crisis (1986).

Against universalistic Enlightenment projects • Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison (1975). • Against Marxist “meta-narratives”. • A critique of the idea that prison reform was a movement towards a more “humane” system. • An understanding of knowledge as a system of power.

Proposed solutions • Imagine a different world – move from development alternatives to development. • Experts should “de-professionalize”. • Development should “let the “subaltern speak” – include the voices of the powerless and poor, and move from a top-down, homogenizing process of globalization towards the “pluriverse”.

Proposed solutions • Allow for the autonomy of local groups and social movements. • Allow for different cultural expressions and avoid giving primacy to the economic.

Debate • Should we all be post-developmentalists now? • Yes • No

Strengths • Postdevelopmentalism promotes reflection and self-criticism. • It is alive to Western-centrism, arrogance, and the abuse of power. • It criticizes the many shortcomings of development, especially top-down, largescale, centralized development projects.

Criticisms • In moving from the shortcomings of development to the “failure” of development, does it throw out the baby with the bathwater? • It trusts in the “voices of the people”, but what if many people want the kind of development posdevelopmentalists don’t like? • Is postdevelopmentalism wrong in being anti -science and anti-rationality?

Criticisms (2) • If knowledge is an assertion of power, what about the postdevelopmentalists’ own assertions? • Does the emphasis on “discourse” and “narratives” neglect the lived experience of people in the developing world? (i. e. despite the “failures” of development, life expectancy in India went from 44 to 58 for women between 1965 and 1990, and 46 to 60 for men in the same period.

Does it misrepresent new social movements? • Chipko activists include Gandhians, communists and also scientists, not just poor women hugging trees. • Ideas about forests, ecology, self-sufficient communities and women as the preservers of the environment mobilise a particular view of the past that is not historically verifiable. • It is also disturbingly elitist. • There is evidence that Chipko activists are concerned with contemporary concerns such as social justice, political democracy, modernising agriculture and linking with markets…. not with recreating an imagined traditional ecology (Sinha, Gururani and Greenberg 1997).

A question • Do the social forms of resistance that postdevelopmentalists use in their favour actually want to negate development or promote a more serious political engagement with development? • Could the emphasis on local autonomy and traditional cultures entrench

Conclusion • Postdevelopmentalism challenges orthodox approaches to development in the same way that dependency theory did in the 1960 s and 1970 s. • Postdevelopmentalism is strong on critique of actually existing development but weaker on clear alternatives to current concepts and practices.

For next week: • What is neoliberalism? • How did neoliberalism become a globally dominant ideology? • How does neoliberalism influence thought and practices in development? • What is the record of neoliberalism? • Are we still in a neoliberal era?

Also for next week • What is meant by “sustainable development”? • What is the mainstream approach to sustainable development, and what are some of the criticisms of it?