Lecture # 2: What is Development?

Development is dominant trope of first/ third world relations.

Development is a highly contested term.
At the height of development discourse [the sets of practices and ideas about
development] in the 1950s and 1960s development meant a vision for the liberation of
people and has come to mean the vision of the liberalization of economies.

The four geographical areas that have traditionally constituted the 3rd world are: Latin
America [from Mexico to the southern tip of South America] & the Caribbean; South
East Asia; Sub-Saharan Africa; Middle East and North Africa. Later, South Pacific Island
Nations were included [in the past this area used to be referred to as Oceania].

Below are 3 ways to think about development:

1. Development as an historical and long-term process, as an unintentional process

[less value laden] less prescriptive. It advocates for the liberation of people
through structural transformation -- development as a process of change.
Development means changes in socio economic structures, change in one area
affects changes in other areas of the social world. This perspective on
development is not necessarily related to intentional or good change. In some
cases development involves decline, crisis and other problematic situations but
all of this can be accommodated within this wide perspective of socio-economic
change. Despite its generally non-prescriptive nature it resonates with meta-
narratives [big over arching stories with grand visions of societal transformations]

2. Development as an intentional activity [value-laden] prescriptive. This second

way is policy related, led by indicators, and is based on value judgments, and has
short- to medium-term time limits development as the MDGs (millennial
development goals), for example. The key feature of this perspective is that it is
focused on the outcomes of change so that it has a relatively short-term outlook,
leading some commentators to label it as ahistorical [does not consider history].
This is somewhat problematic to many of the more academic members of the
development community because it presupposes a set of (essentially bureaucratic
or governmental) goals or objectives, which may not be shared by many of the
people who are supposedly affected by these goals or practices. This means that
there is a paternalistic assumption as to what is good for peoples well being
based on a set of universal values and characteristics.

3. The third is post-modernist notion of development, drawing attention to the

ethnocentric and ideologically loaded Western conceptions of development and
raising the possibilities of alternative conceptions. Development as a dominant
discourse of western modernity that shapes and frames reality and power relations
[value laden] we need to problematize development

We can ask

1
Good for whom?
Whom does it benefit?
Whom does it harm?

difference as a value difference as a relationship

here we use 3rd way of conceptualizing development or problematizing development to

look at some of the major features of development discourse

We can think of Development as both a project and a process.

This project and process then does not proceed in a straight line.

(a) History is crucial

(b) Structural change.
(c) modernization is problematic
(d) Benefits in economic growth are not always equitable
(e) Sustainable Development
(f) Political change
(g) Economic determinism