Post-Development Discourse And Alternatives to Development presented for the fulfillment of the course development sociology in Hawassa university, Ethiopia

1. Post-Development Discourse
And
Alternatives to Development
By
Tomas Tsegaye Haki
January, 2020
Hawassa University, Ethiopia

2. Contents
Defining Discourse
Michel Foucault Discourse Analysis
Basic points of Post-Development
Arturo Escobar and post development

3. Defining Discourse
☻A discourse is a group of statements which provide a language
for talking about i.e., a way of representing a particular kind of
knowledge about a topic.
☻Discourse is system of knowledge or meaning that is shared by
various people. It can be produced by many individuals in
different institutional settings (like families, prisons, hospitals,
and asylums).
☻ Its integrity or “coherence” does not depend on whether it
issues from one place or from a single speaker or “subject.”
(Oxford University Press Canada, 2017)
☻Discourse are a productive force because it shapes our
thoughts, ideas, beliefs, values, identities, interactions with
others, and our behavior.

4. Discourse Cont’d
☻For example, if we use the discourse of “the West and the
Rest” we will necessarily find ourselves speaking from a
position that holds that the West is a superior civilization.
☻Another example, in development it is impossible to talk about
development without referring to concepts such as poverty,
production, the notion of the state, or equality.
☻These concepts first rose to prominence during modern
Western history and only then have they been projected on the
rest of the world.

5. Michel Foucault
(15 October 1926 – 25 June 1984) aged 57
☻ Michel Foucault, was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, social
theorist and literary critic.
☻ Discourse, as defined by Foucault, refers to: ways of constituting
knowledge, together with the social practices, forms of subjectivity
and power relations which inhere in such knowledges and relations
between them.
☻ Foucault’s knowledge/power regimes suspend categories of truth
and falsity ( Fraser 1989).
☻ Foucault's focus is upon questions of how some discourses have
shaped and created meaning systems that have gained the status and
currency of 'truth', and dominate how we define and organize both
ourselves and our social world, whilst other alternative discourses
are marginalised and subjugated, yet potentially 'offer' sites where
hegemonic practices can be contested, challenged and 'resisted'.

6. Post-Development Discourse
☻ Post-Development theories are highly influenced by Foucault and
the method of discourse analysis: consequently, hegemony and
power structures are being deconstructed.
☻ Post-development theory arose in the 1980s and 1990s through the
works of scholars like Arturo Escobar, Gustavo Esteva, Majid
Rahnema, Wolfgang Sachs, James Ferguson, Serge Latouche, and
Gilbert Rist.
☻ Wolfgang Sachs, (1992) "The Development dictionary. A guide to
knowledge as power” he was a German sociologist.
☻Wolfgang Sachs = environmentally sustainable development
☻ Post-development critics referred to the ‘invention of
underdevelopment’ by US-President Truman’s ‘bold new program’
announced on January 20, 1949, which defined Africa, Asia and
Latin America as ‘underdeveloped areas’ in need of ‘development’.

7. Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_S._Truman
Following World War Two, the
United States found itself in a
Cold War struggle against the
USSR. The Truman
administration came up with the
idea for a technical assistance
program as a means to win the
"hearts and minds" of the
developing world.

8. Truman Speech
□ “More than half the people of the world are living in conditions
approaching misery. Their food is inadequate, they are victims of disease.
Their economic life is primitive and stagnant. Their poverty is a handicap
and a threat both to them and to more prosperous areas. For the first
time in history humanity possesses the knowledge and the skill to relieve
the suffering of these people. . . . I believe that we should make available
to peace-loving peoples the benefits of our store of technical knowledge
in order to help them realize their aspirations for a better life. . . . What
we envisage is a program of development based on the concepts of
democractic fair dealing. . . . Greater production is the key to prosperity
and peace. And the key to greater production is a wider and more
vigorous application of modern scientific and technical knowledge.
(Truman [1949] 1964)”
□ From this time American hegemony was started.

9. Cont’d
□ For Truman , development consisted simply of growth in the
income per person in economically underdeveloped areas.
□ After that there are many things are created include:
□ The United Nations Charter in 1947 and other big organizations.
□ And it became clear that rapid growth had been accompanied by
increasing inequalities.
□ By then, economists were more inclined to acknowledge social
aspects as ‘social obstacles’.

10. Post-D… Cont’d
□ Wolfgang Sachs (1992), The Development Dictionary…
□ The last forty years can be called the age of development. This
epoch is coming to an end. The time is ready to write its obituary.
□ Post development is derives from its claim that the ‘era of
development’ is ending and it is time to think about alternatives.
□ They view development as a hegemonic and monolithic discourse
and it is an arbitrary concept rooted in a meta-narrative that, in turn,
only benefits its practitioners.
□ Post-development theorists maintain that the real aim of
development is intimately linked to modernization, which broadens
the control of the Western world and its nationalist allies within the
‘developing’ world (Rapley, 2004: 350).

11. Post-D.. Cont’d
□ Post-development theory has also been characterized as ‘beyond
development’ and ‘anti-development’ for its disruption of
development’s reductive nature.
□ Development was subsequently rejected because its discourse
essentialized non-Western cultures into their deficiencies, and thus
portrayed it as a region in need of modernizing along Western models
(Constantino, 1985; Nandy, 1988; Kothari, 1988; Rist, 1990).
□ Development is rooted in western influence, the developmental
discourse reflects the unequal power relations between the west and the
rest of the world, whereby the western knowledge of development,
approach toward development, and conception of what development
entails, as well as perceptions of progress, directs the course for the rest
of the world.
□ Post-development’s pioneers see : development colonised the world by
ordering it into ‘us’ and ‘them’, ‘the developed’ and ‘underdeveloped’
(Nustad 1998: 42; cf. Brigg 2002).

12. Post-D.. Cont’d
□ According to them, the way we understand development is
rooted in the earlier colonial discourse that depicts the North
as "advanced" and "progressive", and the South as
"backward", "degenerate" and "primitive".
□ The post-development school of thought points out that the
models of development are often ethnocentric (in this case
Eurocentric), universalist, and based on western models of
industrialization that are unsustainable in this world of limited
resources and ineffective for their ignorance of the local,
cultural and historical contexts of the peoples to which they
are applied.

13. Arturo Escobar
□ Arturo Escobar (born 1952, age 68)
□ is a Colombian-American
anthropologist and the Kenan
Distinguished Professor of
Anthropology at the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA.
His academic research interests
include political ecology, anthropology
of development, social movements,
anti-globalization movements, and
post development theory.
Source:
https://redantropologiaambiental.wordp
ress.com/2015/03/23/pagina-web-del-
antropologo-arturo-escobar/

14. Escobar cont’d
□ His “Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third
World” in 1995
□ Escobar, who is called to be one of the most important Post-Development
authors, speaks of the following characteristics that mark Post-
Development literature (Ziai 2007: 100):
 the interest in alternatives to development, not the interest of alternative
development
 a fundamental rejection of the classical development paradigm an
interest in local culture and local knowledge
 a critical perspective on established scientific discourses denying their
status as only valid form of knowledge;
 solidarity for pluralistic grassroots movements
 a critique of economic growth, the model of homo oeconomicus, and
economics as a science.

15. Escobar cont’d
□ According to Escobar, the post-development school of thought
is interested (in terms of searching for an alternative to
development) in "local culture and knowledge; a critical stance
toward established scientific discourses; and the defense and
promotion of localized, pluralistic grassroots movements."
□ According to Escobar, post-developmental thinking believes that
the economy must be based around solidarity and reciprocity;
policy must focus on direct democracy; and knowledge systems
should be traditional, or at least a hybrid of modern and
traditional knowledge.
□ Post-development thought takes inspiration from vernacular
societies, the informal sector and frugal rather than materialistic
lifestyles.

16. Escobar cont’d
□ Escobar argued that the Western model of
development justified itself by claiming to be rational
and scientific, and therefore neutral and objective.
□ Modernisation theory effectively denied people within
developing countries the opportunity to make their
own choices and decisions.

17. Criticisms
□ Post-development theory sees all development as imposed
upon the developing world by the West(umbrella of Western
hegemony).
□ A rejection of all development is a rejection of the possibility
for material advancement and transformation. It ignores the
tangible transformations in life opportunities and health and
material well-being that has been evident in parts of the
developing world.
□ Post-development theorists fail to notice the heterogeneity
within development discourse.
□ Kiely notes that not all grassroots movements are progressive.
Post-development is seen to empower anti-modern
fundamentalists and traditionalists, who may hold non-
progressive and oppressive values.