Arturo Escobar’s “The Invention of Development” provides a
historical account of the idea of development in contemporary literature to
have been created as the solution to the problems of the postcolonial world,
for which, he concludes that it failed to achieve the goals it had set for
itself (Escobar, 1999: 383). The notion of development resurfaced again in the
potwar period, albeit, it being reconfigured and conceived as economic growth.
Championed by the World Bank, raging poverty at the time, defined as people who
had an annual per capita income of less than $100, and comprised 70% of the
world’s population, were attributed to low economic growth. In this regard,
the remedy to this problem was, logically, to boost economic growth.
With development defined as economic growth, modernity and its
manifestations (industrialization, urbanization, and capital investment) were
proposed as the only solutions to the problem of under-development. This
discourse was propagated and transplanted through education programme, financial
assistance programmes, and all other possible avenues via the national and
international institutions and entire systems that were created to fight
poverty. According to Escobar (1999:384) in this conception, development
represents modernization of the indigenes of the south. In this case, one can
think of development as a concept that originated from the ideals of the
Enlightenment era that chastised capitalism best way to achieve economic growth.
Writing from poststructuralism tradition, Escobar notes that this conception of
development revolves around three meta-theories: transforming society towards
industrialization, modifying the values of society in favour of possessive
individualism, and capitalist development.
While economic growth is important for development, conceptualizing development as economic growth is narrow,
simplistic and problematic. It is devoid
of people, their political organization and cultures. Yes, development is quintessentially political and
potentially conflictual. Indeed, wherever human groups form there emerge some
universal and necessary processes which constitute politics. The bloodline of
all processes in all human collectives, politics can be summarized as all
activities of cooperation, conflict, and negotiation in decisions about
distribution of burdens and benefits among members of a given society.
Configured in the broader but neglected realm, development can be defined as
a transformative process of change in the structure and use of wealth and
power. Using this conceptualization, therefore, two pathways of pro-poor
development can be identified: a) when
a society changes the way, it distributes burdens and benefits. By societal
burdens, I mean the taxes and other obligations that are imposed on citizens by
the state; and societal benefits, I mean the public goods and services that are
provided by the state to protect its citizens, enhance their welfare, and
expand their life opportunities. When a society changes the way, it distributes
burdens and benefits, this also triggers changes the relations of power amongst
social groups within that society. For example, a land reform programme that
redistributes land resources to the landless families can alter the balance of
rural wealth and power. b) When a society
changes its political and social relations, this also changes the way in which
that particular society distributes its societal burdens and benefits. For
example, recognizing rights of trades unions or peasant movements, or
disenfranchisement of slaves in a particular society – are all expected to some
extent to affect the way the societal burdens and benefits are distributed,
wishfully, in favour of the majority.
The dominance of the narrow, simplistic and problematic conceptualization of development is telling of its results. Despite massive outlays of humanitarian aid and capital in the form of grants, loans and foreign direct investments from the north to the south, recipient countries are not registering commensurate economic growth, let alone, development. It is perhaps, time to re-look and re-consider development, away from the narrow conceptualizing as economic growth, to the broader conceptualizing that encompasses people, their political and social relations. The dominant concept of development has been reduced to implantation of the western economic and social values represented in modernity - industrialization, urbanization, and capital investment; the destruction of traditional ways of life and infuse them with the (”better”) western values in order to stop them from living precariously, and; in a certain way the demonization of the peasantry (in favour of capital) as an unproductive, surplus, and unprepared workforce, living anachronistic ways of life that they do not fit with modern ideals of prosperity. It can, thus, be postulated that the contemporary dominant notion of development is not a process made to improve people’s lives but a discourse that takes them little into account and generates many more results in the world that creates it, than in the one it tries to change. In short, development is simply doing something at the periphery while not disturbing or promoting economic growth at the centre.
Reference:
Escobar, A. (1999). The
Invention of Development. Current History, Vol. 98 no. 631: 382-87.
