Authors:
Mayank Singh (HS10H021)
Development is a kind of discourse built upon the assumption that the political and socio-economic problems of the third world can be solved by replication of Western modernization in these countries. The general understanding of development is associated with economic growth, but this a very limited understanding of development. Theories of development have been influenced by major discipline like sociology, which look at how the practices of individual or society changed over time. Development as discourse and practice has a long history that could be traced down with the emergence of modernity. One of the ways to look at the process of development is to see how certain development or modernization theories became so dominant in today’s World.
Economic sociology is derived from theories dealing with the cultural origins and social evolution of the modern human character in the context of the development of equally modern social, cultural, and political institution. Economic sociology deals with the origin of economic behaviour. Modernization theory, sociology’s influential account of development, is excessively Eurocentric in terms of its account of the universal supremacy of western rationalism and Western institutions. Modernization theory, basically says: if you want to develop, be like us (West).
One theme in this philosophical background is “naturalism.” Naturalistic theories in sociology (and geography) drew on biology to argue that natural environments create societies and people and that these have different potentials for development—some people (Europeans) develop earlier and faster than others because of natural superiority. A second theme is rationalism, it means the capacity for humans to control the World through thought, logic, and calculation or in other words people depend on some logical explanation for phenomena, instead of some divine explanation for that. Weberian sociology looked to the emergence of a certain kind of culture, specifically a form of thinking called rationalism, to explain European progress. Another significant theme is Structural functionalism, which states that society is a system of institutions that fulfils naturalistic functions. Structural functionalism, the leading paradigm in sociology in the post-World War II period, combined naturalism with rationalism in creating a neo-evolutionary (part biological, part cultural, part sociological) theory of modernization.
Modernization theory spelled out the geography of a global system divided into:-
(1) Centers of modern progress and
(2) Peripheries of traditional backwardness, with the center (West) showing the peripheries (East) their future.
There is a long history of ideas about the stages of growth in various Enlightenment theories of human progress. An important theorist in this tradition is W.W Rostow and his contribution of The Stages of Economic Growth. Rostow argued that in economic dimensions, all societies lay within one of five historical categories:
1.Traditional Societies
2.Preconditions for take-off
3. Take-off
4. The drive toward maturity
5. High mass consumption
All these sociological and geographic theories saw development as far more than economic growth. Modernization theory began by criticizing the narrow focus of neoclassical economics. Yet, like neo-liberalism, modernization makes everyone’s experience with development copy the approaches and accomplishments of the West. The point is that development is a form of social imagination. Its theories are as much persuasive ideologies as they are models of deduced understanding.
Criticism of Development
All the development theories discuss above by and large are theories develop and experience in the west. These theories are product of modernity. Economic development theories have a closed relationship with Industrial revolution of 18th century. Modernity was emerged in the first World and later it was imposed or introduced in the third World, mostly via colonialism. Development thinking took systematic and structural forms. These highly generalized theories tried to position every historical event and place each social characteristic, as a component of some more general overarching system, be it mode of production, world capitalist system, or global market. Explaining something meant putting it into the context of its more general system or structure. Structural theories were the basis for political and social movements calling for the transformation of society through development—that is, development is a way of restructuring society. The theories behind all this can b seen as culminating triumphs of radical modern social philosophy. Since 1980s onwards, many critical development theorist started question the project of development. Edward Said’s Orientalism was an important moment in the application of post- structural ideas to the relations between the First World and Third Worlds. From then onwards post-structural ideas began to appear in post-development thought. Critical development studies challenged the notion of development as a practice and idea. Post-structuralism, Post-colonialism and Post-developmentalism are theories, which vehemently attacks the notion of development.
Post-development theory states that the whole concept and practice of development is a reflection of Western hegemony over the rest of the world. It critique against development project and development theory. There main argument against development is that development as an ideology and a social vision is ingrained in the ideals of modernization, which holds western economic structure and society as universal model for others to follow and imitate. Rooted in western influence, the developmental discourse reflects the unequal power relation between the west and the rest of the world. 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. Arturo Escobar, James Ferguson and Majid Rahnema are some of the most celebrated writers of Post-development theory. Post-Development theory not only discards the project of development but it also offers an alternative to development. Where they are interested in ‘’local culture and Knowledge; defence and promotion of localized, pluralist grassroots movements.’’ In other words, people will define their own course of development, instead of imposing a Western model of development on them.
Post-structural criticism brought two kinds of change to the field. First, there was a change in attitudes toward development. Progress, improvement, and development—all had been assumed to be automatically good at the level of intuition. Yet, with post- structuralism, what previously had been assumed to be progressive, beneficial, and humane, was now seen as powerful, controlling, and detrimental. The very notions of “progress” and “beneficial” became suspect in terms not only of “beneficial for whom?” but also, more revealingly, in terms of “Who determines what ‘beneficial’ means?” or “Why does beneficial assume that life is progress?” Austrian anarchist philosopher Ivan Illich found the rational human decreasingly able to shape his or her environment because one’s energies were consumed in procuring new models of the latest goods. Rich nations, he said, imposed a straightjacket of traffic jams, hospital confinements, and classrooms on poor nations and called it “development.” Yet, more people, quantitatively and relatively, suffered from hunger, pain, and exposure than at the end of World War II. For Illich, underdevelopment was a kind of consciousness rather than a deficient standard of living, a reified state of mind in which mass needs were converted into demands for packaged solutions forever beyond reach of the majority.
Second, there was a change in the methodology of development studies. This involved re-examining what previously had been taken for granted. Development had been seen as a necessary dynamic of social life, something that occurred almost naturally in the modern world. Development happened as a necessary process, in the modern understanding, unless blocked by countervailing forces that should be overcome and removed. For post structuralists, the term “development” was an invention, or social construction, and the concept had a discursive or cultural (rather than natural) history. From this view, economic agents acted as culturally produced identities. Economic rationalities were culturally created, took diverse forms, had distinct geographies, and produced specific forms of development as culturally embedded economic logics. As a cultural logic, development existed in two linked forms: a set of ideas, forms of behaviour, and social practices operating directly in the economic world; and a discourse representing these real practices, but originating in academia, state bureaucracies, and institutions.
Post-colonialism offers extreme scepticism about the Western project of reason, truth, and progress. Post-colonialism is an academic discipline featuring methods of intellectual discourse that analyse, explain, and respond to the cultural legacies of colonialism and of imperialism, to the human consequences of controlling a country. Post-colonial studies analyse the politics of knowledge (creation, control, and distribution) by analysing the functional relations of social and political power that sustain colonialism. Post-colonialism questions and reinvents the modes of cultural perception-the ways of viewing and of being viewed. Post-colonial studies look at the construction of identities, like the ‘’Third World’’ and ‘‘Other’’.
The field of development studies has undergone a significant critique an rethinking—indeed, the very notion of development has increasingly been challenged.
Problems with criticism
Post-development theory challenges the discourse of development. But, there are problems with this criticism, too. One way to say is that Post-development theory is anti-modernization. They reject any notions or practices that come out of modernity in solving the problems. In the above section we discuss about both modernization and anti-development theory. Now, we look at the challenged associated with post- developmentalist theory.
One of the main accusations levelled at Post-Development is its essentialization of Development; this is quite serious as for many writers, Development as discourse is the basis for their critique. Post-development portrays Development discourse as some kind of ‘’monolithic structure’’. The heterogeneity of years of development theory and policy and especially the originality of alternative approaches is not adequately taken into account. Theorist criticizes post-development’s association of Development with Westernisation, which, they claims, denies the agency of Southern actors themselves, as well as ignoring the heterogeneity of ‘the West’, the differences between Europe and the United States for example, as well as Japan and what happened with the East Asian miracle. Crush notes that it is the actual call for banishment that essentializes Development, this very act assumes there is an ‘unequivocal definition’
Another criticism of post-development is its reification of local cultures and communities and romanticization of non-western communities. Also the complete rejection of modernity ignores many of its positive achievements, for example in medicine, such as increases in life expectancy. It can be argued that symbols of modernity such as nuclear power are precisely what is wrong with modernity, yet, it is also useful when asking particularly for who is modernity bad for. Surely it is too much of a generalization to suggest that such icons of modernity are not desired by those in the South, and at least patronizing to suggest that it is bad for them. The rejection of universalism, for example, human rights and the celebration of cultural difference, conceals or even willingly accepts, many traditional forms of oppression and cruelty, such as female genital mutilation. Finally, there is the argument that post-development is purely critique and offers no solutions.
Development from the perspective of Critical modernism
First we looked at theories of development that take a conventionally uncritical view of Western modernism as the best social paradigm that has ever existed and that we can ever achieve. Then we looked at Anti-development and problem with that theory. Now we look at “critical modernity.” Critical modernism focus on the question of development—understood as the social use of economic progress—as a central theme of our age. On the one hand, development simply as aggregate economic growth cannot continue much longer— natural constraints prevent this, and there are abundant natural signs of approaching catastrophe. On the other hand, development as material transformation for the world’s hungry people is an ethical and practical necessity, just as pressing as the natural constraints on growth. There is a need to transform the “Development’’-as a meaning and practices.
There is need to compare critical modernism with postmodernism, in order to understand it better. Critical modernism criticizes material power relations in order to change them, while postmodernism criticizes discourses and ideas to undermine their modern certainty; critical modernism wants to transform development, while postmodernism wants to abandon it. These differences derive not only from the nature of the critique—so that postmodernism focuses on development as discourse, while critical modernism emphasizes development as a class and gendered practice—but derive also from differences about the social object that forms the target of criticism, whether modernism or capitalism.
Critical modernism remains modern in terms of favouring a scientific attitude toward the world that is, requiring some kind of evidence before believing. Critical modernism focuses on a critique of capitalism as the social form taken by the modern world rather than on modernism as an overgeneralised discursive phenomenon. We need to more actively focus on modernity as a form of capitalist practice guided by social relations rather than criticizing modernity as a discursive formation. We should learn to live with modernity by criticizing and changing it.
Critical modernist developmentalism gains insight from the Marxist, post-structural, and feminist critiques of modernity, but it emphasizes belief more in the potential, rather than the practice, of contemporary development.
Critical modernism entails a critique of capitalist power systems in socialist terms of class ownership of productive resources, in feminist terms of male dominance, and in post-structural terms of the hegemony of elite imaginaries and discourses. it converts these negative criticisms into the positives of a series of political proposals on how to change the meaning and practices of modernism. Critical modernism distrusts any elite, whether it be entrepreneurial, bureaucratic, scientific, intellectual, racial, geographic, or patriarchal. Critical modernism favours the views of oppressed peoples of all kinds— from peasant social movements, to indigenous organizations, to women organizing for reproductive rights, to working-class movements. Even so, “favouring” or “valuing” the ideas of oppressed peoples does not mean believing everything their leaders say in a kind of new-age romanticism that finds eternal wisdom glistening on the shaman’s prayer. And while poor people’s movements have to be seen in their own terms and contexts, critical modernism favors alliances that draw together the powers of the oppressed majority in countering what would otherwise be the overwhelming power of the exploiting minority. Critical modernism listens to what people have to say.
Most importantly, critical modernism remains modern in terms of favoring a basically rational scientific attitude toward the world—that is, requiring some kind of evidence before believing rather than accepting purely on faith, as with pre-modern understanding, or denying any validity to evidential truth, as with much of post- structuralism. What Critical Modernism basically says is that we should learn to live with modernity by criticizing and changing it.
Democratic Development
Critical modernism focus on the question of development, understood as social, democratic control over economic progress. Development as social transformation on behalf of the world’s poor people is democratic in intent and effect. Equality, possibility, livelihood, removing the overwhelming might of material constrain —these are the conditions for democracy, understood as the collective freedom to make the basic decisions that determine individual and social existence. To achieve anything like this, “development” has to be transformed—as a term with meaning, as a belief in better things, as a practice employing millions of altruistic people, and as the main hope for a saner world. There is need to draw from alternative principles, pieces of evidence, lots of experience, and millions of committed people who want nothing more than to engage in a democratic discourse on development alternatives.
Ethics
Ethics are principles of right and wrong, good and bad that human beings, following their best intentions, try to exercise in their relations with others and with the natural world. Ethics can be derived far more directly in the historical terms of human experience—for example, discussing the conditions under which people are happiest or forms of life are environmentally most sustainable. In other words, when we ask how we should live and why societies develop in certain ways, the only sure guide is what we have done over long periods of time (the real eternal) and what we can learn from history, practice, and experience, all mediated through discussion.
In the case of development, however, the ethical problems of what and how much to produce are made more transparent by the needs of the world’s billion poverty- stricken people. There is a disturbing tendency for post-structural discussions to see poverty in terms of the social construction of a deficient world rather than the material reality of absolute deprivation in a deficient world. This tendency in accompanied by the ethical advocacy of “convivial poverty” and the spiritual ideal of simplicity and frugality (Rahnema 1997). Support comes from such adages as: “You are poor because you look at what you do not have. See what you possess, see what you are, and you will discover that you are astonishingly rich” (Rist 1997: 294). If poverty is considered purely as a social construct, or something that has entirely different meanings depending on the cultural context, then simplicity, dignity, and the discovery of inner richness may have some validity as ethical responses. But if poverty is considered materially as the absolute lack of inputs vital to continued existence, such as not enough food (of any kind) to keep people alive—near-universal reality—then post-developmental ethical advocacy is a cruel hoax—it amounts to telling those about to expire that they are (astonishingly!) rich, that they should die with “dignity” rather than struggle for life. But poor people are not quietly dignified—they are actively so. The poor have spoken—we only have to listen. And they want what they need: work, food, shelter, and services. These are authentic needs that satisfy any ethical principle, whether of happiness or scarcity. The ethical question is not whether, but how, to provide basic needs and the means of providing for needs is called development.
References:
Peet & Hartwick. Theories of development : contentions, arguments, alternatives. New York: The Guilford Press, 2009.
Illich, I. “Development as Planned Poverty.” The Post-development Reader. Eds. Rahnema and Bawtree. Zed Books Ltd. 1997
Rist, G. The History of Development: From Western Origins to Global Faith. London: Zed Books. 1997.
Mayank Singh (HS10H021)
Development is a kind of discourse built upon the assumption that the political and socio-economic problems of the third world can be solved by replication of Western modernization in these countries. The general understanding of development is associated with economic growth, but this a very limited understanding of development. Theories of development have been influenced by major discipline like sociology, which look at how the practices of individual or society changed over time. Development as discourse and practice has a long history that could be traced down with the emergence of modernity. One of the ways to look at the process of development is to see how certain development or modernization theories became so dominant in today’s World.
Economic sociology is derived from theories dealing with the cultural origins and social evolution of the modern human character in the context of the development of equally modern social, cultural, and political institution. Economic sociology deals with the origin of economic behaviour. Modernization theory, sociology’s influential account of development, is excessively Eurocentric in terms of its account of the universal supremacy of western rationalism and Western institutions. Modernization theory, basically says: if you want to develop, be like us (West).
One theme in this philosophical background is “naturalism.” Naturalistic theories in sociology (and geography) drew on biology to argue that natural environments create societies and people and that these have different potentials for development—some people (Europeans) develop earlier and faster than others because of natural superiority. A second theme is rationalism, it means the capacity for humans to control the World through thought, logic, and calculation or in other words people depend on some logical explanation for phenomena, instead of some divine explanation for that. Weberian sociology looked to the emergence of a certain kind of culture, specifically a form of thinking called rationalism, to explain European progress. Another significant theme is Structural functionalism, which states that society is a system of institutions that fulfils naturalistic functions. Structural functionalism, the leading paradigm in sociology in the post-World War II period, combined naturalism with rationalism in creating a neo-evolutionary (part biological, part cultural, part sociological) theory of modernization.
Modernization theory spelled out the geography of a global system divided into:-
(1) Centers of modern progress and
(2) Peripheries of traditional backwardness, with the center (West) showing the peripheries (East) their future.
There is a long history of ideas about the stages of growth in various Enlightenment theories of human progress. An important theorist in this tradition is W.W Rostow and his contribution of The Stages of Economic Growth. Rostow argued that in economic dimensions, all societies lay within one of five historical categories:
1.Traditional Societies
2.Preconditions for take-off
3. Take-off
4. The drive toward maturity
5. High mass consumption
All these sociological and geographic theories saw development as far more than economic growth. Modernization theory began by criticizing the narrow focus of neoclassical economics. Yet, like neo-liberalism, modernization makes everyone’s experience with development copy the approaches and accomplishments of the West. The point is that development is a form of social imagination. Its theories are as much persuasive ideologies as they are models of deduced understanding.
Criticism of Development
All the development theories discuss above by and large are theories develop and experience in the west. These theories are product of modernity. Economic development theories have a closed relationship with Industrial revolution of 18th century. Modernity was emerged in the first World and later it was imposed or introduced in the third World, mostly via colonialism. Development thinking took systematic and structural forms. These highly generalized theories tried to position every historical event and place each social characteristic, as a component of some more general overarching system, be it mode of production, world capitalist system, or global market. Explaining something meant putting it into the context of its more general system or structure. Structural theories were the basis for political and social movements calling for the transformation of society through development—that is, development is a way of restructuring society. The theories behind all this can b seen as culminating triumphs of radical modern social philosophy. Since 1980s onwards, many critical development theorist started question the project of development. Edward Said’s Orientalism was an important moment in the application of post- structural ideas to the relations between the First World and Third Worlds. From then onwards post-structural ideas began to appear in post-development thought. Critical development studies challenged the notion of development as a practice and idea. Post-structuralism, Post-colonialism and Post-developmentalism are theories, which vehemently attacks the notion of development.
Post-development theory states that the whole concept and practice of development is a reflection of Western hegemony over the rest of the world. It critique against development project and development theory. There main argument against development is that development as an ideology and a social vision is ingrained in the ideals of modernization, which holds western economic structure and society as universal model for others to follow and imitate. Rooted in western influence, the developmental discourse reflects the unequal power relation between the west and the rest of the world. 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. Arturo Escobar, James Ferguson and Majid Rahnema are some of the most celebrated writers of Post-development theory. Post-Development theory not only discards the project of development but it also offers an alternative to development. Where they are interested in ‘’local culture and Knowledge; defence and promotion of localized, pluralist grassroots movements.’’ In other words, people will define their own course of development, instead of imposing a Western model of development on them.
Post-structural criticism brought two kinds of change to the field. First, there was a change in attitudes toward development. Progress, improvement, and development—all had been assumed to be automatically good at the level of intuition. Yet, with post- structuralism, what previously had been assumed to be progressive, beneficial, and humane, was now seen as powerful, controlling, and detrimental. The very notions of “progress” and “beneficial” became suspect in terms not only of “beneficial for whom?” but also, more revealingly, in terms of “Who determines what ‘beneficial’ means?” or “Why does beneficial assume that life is progress?” Austrian anarchist philosopher Ivan Illich found the rational human decreasingly able to shape his or her environment because one’s energies were consumed in procuring new models of the latest goods. Rich nations, he said, imposed a straightjacket of traffic jams, hospital confinements, and classrooms on poor nations and called it “development.” Yet, more people, quantitatively and relatively, suffered from hunger, pain, and exposure than at the end of World War II. For Illich, underdevelopment was a kind of consciousness rather than a deficient standard of living, a reified state of mind in which mass needs were converted into demands for packaged solutions forever beyond reach of the majority.
Second, there was a change in the methodology of development studies. This involved re-examining what previously had been taken for granted. Development had been seen as a necessary dynamic of social life, something that occurred almost naturally in the modern world. Development happened as a necessary process, in the modern understanding, unless blocked by countervailing forces that should be overcome and removed. For post structuralists, the term “development” was an invention, or social construction, and the concept had a discursive or cultural (rather than natural) history. From this view, economic agents acted as culturally produced identities. Economic rationalities were culturally created, took diverse forms, had distinct geographies, and produced specific forms of development as culturally embedded economic logics. As a cultural logic, development existed in two linked forms: a set of ideas, forms of behaviour, and social practices operating directly in the economic world; and a discourse representing these real practices, but originating in academia, state bureaucracies, and institutions.
Post-colonialism offers extreme scepticism about the Western project of reason, truth, and progress. Post-colonialism is an academic discipline featuring methods of intellectual discourse that analyse, explain, and respond to the cultural legacies of colonialism and of imperialism, to the human consequences of controlling a country. Post-colonial studies analyse the politics of knowledge (creation, control, and distribution) by analysing the functional relations of social and political power that sustain colonialism. Post-colonialism questions and reinvents the modes of cultural perception-the ways of viewing and of being viewed. Post-colonial studies look at the construction of identities, like the ‘’Third World’’ and ‘‘Other’’.
The field of development studies has undergone a significant critique an rethinking—indeed, the very notion of development has increasingly been challenged.
Problems with criticism
Post-development theory challenges the discourse of development. But, there are problems with this criticism, too. One way to say is that Post-development theory is anti-modernization. They reject any notions or practices that come out of modernity in solving the problems. In the above section we discuss about both modernization and anti-development theory. Now, we look at the challenged associated with post- developmentalist theory.
One of the main accusations levelled at Post-Development is its essentialization of Development; this is quite serious as for many writers, Development as discourse is the basis for their critique. Post-development portrays Development discourse as some kind of ‘’monolithic structure’’. The heterogeneity of years of development theory and policy and especially the originality of alternative approaches is not adequately taken into account. Theorist criticizes post-development’s association of Development with Westernisation, which, they claims, denies the agency of Southern actors themselves, as well as ignoring the heterogeneity of ‘the West’, the differences between Europe and the United States for example, as well as Japan and what happened with the East Asian miracle. Crush notes that it is the actual call for banishment that essentializes Development, this very act assumes there is an ‘unequivocal definition’
Another criticism of post-development is its reification of local cultures and communities and romanticization of non-western communities. Also the complete rejection of modernity ignores many of its positive achievements, for example in medicine, such as increases in life expectancy. It can be argued that symbols of modernity such as nuclear power are precisely what is wrong with modernity, yet, it is also useful when asking particularly for who is modernity bad for. Surely it is too much of a generalization to suggest that such icons of modernity are not desired by those in the South, and at least patronizing to suggest that it is bad for them. The rejection of universalism, for example, human rights and the celebration of cultural difference, conceals or even willingly accepts, many traditional forms of oppression and cruelty, such as female genital mutilation. Finally, there is the argument that post-development is purely critique and offers no solutions.
Development from the perspective of Critical modernism
First we looked at theories of development that take a conventionally uncritical view of Western modernism as the best social paradigm that has ever existed and that we can ever achieve. Then we looked at Anti-development and problem with that theory. Now we look at “critical modernity.” Critical modernism focus on the question of development—understood as the social use of economic progress—as a central theme of our age. On the one hand, development simply as aggregate economic growth cannot continue much longer— natural constraints prevent this, and there are abundant natural signs of approaching catastrophe. On the other hand, development as material transformation for the world’s hungry people is an ethical and practical necessity, just as pressing as the natural constraints on growth. There is a need to transform the “Development’’-as a meaning and practices.
There is need to compare critical modernism with postmodernism, in order to understand it better. Critical modernism criticizes material power relations in order to change them, while postmodernism criticizes discourses and ideas to undermine their modern certainty; critical modernism wants to transform development, while postmodernism wants to abandon it. These differences derive not only from the nature of the critique—so that postmodernism focuses on development as discourse, while critical modernism emphasizes development as a class and gendered practice—but derive also from differences about the social object that forms the target of criticism, whether modernism or capitalism.
Critical modernism remains modern in terms of favouring a scientific attitude toward the world that is, requiring some kind of evidence before believing. Critical modernism focuses on a critique of capitalism as the social form taken by the modern world rather than on modernism as an overgeneralised discursive phenomenon. We need to more actively focus on modernity as a form of capitalist practice guided by social relations rather than criticizing modernity as a discursive formation. We should learn to live with modernity by criticizing and changing it.
Critical modernist developmentalism gains insight from the Marxist, post-structural, and feminist critiques of modernity, but it emphasizes belief more in the potential, rather than the practice, of contemporary development.
Critical modernism entails a critique of capitalist power systems in socialist terms of class ownership of productive resources, in feminist terms of male dominance, and in post-structural terms of the hegemony of elite imaginaries and discourses. it converts these negative criticisms into the positives of a series of political proposals on how to change the meaning and practices of modernism. Critical modernism distrusts any elite, whether it be entrepreneurial, bureaucratic, scientific, intellectual, racial, geographic, or patriarchal. Critical modernism favours the views of oppressed peoples of all kinds— from peasant social movements, to indigenous organizations, to women organizing for reproductive rights, to working-class movements. Even so, “favouring” or “valuing” the ideas of oppressed peoples does not mean believing everything their leaders say in a kind of new-age romanticism that finds eternal wisdom glistening on the shaman’s prayer. And while poor people’s movements have to be seen in their own terms and contexts, critical modernism favors alliances that draw together the powers of the oppressed majority in countering what would otherwise be the overwhelming power of the exploiting minority. Critical modernism listens to what people have to say.
Most importantly, critical modernism remains modern in terms of favoring a basically rational scientific attitude toward the world—that is, requiring some kind of evidence before believing rather than accepting purely on faith, as with pre-modern understanding, or denying any validity to evidential truth, as with much of post- structuralism. What Critical Modernism basically says is that we should learn to live with modernity by criticizing and changing it.
Democratic Development
Critical modernism focus on the question of development, understood as social, democratic control over economic progress. Development as social transformation on behalf of the world’s poor people is democratic in intent and effect. Equality, possibility, livelihood, removing the overwhelming might of material constrain —these are the conditions for democracy, understood as the collective freedom to make the basic decisions that determine individual and social existence. To achieve anything like this, “development” has to be transformed—as a term with meaning, as a belief in better things, as a practice employing millions of altruistic people, and as the main hope for a saner world. There is need to draw from alternative principles, pieces of evidence, lots of experience, and millions of committed people who want nothing more than to engage in a democratic discourse on development alternatives.
Ethics
Ethics are principles of right and wrong, good and bad that human beings, following their best intentions, try to exercise in their relations with others and with the natural world. Ethics can be derived far more directly in the historical terms of human experience—for example, discussing the conditions under which people are happiest or forms of life are environmentally most sustainable. In other words, when we ask how we should live and why societies develop in certain ways, the only sure guide is what we have done over long periods of time (the real eternal) and what we can learn from history, practice, and experience, all mediated through discussion.
In the case of development, however, the ethical problems of what and how much to produce are made more transparent by the needs of the world’s billion poverty- stricken people. There is a disturbing tendency for post-structural discussions to see poverty in terms of the social construction of a deficient world rather than the material reality of absolute deprivation in a deficient world. This tendency in accompanied by the ethical advocacy of “convivial poverty” and the spiritual ideal of simplicity and frugality (Rahnema 1997). Support comes from such adages as: “You are poor because you look at what you do not have. See what you possess, see what you are, and you will discover that you are astonishingly rich” (Rist 1997: 294). If poverty is considered purely as a social construct, or something that has entirely different meanings depending on the cultural context, then simplicity, dignity, and the discovery of inner richness may have some validity as ethical responses. But if poverty is considered materially as the absolute lack of inputs vital to continued existence, such as not enough food (of any kind) to keep people alive—near-universal reality—then post-developmental ethical advocacy is a cruel hoax—it amounts to telling those about to expire that they are (astonishingly!) rich, that they should die with “dignity” rather than struggle for life. But poor people are not quietly dignified—they are actively so. The poor have spoken—we only have to listen. And they want what they need: work, food, shelter, and services. These are authentic needs that satisfy any ethical principle, whether of happiness or scarcity. The ethical question is not whether, but how, to provide basic needs and the means of providing for needs is called development.
References:
Peet & Hartwick. Theories of development : contentions, arguments, alternatives. New York: The Guilford Press, 2009.
Illich, I. “Development as Planned Poverty.” The Post-development Reader. Eds. Rahnema and Bawtree. Zed Books Ltd. 1997
Rist, G. The History of Development: From Western Origins to Global Faith. London: Zed Books. 1997.
