Last modified: 2016-06-11
Abstract
For much of the post second world war period, development theory has implied some version of modernization theory. While there have been interventions from dependency scholars and Latin American structuralists, these critiques have not amounted to an outright rejection of either the idea of development itself nor its largely linear and teleological conceptualization. Since the 1980s, development studies have been said to be in an impasse. Nevertheless, two streams of development-related research have continued to thrive. The post-development school (as well as its more recent incarnation, modernity-(decoloniality) literature) has rejected if not the idea of development itself at least the desirability of systematic thinking and planning to achieve it. Mainstream (development) economics have instead wholeheartedly embraced a technocratic paradigm of development, often reduced to technical indicators that are meant be achieved through apolitical interventions, and operates without much concern for any theoretical understanding of the process that these interventions seek to facilitate.
The role left for other social sciences in this landscape has been to account for the ‘residual’ dimensions of development processes that could not easily be accommodated into the framework of orthodox economics. To the extent these studies outside of economics have taken a more holistic approach to understanding development and change, they have been shaped by the backlash against meta-theories that has dominated development thinking since the 1980s. As a result, many scholars have become disillusioned with the idea of a macro-level development project that had the potential to improve the material conditions of poor and marginalized communities. This has meant that otherwise excellent research has retreated into the domain of detailed, micro-level ethnographic inquiry that consciously avoids generalization as well as refusing to make prescriptive pronouncements.
This paper is part of an ongoing intellectual project to chart a way out of this narrow operating field towards a more holistic theoretical framework. Specifically, the paper will interrogate the relevance and potential of development theory both in terms of rethinking the meaning of development as well as formulating the possible pathways of achieving it. In doing so, we will be uphold a materialist perspective grounded in the current realities, both physical and institutional. But at the same time we will not be constrained in our conceptualisations by what is feasible in the narrow sense if the current configuration of power and wealth remains intact. In other words, building on the current state of the world, we will be open to radical departures that may not be in the realm of the immediately possible.