{"id":855,"date":"2019-05-25T11:41:53","date_gmt":"2019-05-25T09:41:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.convivialthinking.org\/?p=855"},"modified":"2019-05-25T12:31:08","modified_gmt":"2019-05-25T10:31:08","slug":"problems-of-development-and-development-as-a-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/convivialthinking.org\/index.php\/2019\/05\/25\/problems-of-development-and-development-as-a-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"Problems of development and \u201cdevelopment\u201d as a problem"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Henning Melber and Julia Sch\u00f6neberg<\/em><\/p>\n

Right-wing populism remains on the rise, unleashing the brute force of predator capitalism under authoritarian regimes. The temporary vision of promoting social welfare states as a form of good governance has been replaced by new ideologies bordering to a revival of Social Darwinism. White supremacists, populists and nationalists (re-)enter political commanding heights, basing their rule on exclusion and racism. Those concerned about inequality and all forms of discrimination, advocating the rights of the marginalised and disadvantaged, are ridiculed, harassed and increasingly victims of direct, structural and cultural violence. Their struggles for human rights, justice and dignity face an uphill battle. Political repression is mounting. The unsustainable exploitation of the world\u2019s limited resources as integral part of a growth paradigm is once again accelerated.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the side effects of this frantic and short-term reactionary race to the bottom are celebrated as \u201cdevelopment\u201d. Recently, a blog on \u201cFuture Development\u201d by the Brookings Institute announced with excitement<\/a> a \u201cglobal tipping point\u201d:<\/p>\n

\n

Something of enormous global significance is happening almost without notice. For the first time since agriculture-based civilisation began 10,000 years ago, the majority of humankind is no longer poor or vulnerable to falling into poverty. By our calculations, as of this month, just over 50 percent of the world\u2019s population, or some 3.8 billion people, live in households with enough discretionary expenditure to be considered \u201cmiddle class\u201d or \u201crich.\u201d About the same number of people are living in households that are poor or vulnerable to poverty. So September 2018 marks a global tipping point. After this, for the first time ever, the poor and vulnerable will no longer be a majority in the world. Barring some unfortunate global economic setback, this marks the start of a new era of a middle-class majority.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Such \u201cnew era\u201d, also proclaimed by the World Bank\u2019s latest annual report on poverty and shared prosperity stubbornly ignores the growing inequality recorded between the rich and the rest as the elephant in the room. After all, the majority in many of the new \u201cmiddle income countries\u201d in the so-called global South and its emerging economies still remain at the margins. At a closer look, inequality continues to be reproduced. As critically observed\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

the distribution of national incomes and wealth at a world scale is still characterised by a pronounced North-South hierarchy. But it is more important still to be aware that countries in the global South that have witnessed strong economic growth have also experienced marked escalations in national levels of inequality. (\u2026)<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

What\u2019s clear from this is that we have to ask ourselves what a development policy based on redistribution in favour of the working classes in the global South might look like \u2013 because that, ultimately, is the key to ending poverty in an unequal world.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Trapped by \u201cdevelopmentalism?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

But is this all we have to do? Are we not trapped in a category of \u201cdevelopmentalism\u201d, which does not challenge the premises of \u201cdevelopment\u201d but remains an integral part of a dominant perspective and paradigm as long as we ignore what the Club of Rome already in 1972 dubbed<\/a> the \u201climits to growth\u201d, warning that humans can only survive in the long term if limits are imposed on the \u201cproduction of material goods to achieve a state of global equilibrium with population and production in carefully selected balance\u201d? While the growth of a global middle class is celebrated in ignorance of growing inequalities, an exponentially growing mass extermination of species<\/a> is recorded:<\/p>\n

\n

almost entirely caused by us \u2014 humans. In fact, 99 percent of currently threatened species are at risk from human activities, primarily those driving habitat loss, introduction of exotic species, and global warming. Because the rate of change in our biosphere is increasing, and because every species\u2019 extinction potentially leads to the extinction of others bound to that species in a complex ecological web, numbers of extinctions are likely to snowball in the coming decades as ecosystems unravel.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

For those obsessed with economic growth this is merely a matter of \u201ccollateral damage\u201d of the Anthropocene. But at the not too remote end of such chain are those exterminated whose modes of production and reproduction are the root cause. \u2013 Is this \u201cdevelopment\u201d?<\/p>\n

What is development?<\/strong><\/p>\n

An earlier Convivial Thinking\u00a0 blog post,<\/a> written in immediate frustration about the repetitious and largely futile efforts of \u201cre-thinking development\u201d and fuelled by the experience of yet another event with this title, provoked many reactions among the development studies and development economics community. Commentators agreed in unison that the biggest pitfall in all efforts to \u201crethink\u201d is a lack of consensus, a common denominator of what \u201cdevelopment\u201d is, what it means, what it should bring about (and, most importantly: for whom) and what it specifically is we ought to \u201crethink\u201d.\u00a0Starting a recent seminar on development theory by asking students for their definition, resulted in over 30 different understandings and much puzzlement.<\/p>\n

It, therefore, is of little surprise that Gustavo Esteva as early as 1992 in the Development Dictionary<\/a> had already \u201ctermed development an amoeba-like concept, devoid of any meaning in itself\u201d. For Wolfgang Sachs,<\/a>\u00a0editor of this pioneering volume, \u201cthe idea of development stands like a ruin in the intellectual landscape\u201d. These references document that already a quarter of a century ago a damning diagnosis existed. In (self-)critical efforts within the community of scholars in Development Studies since then such awareness is repeatedly reiterated. But the soul-searching reflections were hardly replaced by another framework transcending the developmental paradigm. Deconstruction was not followed by reconstruction.<\/p>\n

Pablo Yanguas in 2018 re-visited \u201cDevelopment and the Messy Politics of Change\u201d<\/a>. He suggests in conclusion: \u201cDevelopment is not a series of fixes to be measured but of battles to be fought.\u201d But battles for what? Is prayer-wheel-like repetition of the term useful and how are periodic pledges to re-think\/re-position\/re-make it of any help? The notion of \u201cdevelopment\u201d has survived and perpetually resurfaces in discourses as a kind of magic bullet. The \u201camoeba\u201d continues to be (ab)used for rather different if not antagonistic discourses, the commonality of all of them being the widely uncontested assumption that \u201cdevelopment\u201d is inherently good; it just has to be practiced more just, more participatory, more bottom-up.<\/p>\n

Of lately, the colonial-apologetic advocates of empire and white supremacy have with new vigour reactivated the claim that not all was bad about colonialism and referred to the \u201cdevelopmental\u201d aspect through health, education, material infrastructure, even undertaking a balance sheet for \u201cethics and empire<\/a>\u201d. Critics are dismissed as radical ideologues being in denial of the \u201cdevelopment\u201d colonialism had as an inherent and integral part of the expansion of Europe into the rest of the world as a kind of \u201ccivilising mission\u201d. Slave trade, genocides, dispossessions, and other destructive effects of \u201cHow Europe Underdeveloped Africa<\/a>\u201d, for that matter, feature in such perspectives as another infamous collateral damage.<\/p>\n

Development by any other name?<\/strong><\/p>\n

But why should we engage with such exchanges as regards the meaning of \u201cdevelopment\u201d? Do our efforts to dismantle and deconstruct ideological, inherently racist hierarchies of asymmetric power relations and its various forms of exploitation take place in the appropriate arenas for the \u201cbattles to be fought\u201d (Yanguas)? Should we not rather abandon the notion and look at development as suggested by Yanguas in the sub-title of his book as a mere description of change? This would strip the term \u201cdevelopment\u201d of the positive association, which largely comes along in the efforts of those seeking to legitimize the current world order. Or, could we, by eliminating \u201cdevelopment\u201d from our value-loaded vocabulary altogether, avoid transporting a message, which at least indirectly re-confirms a rather useless description appropriated by the interests of those most vocal?<\/p>\n

Among the definitions put forward by the students in the above mentioned seminar were peace, dignity, equality, justice, sustainability and eventually this is what we (should) mean when we talk of development.<\/p>\n

Rather than dumping all our \u201cbattles to be fought\u201d and our contestations to be made into one ambiguous amoeba container let us not shy away from, as George Monbiot<\/a> forcefully argued: name it \u201cwith words that engage people, reveal rather than disguise realities, and honour what we seek to protect\u201d \u2013 and fight for. Naming what we mean enables us better to dissect social, political, economic and environmental dimensions of global inequalities and analyse origins of disparities, power imbalances<\/a> and their continuations<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Abandoning \u201cdevelopment\u201d cannot mean to replace one amoeba with another, such as recently suggested<\/a> with \u201ctransformation\u201d, especially when institutions and structures remain untransformed. Gaining increasingly prominence in the context of the SDGs, \u201ctransformation\u201d is targeted towards the future. But how can we seriously plan for the future if we fail to confront the past and present?<\/p>\n

We also need to abandon the quest for a grand theory, a holy grail, which will solve all problems. The Zapatistas famously pledged to seek a \u201cworld in which many worlds fit.\u201d
\nWhat does it practically mean? As Arturo Escobar has put forward, it acknowledges that the crises we face are foremost of a particular \u201cset of world-making practices [\u2026] that we usually refer to as the dominant form of Euro-modernity<\/a> (capitalist, rationalist, liberal, secular, patriarchal, white, or what have you).\u201d \u00a0And it requires the pursuance of precisely termed goals to transcend borders not only geographically, but also mentally and beyond narrow disciplinary confinements, while paying respect and giving recognition to diversity and otherness.<\/p>\n

This post originally appeared on the Global Development Institute Blog. <\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Henning Melber<\/a> is Extraordinary Professor at the University of Pretoria and the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein, Senior Research Fellow with the Institute for Commonwealth Studies\/Centre for Advanced Study at the University of London and President of the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI).<\/p>\n

Julia Sch\u00f6neberg<\/a>\u00a0 is post-doctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Development and Postcolonial Studies at the University of Kassel, Germany and Visiting Researcher at ISS in The Hague. She is co-founder of Convivial Thinking.<\/p>\n

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by Henning Melber and Julia Sch\u00f6neberg Right-wing populism remains on the rise, unleashing the brute force of predator capitalism under authoritarian regimes. The temporary vision of promoting social welfare states as a form of good governance has been replaced by new ideologies bordering to a revival of Social Darwinism. White supremacists, populists and nationalists (re-)enter … Continue reading “Problems of development and \u201cdevelopment\u201d as a problem”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[21,12,28],"class_list":["post-855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-speaking","tag-development","tag-global-south","tag-post-development"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/convivialthinking.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/convivialthinking.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/convivialthinking.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/convivialthinking.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/convivialthinking.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=855"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/convivialthinking.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":862,"href":"https:\/\/convivialthinking.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855\/revisions\/862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/convivialthinking.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/convivialthinking.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/convivialthinking.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}