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Summarizing development
Summarizing development: A quixotic quest?
- Where did it come from?
- Colonialism–European powers, economic dismantlement and exploitation, depopulation (i.e., genocide), enslavement, backed by overwhelming force
- Post WWII [Cold War + Reconstruction] + Bretton Woods [Marshall Plan] >World Bank
- US food and trade policies
- Decolonization (Boserup and European rule) Africa, Asia, Americas
- Griffin’s thesis: one country’s development is another’s underdevelopment?
- Structural transformation (via borrowing)–neocolonialism?
- Assumptions of ‘true’ development
- Implies value judgments
- Implies change–the POET model as a way to think about short- and long-term change
- Change usually means ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ (some better off, others not)
- Unintended consequences accompany change in complex societies
- Short-term vs longer-term
- Radical nature of ‘true’ development (grassroots, participatory, self-determining, democratic, egalitarian and equitable)
- Development as resistance against larger political and economic forces
- Elements ….
- Minimum: Food, livelihood, equality (from Seers)
- Eliminating poverty
- Equity, fairness
- Expanding choice, freedoms (freedom ‘from’ and freedom ‘to’), dignity
- Self-determination
- Infrastructure
- Participation in social and civic life
- Realizing human potential
- Sustainability
