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Summary outline
The week’s material
- Assistance?
- from whom to whom (multilateral, bilateral, NGO …)?
- for what (economic, institution and infrastructure building, health, education …)?
- Strings attached (yes, ‘aid’ often isn’t freely predicated on conditions from donor)?
- Where did the concept come from?
- Assumptions
- it’s replicable (demographic transition)
- it’s economic
- technology transfer (agrarian / industrial transformation)
- it’s structural (transformation of the economy, labor force)
- it’s aggregate (region, nation, household, etc.)
- It’s often big (Nagarjuna Sagar Dam in India)
- It’s benevolent (really)
- Dudley Seers–‘realization of personality‘ (an alternative critique); and at a minimum:
- food
- livelihood
- equality
- Measuring development
- Considerations–cost, validity (are we measuring what we say we’re measuring?), reliability (are our measurements accurate?), quantitative vs qualitative dimensions, comparability across societies, global vs disaggregated measures
- Do ‘global’ (meaning high-level, national averages, etc.) measures mask deepening poverty? If so, how?
- Gapminder and the progress of 200 years
- Language of development
- industrial/non-industrial, developed/undeveloped/developing, low/medium/high income, poor/rich, advanced/ backwards, modernity/tradition . . . North/South
- Meaning of development?
- Gandhi: The realization of human potential
- Brundtland Commission (a UN project on sustainable development); Meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (improvement in human welfare, quality of life, and social well being)
- Elements? Values? Preconditions (e.g., democracy)?
- Key concepts: human rights, choice, equality and equity, agency, participation, etc.
- In practice
- (according to Maggie Black) Means to reinforce existing political power structures
- Does Black then suggest development reflects (neo) colonialism?
- Ethnocentric
- Process controlled by countries of the North
- Corruption, dysfunction, ‘weak states’
- (according to Maggie Black) Means to reinforce existing political power structures
- 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
- Structure and Agency
- ‘Development’ may be controlled by countries of the North, but there is a professional cadre of development professionals–scholars and practitioners–who believe fervently in the loftiest ideals and potentials of redressing global inequality, reducing poverty, and helping citizens achieve some measure of self-determination.
- In other words, the structure of geopolitical power that favors countries of the North often leaves little leverage for committed professionals and politicians in-country to achieve or define for themselves what ‘development’ is or how to go about it.
