Chapter 5 Chapter Summary

This chapter discusses the main concerns of the post-development school and highlights examples of practices and ideas of “alternatives to development.” As in other scholarly debates, several concepts mark the post-development tradition. Leading among them are depoliticization, universalism, the conception of discourse, and knowledge–power. Proponents of orthodox development theories of both liberalism and Marxist-inspired theories of dependency that emerged in the post-1945 period portrayed development in technocratic terms. Notably, liberalism that formed the mainstream view of development believed that countries in the Global South needed to institute depoliticized economic and industrial policies similar to those used in the Global North. At the same time, Europe’s historical development toward capitalist modernity was seen to represent the universal trajectory for all countries regardless of their specific historical experiences, such as colonialism and its attendant economic legacies. Finally, drawing on the work of Foucault, post-development thinkers contended that power dynamics underpin ideas such as those embodied in development theory. From their perspective, ideas are not neutral: those who have institutional or other forms of power determine what constitutes knowledge. Further, ideas play a crucial role in the reproduction of images and notions such as “the developed” and “the developing world.”