Paradigms lost, paradigms regained? Development studies in the twenty-first century

Until the mid-1980s post-World War II development thinking shared three basic paradigms, ie essentialising the Third World and its inhabitants as homogeneous entities, an unconditional belief in progress and in the makeability of society, and the importance of the (nation)state in realising that progress. Development theories (from modernisation to dependencia) as well as the international development aid industry all shared these paradigms. From the mid-1980s onwards these three paradigms increasingly lost their hegemonic status and are currently, on the threshold of the twenty-first century, being replaced by a loose set of partly descriptive, partly heuristic notions like civil society, social capital, diversity and risk. This article is an attempt to analyse the most important reasons for the loss of the central paradigms in development thinking. It tries to assess the importance for development studies of several postmodern, post-development and globalisation-inspired notions and insights.