Misrecognitions and missed opportunities: post‐structuralism and the practice of development

Abstract

Over the past 20 years post‐structuralist scholars have produced critiques of the field of development. In some circles it is now quite broadly accepted that this approach is futile and that we ought to move into a ‘post‐discourse’ era. By way of counterpoint, this paper argues that such exchanges are based on misrecognitions whose acceptance forecloses possibilities that both critics and their detractors would welcome. The paper is broken into two sections. The first engages problems ascribed to post‐structuralist critiques that seem to have been particularly successful in discouraging further engagement. The second explores three aspects of a single moment of post‐structuralist thought that have been obscured by current debate. Engaging these aspects, while bringing difficulties of its own, may secure conditions necessary for the emergence of the sorts of partnerships often claimed as necessary both by developers and by their post‐structuralist critics.

Notes

Peter Tamas is in the Center for International Education, Hills South, School of Education, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01002, USA. Email: [email protected].

Arturo Escobar, ‘Reflections on development: grassroots approaches and alternative politics in the Third World’, in Bruce Lloyd (ed), Framing the Future: A 21st Century Reader, London: Adamantine Press, 1998; Kriemild Saunders, Feminist Post‐Development Thought: Rethinking Modernity, Post‐Colonialism & Representation, London: Zed Books, 2002; Arturo Escobar, ‘Discourse and power in development: Michael Foucault and the relevance of his work to the Third World’, Alternatives, X, 1984, pp 377–400; Arturo Escobar, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995; Arturo Escobar, ‘Cultural politics and biological diversity: state capital and social movements in the Pacific coast of Colombia, in Lisa Lowe & David Lloyd (eds), The Politics of Culture in the Shadow of Capital, London: Duke, 1997; JS Crush, Power of Development, London: Routledge, 1995; Tim Mitchell, ‘America's Egypt: discourse of the development industry’, Middle East Report, March–April 1991, pp 201–226; Majid Rahenma & Victoria Bawtree (eds), The Post‐Development Reader, London: Zed, 1997; Wolfgang Sachs, The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power, London: Zed Books, 1992; and James Ferguson, The Anti‐Politics Machine: ‘Development’, Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Michel Foucault, ‘What is an author?’, in Donald F Bouchard (ed), Language, Counter‐Memory, Practice, Ithica, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977; Foucault, The History of Sexuality, New York: Pantheon Books, 1978; Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, New York: Vintage Books, 1979; Foucault, ‘Two lectures’, in Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972‐1977, ed Colin Gordon, New York: Pantheon Books, 1980; Foucault, ‘Afterword: the subject and power’, in Hubert L Dreyfus, Paul Rabinow & Michel Foucault (eds), Michel Foucault, Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1983; and Foucault, ‘Nietzsche, genealogy, history’, in Paul Rabinow (ed), The Foucault Reader, New York: Pantheon, 1984.

A Agrawal, ‘Poststructuralist approaches to development: some critical reflections’, Peace and Change, 21 (4), 1996, pp 464–477; Anthony Bebbington, ‘Reencountering development: livelihood transitions and place transformations in the Andes’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 90 (3), 2000, pp 495–520; Stuart Corbridge, ‘Beneath the pavement only soil: the poverty of post‐development’, Journal of Development Studies, 34 (6), 1998, pp 138–148; Rosalind Eyben, ‘Development and anthropology: a view from inside the agency’, Critique of Anthropology, 20 (1), 2000, pp 7–14; Kathy Gardner & David Lewis, ‘Dominant paradigms overturned or “business as usual”? Development discourse and the White Paper on International Development’, Critique of Anthropology, 20 (1), 2000, pp 15–30; Maia Green, ‘Editorial’, Critique of Anthropology, 20 (1), 2000, pp 5–7; Gillian Hart, ‘Development critiques in the 1990s: culs de sac and promising paths’, Progress in Human Geography, 25 (4), 2001, pp 649–658; Ray Kiely, ‘The last refuge of the noble savage? A critical assessment of post‐development theory’, European Journal of Development Research, 11 (1), 1999, pp 30–55; David Lehmann, ‘An opportunity lost: Escobar's deconstruction of development’, Journal of Development Studies, 33 (4), 1997, pp 568–578; Meera Nanda, ‘The pitfalls of “postdevelopment”: the case of the ecofeminist critique of the green revolution’, Research and Society, 8, 1995, pp 85–106; Richard Peet & Elaine R Hartwick, Theories of Development, New York: Guilford Press, 1999; and Meera Nanda, ‘The science wars in India’, Dissent, 44 (1), 1997, pp 78–83.

Arturo Escobar, ‘Beyond the search for a paradigm? Post‐development and beyond’, Development, 43 (4), 2000, pp 421–436.

Morgan Brigg, ‘Post‐development, Foucault and the colonisation metaphor’, Third World Quarterly, 23 (4) 2002.

Gardner & Lewis, ‘Dominant paradigms overturned or “business as usual”?’, p 16.

There is, of course, a range of other significant objections to post‐structural critiques of development which are not considered in this paper. For example, to the extent that post‐structural critiques are effective in decentring Western knowledge they are accused of securing the conditions necessary for the insurrection of local voices of intolerance. Nanda, ‘The pitfalls of “postdevelopment” ’; and Nanda, ‘The science wars in India’.

Eyben, ‘Development and anthropology’, p 7.

Escobar, ‘Discourse and power in development’.

Eyben, ‘Development and anthropology’.

Ferguson, The Anti‐Politics Machine.

Gardner & Lewis, ‘Dominant paradigms overturned or “business as usual”?’, p.16.

VI Lenin, Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism: A Popular Outline, International Publishers, 1939.

Lehmann, ‘An opportunity lost’; Agrawal, ‘Poststructuralist approaches to development’; and Kiely, ‘The last refuge of the noble savage?’.

Rahenma & Bawtree, The Post‐Development Reader; and Kiely, ‘The last refuge of the noble savage?’.

Ranajit Guha, Subaltern Studies: Writings on South Asian History and Society, Vol 1, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982.

Ibid.

Escobar, Encountering Development.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ‘Can the subaltern speak?’, in Cary Nelson & Lawrence Grossberg (eds), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1988.

While distinct, these two are politically linked. For example, developers' rejection of Escobar's intervention on the basis that it is an inaccurate representation (portraiture) compromises his attempt to represent (proxy) the interests of his collaborators.

Linda Alcoff, ‘Cultural feminism versus post‐structuralism: the identity crisis in feminist theory’, in Nancy Tuana & Rosemarie Tong (eds), Feminism and Philosophy: Essential Reading in Theory, Reinterpretation, and Application, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995, p 440.

Foucault, ‘Nietzsche, genealogy, history’, p 148.

Foucault, ‘Two lectures’, pp 93, 98.

Michel Foucault, ‘Politics and the study of discourse’, in Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon & Peter Miller (eds), The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality: With Two Lectures by and an Interview with Michel Foucault, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1991, p 54. Judith Butler has pursued a somewhat different approach. Rather than look to the plurality of discourses, she has explored the possibilities found in the gaps or failures of closure within a presumed hegemonic discourse. Butler, The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997.

See further J Bruce Nichols, The Uneasy Alliance: Religion, Refugee Work, and US Foreign Policy, New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

Uma Narayan, ‘The project of feminist epistemology: perspectives from a nonwestern feminist’, in Susan Bordo & Alison M Jaggar (eds), Gender/Body/Knowledge: Feminist Reconstructions of Being and Knowing, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1989.

Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993; and WEB Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches, Chicago, IL: AC McClurg & Co, 1903.

Narayan, ‘The project of feminist epistemology’, p 265.

Joan Wallach Scott, ‘The evidence of experience’, Critical Inquiry, 17, pp 773–791, 1991.

Homi K Bhabha, The Location of Culture, London: Routledge, 1994; VS Naipaul, The Mimic Man, London: André Deutsch, 1967.

Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse?, London: Zed Books for the United Nations University, 1986.

Chandra Talpade Mohanty, ‘Introduction’, in Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Ann Russo and Lourdes Torres (eds), Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1991, p 8.

Chizu Sato, ‘Rethinking adult literacy education through a third world feminist educator's perspective’, Masters Project, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Honor Ford‐Smith, ‘Ring ding in a tight corner: sistren, collective democracy, and the organization of cultural production’, in M Jacqui Alexander & Chandra Talpade Mohanty (eds), Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures, New York: Routledge, 1997.

Spivak, ‘Can the subaltern speak?’.

Ann Ferguson, ‘Resisting the veil of privilege‐building bridge identities as an ethico‐politics of global feminisms’, Hypatia, 13 (3), 1998, p 107.

Michel Foucault, JD Faubion & R Hurley, Power, Vol 3, New York: New Press, 2000, p 288.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Peter Tamas

Peter Tamas is in the Center for International Education, Hills South, School of Education, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01002, USA. Email: [email protected].