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Abstract
During the course of the 1990s, the Post-Development school emerged as an innovative though controversial approach in development studies. The article examines its critical reception in the textbooks and the extent to which its authors and arguments have become influential. It argues that the relationship between development studies and Post-Development is characterised simultaneously by (sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit) rejection and integration. Examining a number of current development studies textbooks, it illustrates the growing influence of Post-Development arguments and how they have been tacitly or consciously taken up while often rejecting Post-Development per se.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their constructive and useful comments.
Notes
This article was originally published with errors. This version has been amended. Please see Corrigendum (https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2017.1342343).
1. See above all Sachs, Development Dictionary; Escobar, Encountering Development; and Rahnema with Bawtree, Post-Development Reader.
2. See eg Knippenberg and Schuurman, “Blinded by Rainbows”; Corbridge, “Beneath the Pavement”; Kiely, “Last Refuge”; Nanda, “Who needs Post-Development?”; Storey, “Post-Development Theory”; Nederveen Pieterse, “After Post-Development.”
3. See eg Nustad, “Development: The Devil We Know?”; Brigg, “Post-Development”; Lind, “Feminist Post-Development Thought”; Matthews, “Post-Development Theory”; Ziai, “Ambivalence of Post-Development”; Simon, “Separated by Common Ground?”; Andrews and Bawa, “Post-Development Hoax?”; Ziai, “Premature Burials.”
4. Nederveen Pieterse, “My Paradigm or Yours?,” 366; Nederveen Pieterse, Development Theory 2nd ed., 122f; Andrews and Bawa, “Post-Development Hoax,” 930.
5. Thus, I am supporting the position of Nustad, “Development: The Devil We Know?,” who argues that PD’s lack of instrumentality for a political programme of development should not lead to sidelining the approach.
6. Sachs, Development Dictionary.
7. Of course, this does not do justice to writers like Serge Latouche, Ashis Nandy, Claude Alvares, Frédérique Apffel-Marglin and others.
8. This excludes arguments which are central for one of these writers, but marginal or not present in the work of others, such as Shiva’s characterisation of ‘development’ as a ‘project of western patriarchy’; Shiva, Staying Alive, 1.
9. Esteva, “Development,” 6f; Sachs, “Introduction,” 2; Escobar, Encountering Development, 3; Rist, History, 69–72.
10. Rahnema, “Introduction,” ix.
11. Sachs, “Introduction,” 4; Esteva, “Metaphor,” 79.
12. ‘Though development has no content, it does possess one function: it allows any intervention to be sanctified in the name of a higher goal’; Sachs, “Introduction,” 4. Li talks about the ‘will to improve’ in this context (Li, Will to Improve), Cowen and Shenton about ‘trusteeship’ (Cowen and Shenton, Doctrines).
13. Ferguson, Anti-Politics Machine, 256; Escobar, Encountering Development, 143; Sachs, “Archaeology,” 9.
14. Shiva, Resources; see also Saunders, Feminist Post-Development; Shiva, Staying Alive; Mies and Shiva, Ecofeminism.
15. ‘… development cannot be separated from the idea that all peoples of the planet are moving along one single track towards maturity, exemplified by the nations “running in front”. In this view, Tuaregs, Zapotecos or Rajashtanis are not seen as living diverse and non-comparable ways of human existence, but as somehow lacking in terms of what has been achieved by the advanced countries’; Sachs, “Introduction.” 3. ‘The metaphor of development gave global hegemony to a purely Western genealogy of history, robbing peoples of different cultures of the opportunity to define the forms of their social life’; Esteva, “Development,” 9.
16. Sachs, “Introduction,” 3; Esteva, “Development,” 13; Escobar, Encountering Development, 4; Rahnema, “Introduction,” x.
17. Bennholdt-Thomsen and Mies, Subsistence Perspective; Sittirak, Daughters of Development.
18. Esteva, “Development,” 17–20; Escobar, Encountering Development, ch. 3; Sachs, “Archaeology,” 18–22.
19. Esteva, “Development,” 20–22; Escobar, Encountering Development, ch. 6.
20. Haynes, Development Studies, especially 168–71.
21. Peet and Hartwick, Theories of Development, 230–9.
22. Hettne, Development Theory, 30f.
23. ‘For all its protestations of radical difference, there is little in Post-Development that moves beyond Gandhi or Schumacher, Illich or Fanon’; Corbridge, “Beneath the Pavement,” 145. Nederveen Pieterse makes a similar point in Development Theory, 107.
24. Larrain, Theories of Development, 1–3.
25. Hoogvelt, Globalisation.
26. Allen/Thomas, Poverty and Development, 1–48.
27. Kingsbury et al., International Development, 21–50.
28. Willis, Theories and Practices, 1–35.
29. Haslam et al., Introduction, 1–27.
30. Eg Willis, Theories and Practices, 20–6; Haslam et al., Introduction, 28–44; Allen/Thomas, Poverty and Development, 241–70; Greig et al., Challenging Global Inequality, 59–66; Kothari/Minogue, Development Theory, 36–40; Berger/Weber, Rethinking the Third World, 25–32.
31. Khambhampati, Development, 82.
32. Mavrotas and Shorrocks, Advancing Development, 45.
33. According to a Google Scholar search for PD and critique, these are Nederveen Pieterse, Kiely and Corbridge; https://scholar.google.de/scholar?q=post-development+critique&btnG=&hl=de&as_sdt=0%2C5 (accessed 10 October 2016).
34. Nederveen Pieterse, Development Theory 1st ed., 110f.
35. Ibid., 106f.
36. Ibid., 109.
37. Ibid., 106, 108.
38. Ibid., 106.
39. Ibid., 103, 110.
40. Ibid., 110.
41. Ibid., 111.
42. Ibid., 3.
43. Ibid., 4.
44. Ibid., 8.
45. Ibid., 18.
46. Ibid., 25–7.
47. Ibid., 28.
48. Corbridge, ‘Beneath the Pavement’, 139.
49. Ibid., 143, 145.
50. Chari and Corbridge, Development Reader, 3.
51. Ibid., 7.
52. Ibid., 47, 263.
53. Ibid., 125.
54. Peet and Hartwick, Theories of Development, 231f.
55. Ibid., 236.
56. Ibid., 233.
57. Ibid., 285f.
58. Ibid., 1.
59. Ibid., 277.
60. Ziai, “Ambivalence of Post-Development.”
61. Booth, “Marxism”; Booth, Rethinking; Schuurman, Beyond the Impasse; Kiely, Sociology and Development.
62. Schuurman, “Impasse.”
63. Ibid.
64. Nederveen Pieterse, Development Theory 2nd ed., 214.
65. Ibid., 184.
66. ‘Development can be seen … as a process of expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy’. Sen, Development as Freedom, 3. This definition basically claims that people have to decide for themselves what development understood as the path to a good society looks like – a view shared by sceptical PD. Taking seriously Sen’s definition and Nederveen Pieterse’s ‘development pluralism’ thus leads to a position close to PD – suggesting that there is no dichotomy between PD on one side and development studies on the other side.
67. Kothari and Minogue, Development Theory, 9.
68. Ibid., 10.
69. Nederveen Pieterse, Development Theory 2nd ed., 214.
70. Ziai, “Ambivalence of Post-Development.”
71. I expect that the increasing awareness of industrial capitalism’s ecological and social consequences will strengthen the position of its radical rejection in the future.
72. Ziai, “Premature Burials,” 43.