The seductions of determinism in development theory: Foucault's functionalism

Abstract

In 1985 David Booth wrote a seminal article in which he argued that development theory, mostly Marxist but also modernisation theory, was out of touch with reality, incapable of generating viable policy, and riven with meta-theoretical errors. He recommended a return to empirical case studies, the comparative method, and an awareness of the problems of functionalist and essentialist argument. In the ensuing decade a further range of solutions was offered to bail development theory out of trouble: micro-theory, participatory action research, postmodernism, post-development theory, postcolonialism. Twenty years later the dominance of Marxist and neo-Marxist theories has been replaced by an equally pervasive hegemony of Foucauldian discourse. In signaling the presence of a new impasse, there is much talk of ‘the poverty of post-development’. The intriguing question to ask is: what can development theorists and Third World intellectuals learn about themselves in this constant refrain?

Notes

1 Poulantzas and Walzer both criticise the functionalist argument evident in Foucault (McNay, 1994: 105; Walzer, 1986), while Habermas complains of a metaphysical, reified and undifferentiated will to power (McNay, 1994: 105).

2 The debate around the possibility of authentic participation and its unintended consequences has been suffused in Foucauldian theory. See, for example, Cooke and Kothari (2001) and Hickey and Mohan (2004).

3 In an intriguing overlap with Gadamer and Fanon concerning intellectuals, Spivak speaks here about the impossibility of escape from modernist discourse, about the inevitability of collusion with colonialism, of the unavoidability of the politics of knowledge, and the need for ‘hyper self-reflexivity’. If there is to be any worth to the intellectual standpoint, it will be through ‘learning to learn from the Other’, and becoming aware of one's own assumptions and premises (Kapoor, 2004).