- Assistance?
- from whom to whom?
- for what?
- strings attached?
- Where did it come from?
- Colonialism--European powers, economic dismantlement and exploitation, depopulation (i.e., genocide), enslavement, backed by overwhelming force
- Post WWII [Cold War + Reconstruction] + Bretton Woods [Marshall Plan] >World Bank
- US food and trade policies
- Decolonization (Boserup and European rule) Africa, Asia, Americas
- Griffin's thesis: one country's development is another's underdevelopment?
- Assumptions
- it's replicable (demographic transition)
- it's economic
- technology transfer (agrarian / industrial transformation)
- it's structural (transformation of the economy, labor force)
- it's aggregate (region, nation, household, etc.)
- It's benevolent
- Dudley Seers--'realization of personality'
(an alternative critique)
- Measuring development
- Considerations--cost, validity (are we measuring what we say we're measuring?), reliability (are our measurements accurate?), quantitative vs qualitative dimensions, comparability across societies, global vs disaggregated measures
- Do global measures mask deepening poverty?
- Language of development
- industrial/non-industrial, developed/undeveloped/developing, low/medium/high income, poor/rich, advanced/ backwards, modernity/tradition . . .
- Meaning of development? Some definitions:
- Gandhi: The realization of human potential
- Brundtland Commission (sustainable development); Meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (improvement in human welfare, quality of life, and social well being)
- Elements? Values? Preconditions (e.g., democracy)?
- In practice
- (according to Maggie Black) Means to reinforce existing political power structures
- neo-colonialism?
- Ethnocentric
- Process controlled by countries of the North
- Corruption, dysfunction, 'weak states'
- Assumptions of 'true' development
- Implies value judgments
- Implies change
- Change usually means 'winners' and 'losers' (some better off, others not)
- Unintended consequences accompany change in complex societies
- Short-term vs longer-term
- Radical nature of 'true' development (grassroots, participatory, self-determining, democratic, egalitarian and equitable)
- Development as resistance against larger political and economic forces
- Elements ....
- Minimum: Food, livelihood, equality (from Seers)
- Eliminating poverty
- Equity, fairness
- Expanding choice, freedoms (freedom 'from' and freedom 'to'), dignity
- Self-determination
- Infrastructure
- Participation in social and civic life
- Realizing human potential
- Sustainability
- Evidence ....
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