Week 4: Theories of Development Question: what might someone say the above?

‘We must embark on a bold new program for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of some underdeveloped areas. The old imperialism – exploitation for foreign profit – has no place in our plans. What we envisage is a program of development based on the concept of development based on the concept of democratic fair dealing…More than half the people of the world are living in conditions approaching misery. Their food is inadequate. They are victims of disease. Their economic life is primitive and stagnant. Their poverty is a handicap and a threat both to them and to more prosperous areas. For the first time in history, humanity possesses the knowledge and the skill to relieve the suffering of these people.’ (President Truman, 1947) If time you can watch the whole speech:

What do we mean by ‘development’? Are there any issues?

What is this image saying? Do you agree?

You could split the group into 4 – they can research one of the four theories (using the blog post or the internet more widely – then they present on it!)

1. Development as Modernisation Following WWII, the idea of development became linked with an approach to economics that assumed that economic growth was the main goal of a ‘developing’ nation. Those nations who were more financially wealthy also held a strong role in the World Bank and IMF as they were run on a one-dollar, one-vote system rather than following the UN on a one-country, one-vote system. Specifically, many assumed that further happiness would be achieved through increased national production, measured by the new standard of Gross National Product (GNP).   Modernising institutions (e.g. schools) => Modern values => Modern behaviour => Modern society => Economic development

2. Dependency Theory Dependency theory developed as a response to modernisation theory. Many thinkers pointed out that in modernisation, one group’s gain usually resulted in another group’s loss. They also noted that the primary beneficiaries of the colonialist times were the bourgeoisie elites, rather than the entire country as a whole. Dependency theorists called the rich colonising early industrialising countries the ‘metropoles’ and termed the colonised exploited states the ‘satellite’ or ‘periphery’ states. These theorists thus argued that we needed to examine the reasons why capital may not have been created in the ‘developing’ countries in the first instance, and why this persisted long after their independence, to today.

3. Human Development Approaches Sen (an Indian economist who was the founder of this movement) argues that the expansion of freedoms is both: The primary end of development (‘the constitutive role’) The principal means of development (the ‘instrumental role’) i.e.  expansion of freedoms and removal of unfreedoms in itself increases freedoms due to the interrelated nature of freedoms.

4. Post Development Theories ‘There can be no fixed and final definition of development, only suggestions of what it should imply in particular contexts.’ B. Hettne. (1995) Development Theory and the Three Worlds. ‘Developing countries’ is the name that experts use to designate countries trampled by someone else’s development.’ (Edward Galeano, Upside Down: A Primer for the Looking Glass World)  ‘Development has to be culturally grounded and placed in context for it to respect the dignity of life, where it is about sustaining communities rather than making them subservient to the dictates of global economic imperatives. What development means is a question, which has to be left to individual communities; this is the only way we can assure development because self-development thereby reinforcing the idea of development-by-people.’ (from Daly, Kumar and Regan, 2016)

Fanon, F. The Wretched of the Earth. Suggested further reading:  Mincer J. (1981) “Human Capital and Economic Growth” Working Paper 80, National Bureau of Economic Research. Cambridge MA http://www.nber.org/papers/w0803.pdf  Fanon, F. The Wretched of the Earth. Hoogvelt, A book Globalisation and the Postcolonial World (2001) Robeyns, I. (2005). ‘The capability approach: A theoretical survey’. Journal of Human Development, 6(1), 93-114. Sen, A. (1999). Development as freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp 1-34. UNDP (2009) Human Development Report 2009 – Chapter 1 Rodney, W – How Europe Underdeveloped Africa