1Development discourse and its critics An introduction to post-development Aram Ziai In order to realize the most significant shift in development theory in the last decade of the twentieth century, one only needs to compare two editions of what may be the most widespread and influential textbook on the topic. In the 1992 edition, the first sentence reads ‘This book is about development in what has become known as the “Third World”’, and the introduction goes on to explain that ‘Third World’ is a synonym for the poorer, ‘less developed’ countries, and that alternative meanings of ‘development’ are ‘hotly contested’ (Thomas 1992: 1). The revised edition of 2000 starts with nearly the same statement, but then adds the following: the very idea of development is under challenge to an extent not foreseen even a few years ago. Voices from the ‘post-development’ school claim that, at best, development has failed, or at worst it was always a ‘hoax’, designed to cover up violent damage being done to the so-called ‘develop- ing’ world and its people. (Thomas 2000: 3) A whole new chapter solely dedicated to discuss and repudiate this criticism has been added to the new edition. Obviously, the ‘post-development school’ and its radical, and at first sight, irritating or at least strange claims seem to have had serious impact on the academic discussion during the 1990s. This book sets out to explore this school of thought. It is not the first one to do so, but, as will hope- fully become clear, it attempts to do so in a distinct manner. Although this is not the place for an extensive discussion of post- development (see Ziai 2004), a brief overview on its history and central ideas is provided here, followed by an equally brief overview on the main arguments raised by critics. Post-development: an overview Already, during the 1980s, some scholars and activists were articulating dissatis- faction with the concept and practice of ‘development’ that was explicitly not calling for a better, alternative version of it, but dismissing it altogether (Escobar 4 A. Ziai 1985, 1987, 1988; Esteva 1985, 1987; Rahnema 1985; Latouche 1986; Rist and Sabelli 1986). Inspired by the works of Ivan Illich, but also by Foucault, Gandhi, Polanyi and others, a group of authors collaborated to produce the first among three major works most frequently seen as representative of post-development: the Development Dictionary (Sachs 1992a). The 17 authors (a significant part of them from the South) had all become disillusioned with development policy, and the introduction proclaims that the ‘last 40 years can be called the age of devel- opment. This epoch is coming to an end. The time is ripe to write its obituary’ (Sachs 1992b: 1). The reasons given were that the industrial model of society could no longer be conceived as ahead in the evolutionary scale in the light of the ecological predicament, that the project of development which had been an instrument in the Cold War was bound to exhaust itself after 1989, that the development era had not led to a process of catching up for most of the ‘devel- oping world’ but to a widening gap between rich and poor countries, and finally that ‘development’ was a ‘misconceived enterprise’ in that it implicitly aimed at eliminating cultural diversity through the universalizing of Western institutions (ibid.: 2–4). Often, the post-development critics referred to the ‘invention of underdevel- opment’ by US-President Truman’s ‘bold new program’ announced on January 20, 1949, which defined Africa, Asia and Latin America as ‘underdeveloped areas’ in need of ‘development’: On that day, two billion people became underdeveloped . from that time on, they ceased being what they were, in all their diversity, and were trans- mogrified into an inverted mirror of other’s reality: a mirror that belittles them and sends them to the end of the queue, a mirror that defines their identity, which is really that of a heterogeneous and diverse majority, simply in the terms of a homogenizing and narrow minority. (Esteva 1992: 7)1 The second major work was Escobar’s monograph Encountering Development, in which he put forward the view that ‘the development discourse . has created an extremely efficient apparatus for producing knowledge about, and the exer- cise of power over, the Third World’ (Escobar 1995: 9). In this discourse, he claims, forms of knowledge and of subjectivity were linked to a system of power, and even many alternative approaches to development formulated their criticism of mainstream development policy only within the limits of this dis- course. Escobar also outlined the common features of what was later to be referred to as the post-development school of thought: they are interested not in development alternatives but in alternatives to development, . [they share] an interest in local culture and knowledge; a critical stance towards established scientific discourses; and the defense and promotion of localized, pluralistic grassroots movements. (Escobar 1995: 215) Development discourse and its critics 5 The third work to be mentioned as of great importance for the process of ‘school formation’ was The Post-Development Reader (Rahnema with Bawtree 1997). Here, development was analysed, following Illich, as ‘a threat to people’s auto- nomy’ (Rahnema 1997a: 9). The editor’s main claim (referring to the Cold War origin of development aid) was that development, as it imposed itself on its ‘target populations’ was basically the wrong answer to their needs and aspirations. It was an ideology that was born and refined in the North, mainly to meet the needs of the dominant powers in search of a more ‘appropriate’ tool for their economic and geopo- litical expansion . the ideology helped a dying and obsolete colonialism to transform itself into an aggressive – even sometimes an attractive – instru- ment able to recapture new ground.... The hidden – yet clear – message that every development project has carried to the people at the grassroots has been that their traditional modes of living, thinking and doing have doomed them to a subhuman condition . (Rahnema 1997b: 384, 397) The coming era of post-development therefore had to be based on a new ratio- nale, which could draw inspiration from ‘vernacular societies’, although no return to a static ‘state of nature’ was envisioned: The end of development should not be seen as an end to the search for new possibilities of change.... It should only mean that the binary, the mechan- istic, the reductionist, the inhumane and the ultimately self-destructive approach to change is over. (Rahnema 1997b: 391) The ‘alternatives to development’ put forward by the post-development authors are located in grassroots movements, urban and rural local communities and the informal sector. As a reaction to the failure of development, they claim, new social structures were in the making based on different conceptions of the economy (solidarity and reciprocity instead of homo oeconomicus and the world market), of politics (direct democracy instead of centralized authorities), and of knowledge (traditional knowledge systems instead of modern science). Fre- quently, ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ elements would be mixed or ‘hybridized’ (Escobar 1995: 51, 96, 217ff). However, as the reader was compiled of contributions of 46 different authors, a certain hetergeoneity in theoretical perspectives cannot be denied.2 There were also, of course, many other authors and books that could (according to Escobar’s definition cited above) be grouped under the heading of post-development (e.g. Nandy 1988, 1992, 1994; Shiva 1989; Apffel-Marglin and Marglin 1990, 1996; Rahnema 1990; Alvares 1992; Rist et al. 1992; Kothari 1993; Latouche 1993; Ferguson 1994; Perrot et al. 1994; Rist 1994, 1997; Sachs 1995, 1999; Esteva and Prakash 1998; see also DuBois 1991; Manzo 1991; Hobart 1993; 6 A. Ziai Mehmet 1995; Lummis 1996; White 1996, 2002; Underhill-Sem 2002); Megoran 2005. Critiques of post-development: an overview Apart from that, numerous publications appeared in the 1990s dealing with development discourse from a critical perspective, inspired by the post- development school, but sometimes insisting on a more nuanced and academic approach (e.g. Crush 1995; Moore and Schmitz 1995; Apthorpe and Gasper 1996; Cowen and Shenton 1996; Cooper and Packard 1997; Marcussen and Arnfred 1998). Within the debate on gender and development, we find a whole range of works dealing with similar questions, stretching from eco-femin- ism to decidedly post-modern approaches (Shiva 1989; Mies and Shiva 1993; Marchand and Parpart 1995; Saunders 2002). The post-development ideas were widely discussed and often heavily criti- cized by countless authors from political economy, neo- or post-marxist (e.g. Berger 1995; Corbridge 1998; Kiely 1999; Peet with Hartwick 1999, chapter 5; Brass 2000; Brett 2000; Storey 2000; Watts 2000; Rapley 2004, 2006), sociological and geographical (Knippenberg and Schuurman 1994; Nederveen Pieterse 1996, 2000; Lehmann 1997; Eriksson Baaz 1999; Khondker 1999; Blaikie 2000; Curry 2003; Simon 2006), anthropological and actor-oriented (Little and Painter 1995; Gow 1996; Grillo and Stirrat 1997; Crewe and Harri- son 1998; Ausdal 2001; Robins 2003), historical (Grischow and McKnight 2003) or Foucauldian and de-constructivist perspectives (Brigg 2002; Parfitt 2002). Although there is not sufficient space for a thorough discussion of the numer- ous points of criticism raised against the post-development authors – some of which are addressed in the following chapters – three of the most typical and often-quoted critiques are briefly reviewed. One of the sharpest rebuttals of post-development comes from Stuart Cor- bridge, who claims that, beneath the pavement of modernity, there is only the hard soil of pre-modern times to be found, not the progressive beach imagined by post-development. Although he admits that post-development correctly points out certain prejudices and failures, he maintains: Proponents of post-development too often trade in non-sequiturs (the failure of dev.