Department of Sociology & Industrial Sociology Prince Alfred Street, Makhanda, 6139, South Africa Tel: +27 (0) 46 603 8361/7544 www.ru.ac.za/sociology SOCIOLOGY & DEVELOPMENT STUDIES HONOURS 2021: Term 1 DEVELOPMENT THEORY LECTURERS Prof. Monty J. Roodt ([email protected]) Mr Thoko Sipungu ([email protected]) Ms Tarryn Alexander ([email protected]) 2 INTRODUCTION Welcome to the honours course on Development Theory! Section 1 of the course, taught by Professor Monty Roodt, will consist of four seminars over two weeks. It will cover an introduction to the concept of development, and the history of the main development theories. We will not cover feminist theories of development as there is a separate course covering this important topic, run by Professor Michael Drewett. Section 2 will be taught by Mr Thoko Sipungu. This section hopes to provide theoretical and practical understandings of development through an examination of the capabilities and right- based paradigms to development insofar as they relate and apply to disability. Section 3 will be taught by Ms Tarryn Alexander. Section three introduces post-development theory and its critique of the power relations and orientalist thinking which permeates Eurocentric development discourses. In the final week we look at the notion of “the developmental state” in the context of South Africa. There will be an essay for each of the three sections which comprise the course mark. SECTION 1: DEVELOPMENT THEORIES This section will start with an introduction to the concept of development and how it has evolved over the decades from the colonial period, through what has become known as the “first development decade” in the period after the Second World War, into the period of neoliberalism and globalisation where the environmental/food and the world capitalist crises have prompted calls for the entire development enterprise to be abandoned. Alan Thomas usefully distinguishes three main senses or contemporary meanings of the term ‘development’: as a vision, description, or measure of the state of being of a desirable society as a historical process of social change in which societies are transformed over long periods as consisting of deliberate efforts aimed at improvement on the part of various agencies, including governments, all kinds of organisations and social movements (cited in Bernstein, 2006: 45). Bernstein (2006: 45) continues: “Underlying this lucid and concise characterisation are the dramatic and contradictory histories of the formation of the modern world, of how people located differentially in the times and places of its processes have tried to make sense of them, and of the effects of those understandings for more or less coherent political projects and other forms of collective action (combining ‘vision’ and ‘deliberate efforts aimed at improvement’)”. 2 After this introduction, the course moves on to an analysis of the three conventional post-Second World War development paradigms. As Kothari points out, this heralds what for many development courses is the starting point of “development studies” – the post-World War II reconstruction of Europe and Japan under the auspices of the Marshall Plan and the subsequent ascendency of “modernisation theory” as the capitalist orthodoxy within the context of the competing paradigms of the “Cold War”. Here a critical examination of dual economy theory and Rostow’s stages of economic growth will take precedent. The failure of modernisation theory to stimulate development along first world lines or to decrease the gross inequality between so-called first and third world countries gave rise initially to the unequal-exchange and import-substitution theories of the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA) under the leadership of Raul Prebisch, but these were soon eclipsed by the more radical analysis of the South American structuralists (mainly historians), dependency theorists (Andre Gunder Frank) and world-systems theorists (Emmanuel Wallerstein), who attempted to link the continued “underdevelopment” of the ex-colonies to the fact that these countries were locked into a structural position within the world capitalist system of on‐going exploitation stemming from their colonial past. While the world systems theory provided an important critical analysis of international inequality and post‐colonial exploitation, many development practitioners felt that these theories were big on critique but low on practical pointers for a way out of the ‘development impasse’. The result was the emergence of a development paradigm known as “Basic Needs” or “Redistribution with Growth”, which combined a trenchant critique of modernisation theory with a set of alternative strategies for development. These strategies involved greater state involvement in the development process and redirection of development efforts from capital-intensive urban industrialisation to labour-intensive rural agriculture and agro-industry, combined with active citizen participation in the development process. The failure of the basic needs approach has been blamed as much on the lack of political will, both from international players and from local political elites, as it has on the resurgence of the modernisation orthodoxy, this time in an updated form more suited to a globalizing world, known as neo‐liberalism. The neo‐liberal framework, implemented in the developing world under the auspices of the international financial institutions, namely the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank through its structural adjustment programmes, is predicated on the reduction of state spending, export orientation and the opening of national borders to international trade and investment. Requirements for Section 1 You do not do a degree, you read for a degree. This is especially true for post-graduate courses. You are expected to read widely as possible and participate in the Zoom meetings with a three to five-page type-written preparation for every seminar (except the first seminar where I will 2 introduce the course). These seminar preparations will serve as the basis for your active participation in the seminars and as the raw material for your essay. Having listened to other people’s presentations and participated in the discussion, you will have the opportunity to revise your paper before writing the essay. I will select people randomly to present on the topic under discussion, so you need to have your initial three-page preparation done for each seminar. Times: Mondays – 11 am to 1 pm Thursdays – 11 am to 1 pm Essay Topic for Section 1 Critically evaluate the concept of development taking into consideration the different theories of development studied in Section 1. The essay must be one and a half spacing Times New Roman font and between 7 – 8 pages long, and properly referenced with appropriate subheadings and title. Please consult Handout No 1 for the university’s policy on plagiarism and the department’s policy on referencing. Please do not send it to me as a PDF document or in Google Docs, Microsoft Word only. Submission Date: Monday, March 28 Seminar Topics and Readings Week 1: Monday Introduction to Development and Development Studies Introduction to the concept of development Henry Bernstein’s characterisation of development as dramatic and contradictory histories of the formation of the modern world A broader concept of development. Seminar/Assignment Topic What do you understand the term “development” to mean given the change in its initial focus on economic growth to a broader understanding that includes social, cultural, gender, environmental and political aspects? Readings Barder, O. (2010) Development and complexity. London: Centre for Global Development. (On RUConnected) 2 Bernstein, H. (2006). Studying development/development studies. London: Routledge. Kothari, U. & Minogue, M. (eds.) (2002). Development theory and practice: Critical perspectives. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave. Available at: https://books.google.co.za/books?hl=en&lr=&id=1GwZCwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=kot hari+uma&ots=YEJeUmgijR&sig=Bkswfaxl_oruvWbKkIJZchswGjY&redir_esc=y#v=onepage &q=kothari%20uma&f=false Kothari, U. (2005). A radical history of development studies: Individuals, institutions and ideologies. Cape Town: David Philip; London, New York: Zed Books. Available at: https://books.google.co.za/books?hl=en&lr=&id=WvdiDgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT45&dq=Fro m+Colonial+Administration+to+Development+Studies:+a+Postcolonial+Critique+of+the+Histo ry+of+Development+Studies&ots=IKNrz4r_Qv&sig=p0ijdgWv45jZsGjpEEWr8UmmwNQ&re dir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=From%20Colonial%20Administration%20to%20Development%20Stu dies%3A%20a%20Postcolonial%20Critique%20of%20the%20History%20of%20Development %20Studies&f=false Sachs, W. (ed.) (1992). The development dictionary. Johannesburg: University of the Witwatersrand Press. Chapter 1. Available at: https://books.google.co.za/books?id=2bi_kf7QAq4C&pg=PA1&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=4#v=on epage&q&f=false SOAS (2021) Understanding sustainable development. London: London University. (On RUConnected) Sumner, A., (2008) What is ‘development’? In: A. Sumner & M. Tribe (eds.) International development studies: Theories and methods in research and practice. London: SAGE. (On RuConnected). Week 1: Thursday Modernisation Theory • Modernisation as a model of progress • Post-second-world-war reconstruction: Marshall Plan • Dual‐economy theory: Lewis, Hobart‐Houghton • Rostow’s stages of economic growth • Modernisation theory and neo-liberalism/structural adjustment