THE DEVELOPMENT OF DEVELOPMENT THEORY
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THE DEVELOPMENT OF DEVELOPMENT THEORY-TOWARDS CRITICAL GLOBALISM
The prevalent note in development thinking nowadays is saying goodbye to paradigms Many articles open by saying goodbye to modernization and dependency, while insisting that no new paradigm will be proposed. The objections to these paradigms are familiar enough and there's no need to restate them here Still this is not just a time of 'waiting for a text'. Several new departures in development thinking parallel general tendencies in social theory, such as the problema-tization of modernity, poststructuralism and postmodernism. Development £^IÍÍt^^^ of power/knowledge (Š^hTíW
^rgTrrTOTaFglin 1990,DuBois 1991,55651985)^^tmeted (Johnston 1991), subjected to archaeological excavation (Sachs 1999), or juxtaposed to /explorations of the postmodern (Schuurman 1993, Slater 1992) These contributions expand on the critiques of Eurocentrism, Orientalism, and occidental cultural homogemzation in postcolonial and cultural studies. No doubt the debates on modernity and postmodernity carry major implications for development theory for they are concerned with redefining 'development' writ large
These contributions are limited by their preoccupation with discourse While deepening our critical insight they do not offer alternatives. At the same time that postmodern interrogations provide the basis for a new critique of modernization heory, modernity as a theme is making a comeback, but now in the plural - as late or advanced modernity, modernity 'reworked', neomodernization theory or new modernity. The latter involves the notion of 'risk society' and the argument of a new modernity' in which all societies, developed and less developed are exposed to a globalization of ecological and other risks (Beck 1992)
A recurring feature of many discussions is that development theory is being attributed more coherence and consistency than it possesses. Thus in being criticized as the 'religion of the West' (Rist 1997) or as the 'myth of development (Tucker 1999), developmentalism is homogenized and discussed as if it were cut from a single cloth. The deconstruction of development texts is not the same as unpacking development theory, disaggregating its lineages, dimensions and projects.
The very notion of development is increasingly being bracketed. The questioning comes from various directions: from deconstructions of development discourse
but also from the momentum of globalization on account of which the special status of developing economies - the original rationale of the development argument - is gradually being eroded. In this context, structural adjustment represents a radical break with the development tradition, less because of its neoliberal thrust than, more importantly, because of the implicit argument that all societies must adjust to global economic imperatives. The implication is that either development is gradually fading out as an outdated perspective belonging to a bygone era of economic apartheid, or it is broadened to apply to all societies, as a global logic. If this were the case it would be logical to assume that the content and meaning of development would be changing too.
These various notions - deconstruction of development, structural adjustment, globalization, global risk - seem to point in a similar direction: the demise of 'development' and its gradually emerging reconstruction as world development. A related question is the relationship between endogenous and exogenous dynamics in development: this too, on different grounds, may point toward a reconceptualization of development as a global problematic.
This chapter seeks to develop three arguments. First, it argues that development thinking has not been the single paradigm for which it has often been taken, but that all along it has been a heterogeneous set of approaches that has been not only variable over time but highly diverse at any given time. Secondly, it zeroes in on one particular unresolved dilemma in several forms of development thinking: the disparity and tension between endogenous and exogenous dynamics in development. Thirdly, it explores the current tendency to rethink development as a process that is not reserved to 'developing countries' but that all societies are developing, as part of a global process. Thus it juxtaposes development discourse and globalization. I argue that globalization should neither be blocked out or ignored, in the name of delinking, import substitution or neomercantilism, nor unconditionally embraced. The term I propose for this in-between position is critical globalism.
The first part of this chapter takes the form of development discourse analysis. The second part continues this analysis with metatheoretical reflections. The strength of discourse analysis is to make subjectivities transparent, which may offer grounds to renegotiate subjectivities; but it is limited in that it does not per se engage objective dynamics. So in the third part the mode of argument changes as well. The closing argument on development and globalization seeks to gather the insights gained from analysing development discourse and to combine these with changes in objective circumstances so as to arrive at critical policy orientations.
Notions of Change
There is a tendency among users as well as critics of development theory to attribute to it a certain coherence and consistency, with the exception of one or another favourite cleavage. This easily produces a dichotomous view of development theory, as in Marxism versus neoclassical economics, mainstream versus counterpoint, etc. Development theories promote the .facade of. consistency as part of their single-minded future-building project. Critics contribute to it by
following the logic of binary opposition. It may be fruitful instead to view development theoiy in the plural, not as the unfolding of a grand paradigm neatly bifurcating in contesting models, but as a hybrid made up of uneven elements, of borrowings and incursions from alien sources, and improvisations spurred by crises. In a word, to consider the inconsistencies of what goes under the heading of development theory.
Robert Nisbet is widely regarded, including by critics of many claims of develop-mentahsm, as an authoritative source on the history of Western notions of change while he is also a spectacular representative of the tendency to 'homogenize'' developmental thinking. In Social Change and History he maintains that Tor twenty-five hundred years a single metaphoric conception of change has dominated Western thought' (1969: 211). The theory of social development in his view, derives from the ancient metaphor of growth. With the Greeks this took on the form of cycles of change; in the Christian version formulated by Augustine it was modified to an epic form, which was still cyclical but without recurrence- and by the seventeenth century it was again modified to produce the modern idea of linear progress. In the eighteenth century this set of assumptions engendered the idea of 'natural history', and in the nineteenth century, the theory of social evolution that was common to Hegel, Saint-Simon, Comte, Marx, Spencer, Morgan and Tylor. This theoiy, according to Nisbet, regarded change as natural, immanent or proceeding from forces within the entity, continuous, directional, necessary' corresponding to differentiation in society, typically moving from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous, and finally, as proceeding from uniform causes
Nisbet concedes that in twentieth-century social science there was a revolt against evolutionism, replacing unilinear evolutionism with multilinear evolution, but he maintains that even the critics reproduced the underlying metaphor of growth: 'although they were denouncing the schemes of social evolution they were accepting at full value the concepts of change that underlay the theory of social evolution' (1969: 225). That is, the belief in origins, immanence, continuity, uniform causes, etc. is reproduced in twentieth-century conceptions of social change. This bold thesis raises several questions: is this representation plausible or does it m itself reflect a belief in origins and continuity?
A different way of reading the development of development theory may be genealogy ,n the N.etzschean sense. Nietzsche, as Foucault reminds us was opposed to the search for 'origins': 'because it is an attempt to capture the exact essence of things, their purest possibilities, and their carefully protected identities; because this search assumes the existence of immobile forms that precede the external world of accident and succession'. However, Foucault continues 'if the genealogist ... listens to history' he finds behind things 'not a timeless and essential secret, but the secret that they have no essence or that their essence was tabncated m a piecemeal fashion from alien forms' (Foucault 1984- 78) An example of the preoccupation with origins is Hegel: 'The principle of development involves also the existence of a latent germ of being - a capacity or potentiality striving to realize itself. This formal conception finds actual existence in spirit; which has the history of the world for its theatre, its possession, and the sphere of its realization' (quoted in Nisbet 1969: 159).
For Nietzsche this would be an example of the 'Egyptianism' of philosophers, the obstinate 'placing of conclusions at the beginning' (in Foucault 1984: 90). History is replaced by metaphysics, by Neoplatonic essences beyond time. Let's contrast this with Nietzsche (1976: 470): 'By searching out origins, one becomes a crab. The historian looks backward; eventually he also believes backward.'
Nisbet's history of the idea of development as a continuous outgrowth of the Greek metaphor of growth exhibits not only the preoccupation with origins and continuity but also an essentialism of ideas. It lays claim to a grand cohesiveness of Western thought, uniting the pagan and Christian, classical and modern notions in a single weave. It sets the West apart from the rest of the world, while it tacitly removes the main lines of cleavage within Western thought, those separating ancients and moderns, religious and secular elites, elites and dissidents (such as Nietzsche's esprits litres). An exercise in high humanism, it produces an elite representation of Western notions of change, with the classics duly towering above subsequent thinkers as the true ancestors of Western thought.
What faithful conformism to begin with the Greeks, the proverbial 'cradle of Western civilization'. Why not consider the divergencies among Greek notions of change? For example among the Peripatetics, the followers of Aristotle, who along with the Neoplatonists adhered to a cyclical notion of time, whereas the Stoics moved away from this, and historians such as Herodotus and Thucydides broke altogether with the doctrine of recurrence.
In his essay on Chinese 'Attitudes toward time and change as compared with Europe' Joseph Needham groups non-Christian Greek thought together with Indian thought and the Hindu and Buddhist notion of the endless repetition of the wheel of existence. Needham refers to 'the intense history-consciousness of Christendom' and contrasts linear Judaeo-Christian time to cyclical Indo-Hellenic time. With regard to China he concludes: 'Strange as it may seem to those who still think in terms of the "timeless Orient", the culture of China was, on the whole, more of the Iranic, Judaeo-Christian than of the Indo-Hellenic types' (Needham 1981: 131). This gives us a rather different view of the distribution of civilizational perceptions of change, and a totally different map of world history from Nisbet's. The grounds for the singularity of the West as a special case, a deviation from the 'general human pattern', are eliminated.
Why not highlight, rather than continuity and uniformity, the discontinuities and divergencies in Western notions of change? Western views, of course, have also been an amalgam, as we can see, for instance, in the melange of Christian views in Augustine's time and later in the return to cyclical thinking in Nietzsche ('ewige Wiederkehr' or eternal recurrence), Spengler and Toynbee (Needham 1981: 128). A re-examination of Western notions of development may reveal a far more heterogeneous history, replete with moments of improvisation, dissonance, discontinuity. Leaving aside that Nisbet simplified the notions of change of Greeks and Christians - which to an extent he nuanced in a later work (1980) -let's turn to the moderns.
Nisbet rightly mentions that the nineteenth-century theories of social development applied to different entities - to reason for Turgot and Condorcet, to knowledge and civilization for Comte, to freedom for Hegel, to democracy for
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DEVELOPMENT THEORY
Toqueville, to the forces of production for Marx, to social institutions for Spencer, to kinship, property and civil government for Morgan, to legal institutions for Maine, to culture and religion for Tylor. Nisbet insists: 'it was the entity ... for which natural development in time was claimed. It was not the sum total of geographical areas on earth' (1969: 167). But this is not the whole story of the theory of social evolution. Evolutionist stages theories, such as that of Victorian anthropology - primitivism, savagery, barbarism, civilization - were also taken to apply to human cultures, which were identified with societies (cf. Stocking 1987). Theorists of social evolution regularly applied their views to geographical areas -Hegel on Africa, Marx on Asia are familiar examples.
Nisbet's focus is on development conceived as natural and endogenous to the entity or society, but another dimension to nineteenth-century developmental thought which is glossed over in his account is development arising from exogenous influences and conditions - from diffusion, international influences, or what we would now call globalization. Marx's theory is both: 'the new grows in the womb of the old' refers to endogenous, organic growth; while his statements on capitalism as a 'permanently revolutionizing force', on its progressive effects on the 'rural idiocy' of the countryside, and of colonialism on 'stagnant' societies refer to external dynamics.
Nisbet is sensitive to Western ethnocentrism: 'No one can miss the fact that in every instance - there is no exception - the direction of change found by the evolutionist was toward the specific set of qualities possessed by Western Europe alone' (1969: 169-70). But, just as geography is missing, the imperial setting is absent from his account. In fact it has been argued that imperialism is marked by 'the primacy of the geographical', for it is after all 'an act of geographical violence' (Said 1993: 225). While this is a particularly narrow reading of imperialism that overlooks its political economy (which may well transcend geographical, territorial boundaries), the element of geography should not be ignored.
Nisbet's argument of continuity overlooks the actual shifts in Western developmental thinking, it papers over the dynamics over time of European views. Briefly, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century views tended to be ambivalent as to Europe's status in the world and looked up to non-European models such as China, Turkey, Persia, the noble savages of America, the Pacific and Africa. Only in nineteenth-century theories of social evolution did the European will to power prevail; they took a single-focused form which provided greater consistency, particularly during the second half of the century, than before or after.1
If Nisbet's representation is fundamentally flawed, how can we account for the fact that his kind of view has found such wide acceptance? A related question is to what extent we can recognize the same implicit model of endogenous, organic growth in contemporary development theory.
Development Theories in the Plural
If we consider twentieth-century development thinking and its theoretical lineages, does Nisbet's metaphor of growth hold? Is the tenor one of continuity and consistency or one of disparity and improvisation? The term 'development theory'
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suggests a coherence that in fact is hard to find. What we do find is a plethora of competing and success.ve currents, schools, paradigms, models and approaches, several of which claim to exclude one another. For a start, development theory refers to two terrains which have tended to converge only at certain junctures: development sociology and development economics. Further more or less obvious distinctions run between theory and ideology, policy and practice.
Development sociology has been by and large the critical successor to the nineteenth-century theories of social development. Development economics, on the other hand, owes its origin to a deviation from late nineteenth-century economic orthodoxy. Kurt Martin (1991) has made the interesting argument that development economics resuscitates and revisits the basic findings of classical political economy, of Smith, Ricardo and Marx, who were development economists in that their basic problematic was the transition from agrarian to industrial society. Neoclassical economics came into being only after 1870, as a theory ot fully industrialized economies (FitzGerald 1991).
'Development' if understood as the problematic of the transition from agriculture to industry has been revisited and reinvented several times over; it has been a question facing several generations of late developers. It was the question lacing Central Eastern and Southern European economies during the early twentieth century'- hence the involvement of Central Europeans in the early stages ol modern development theory. Hence Alex Nove's claim that development theory was 'born in Russia in the twenties' (Martin 1991: 28). Accordingly, several modern development theories replicate earlier findings.
The formative period of 'modern' development economic theory was the 1940s and 1950s The colonial economies were the terrain of development theory but the problematic was that of the transition or, in a word, industrialization. Thus while 'colonial economics' was transformed into 'development economies', it borrowed from the existing theories of transition, either from classical political economy or from other Tate developers'.
So the theory of unequal exchange was originally advanced in 1929 as an argument for protecting industry in agrarian countries (Martin 1991: 38). At the time unequal exchange was viewed as a feature of centre-periphery trade. In his 1928 analysis of European capitalism Werner Sombart applied this terminology to Great Britain as the dominant centre and Central, Eastern and Southern Europe as exploited and dominated peripheries. In fact the terminology of centre and periphery derives from an older, late nineteenth-century discourse of German political geography, in which the term Randlage was used for periphery. For geographers such as Friedrich Ratzel this discourse carried definite political, nationalist overtones, as part of the rivalry between Germany and Britain Via Dietrich Haushofer it entered the discourse of geopolitics of National Socialism and informed the urge for Lebensraum (Nederveen Pieterse 1989: Ch. 1). Accordingly  the centre-periphery argument served nationalism in both offensive (national expansionism) and defensive (protectionism) modes. In the 1960s it was reutilized as a cornerstone of dependency theory. In Arghin Emanuel's contribution to dependency theory, unequal trade came to describe the dualism of the world economy between North and South.
The premise of modern (i.e. postwar) development economics was that it was a separate branch of economics, different from economics in the industrialized countries and from neoclassical equilibrium theory. State intervention and planning, along with accumulation and growth, were part of its 'founding discourse' which showed general affinities with Keynesianism. Foreign assistance, accompanied by the idea of mutual benefit, was another feature of the original discourse. In this respect it diverged from both neoclassical economics and Marxism.
In relation to international trade, again radically different theoretical outlooks prevailed. On the one hand were liberalism and the tradition of the Manchester School, following the Smithean premise that free trade and the international division of labour based on comparative advantage would eventually benefit all countries. On the other was neomercantilism, arguing, in the footsteps of Alexander Hamilton and Friedrich List, that infant industries require tariff protection Mainstream economic theory from the 1870s onward promoted the free trade argument, while the neomercantilist policies which sheltered the late developers (the American Republic, later followed by Germany, France, Russia) were relegated to the margins, as deviations from the norm, to be reclaimed later as part of neomarxist theory. At that stage the theory of unequal exchange served as an argument for tariff protection in less developed countries.
From the outset development thinking has been marked by an uneven and contradictory patchwork with divergent paradigms operating in different terrains and sectors: in industrialized economies, neoclassical economics coexisted with industrial policy; in trade, liberalism in theory coexisted with neomercantilism in practice; in finance, versions of monetarism prevailed. Each of these divergent perspectives and policy orientations made its imprint on developing economies, all of them simultaneously in different sectors, although usually articulated under the umbrella of an overarching development rhetoric. Which development posture prevailed reflected the historical bloc of class alignments that held the upper hand.
As a concept 'development' papers over the different interests involved in economic, social and political change. 'Development' suggests the possibility of a package formula in which all these interests come to some form of crystallization and convergence. As such it displays an intrinsically positivist bias Obviously, social and economic change is always a field of contestation among different stakeholders. Each of these will construct a story - of the past, present and future - to validate its claims. A political economy of development theory (as a subset of the general sociology of knowledge) might not have too much difficulty in identifying the shifting 'historical blocs' that have set the agenda of development ideology at different points in time,2 except, of course, that at no time it has been a single or uncontested agenda.
New trades and manufactures (Manchester School) contested the political economy of monopoly enterprise (mercantilism, old colonial system). The political economy of competition capital and manufacturing was contested by finance capital (monetarism). All along, the political economies of capital in their different articulations have been contested by the political economies of labour (trade unionism, synd1Calism, Marxism, socialism). The claims of national firms and
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agricultural interests (protection) have been contested by internationally oriented enterprise (free trade). These various sets of contradictions have been played out through contestations between alignments of interests favouring either state intervention or market forces. Like masks in a puppet show, both 'state' and 'market' have themselves signified complex fields of forces and interests. 'State' and 'market' have been on either side of these contesting forces. The state has been the meeting place where a political and social contract between the diverging interests was fashioned.
Accordingly, development thinking implicitly carries two sets of meanings: an actual diversity of interests and perspectives, and a hegemony, i.e. an inherently unstable settlement of these differences resulting in a development posture. The hegemonic effect occurs both at national and at international levels (Cox 1991). In a sense, there are as many ideologies of development as there are players in the field, but some players are more equal than others.
In the 1960s what consensus existed in development economics was destroyed 'so that it is no longer possible to talk of a mainstream of development economics' (Martin 1991: 55). In the 1970s the Chicago version of monetarism became dominant. Monetarism is not to be equated with neoclassical equilibrium theory: it is 'little more than a revival of nineteenth century bankers' principles of "sound money" - currency convertibility, stable parity, fiscal thrift, low wages and minimal government influence in business' (FitzGerald 1991: 15).
The ensuing wave of generalized neoliberalism rejects the 'limitations of the special case' and argues that poor countries are poor mainly because of mismanagement. Put in another way: the compartments which hitherto separated development economics from the mainstream economics which prevailed in industrialized economies, international trade and finance, fell away, so that development economics is being integrated into general economics. Whether or not there is a ground for a separate theory of development is presently one of the key debates (Martin 1991: 55; Hettne 1995). The logic of structural adjustment programmes follows from the demise of separate development economics.
These shifts of alignment make for a second deep rupture in the overall history of 'development'. The career of development has typically been one of state intervention. Now in many parts of the world we witness the marginalization of the state and a new ascendancy of market forces. A feature of this process is the renewed predominance of finance capital since the 1970s and the cycle of debt expansion and debt crisis, which turned the IMF and World Bank into leading arbiters of development policy, with the banking orthodoxy of sound money, or monetarism, being recycled as the newest beacon on the development horizon. Robert Kuttner notes that under these circumstances what public sovereignty remains 'has been entrusted to perhaps the most conservative and market-oriented of all public institutions - central banks ... the triad of central bankers, IMF, and World Bank has been so thoroughly creditor-oriented that it might as well have been the House of Rothschild or the House of Morgan' (1991: 260-1). In the alignment of the late twentieth century, as in the late nineteenth century, finance capital predominates as the cement of the historic bloc of interests that frames 'development'.
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THE DEVELOPMENT OF DEVELOPMENT THEORY
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Along with the discourse the models shifted - no more United States and American Dream, no more China, Cuba, Tanzania, Nicaragua either, but the accumulation models of the NICs of East Asia. It spelled the 'end of the Third World' (Harris 1986) and of Third Worldism. In the process another contradiction emerges, another instance of development double-speak, for indeed the East Asian experience is not a model of unfettered market-led development but, on the contrary, the model of the developmental state (Johnson 1982, White 1988). In other words, current development ideologies are another highly diverse and deeply divided range of discourses.
These divergencies can be observed on the level of development theory, which is increasingly diversifying (Booth 1994b); development ideology, where neoliber-alism appears to have passed its peak; and development policy, which is inspired as much by ad hocism and pragmatism as it is driven by ideological posturing and on-the-spot manoeuvring. Here from time to time I use development thinking as a middling term, indicating the mixed character of development speak - an uneven melange of theoretical precepts, ideological subscriptions and political preferences.
One line of thinking holds that the dividing line between development successes and failures in terms of growth does not run between models or theories, but that what matters most is not the 'model' but how it is implemented. For instance, what matters is not whether or not a state intervenes but what kind of state intervenes and in what political culture. Several Asian countries have sought to implement NIC strategies with strong doses of state intervention and this has generated high growth rates in several East and Southeast Asian countries; in Thailand, Malaysia and to some extent Indonesia. The formula however has not worked in the Philippines and Sri Lanka. To explain this variation factors have been brought in such as economic and political history, political culture, political institutions (Litonjua 1994) and ethnic politics and 'crony capitalism'.
It might be difficult to oppose privatization in general if privatization can also serve as a barrier against corrupt politicians. This however does not settle the underlying problem of accountability: on the contrary, for market forces are likely to be still less accountable than state bureaucracies. The question, then, is not one of state versus market, but rather points towards democratization and democratic reforms of state structures, such as decentralization, which can make the state more accountable.
These insights have instilled a sobering awareness. Matters are not simply decided on the basis of models. Policy implementation is affected by factors such as political culture, historical itineraries, and location in the regional and international environment. This also affects the behaviour of the World Bank, which in the actual implementation of its policies is more concerned with negotiation than with simply imposing its economic model (Mosley et al. 1991). In the process we are referred back to what development economists call 'non-economic factors'.
Modernization Revisited
In development sociology the leading paradigm has been modernization.
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stamp - if we recall that Dahrendorf called the US the country of angewandte Aujklarung, the applied Enlightenment. At the time the US entered its era of globalism, a 'can do' attitude characterized its approach, as in the functionalist modernization advanced by Hoselitz: 'You subtract the ideal typical features or indices of underdevelopment from those of development, and the remainder is your development program' (Frank in Worsley 1984: 18).
Most forms of evolutionism conceived of development as being natural and endogenous, whereas modernization theory makes room for exogenous influences. Modernization theory is usually referred to as a paradigm, but upon closer consideration turns out to be host to a wide variety of projects, some presumably along the lines of endogenous change, viz. social differentiation, rationalization, the spread of universalism, achievement and specificity; while it has also been associated with projects of exogenous change: the spread of market relations or capitalism, industrialization through technological diffusion, Westernization, nation-building (nationalism as a derivative discourse), state formation (as in postcolonial inheritor states). If occasionally this diversity within modernization is recognized, still the importance of exogenous influences is considered minor and secondary.
I do not view 'modernization' as a single, unified, integrated theory in any strict sense of 'theory'. It was an overarching perspective concerned with comparative issues of national development, which treated development as multidimensional and multicausal along various axes (economic, political, cultural), and which gave primacy to endogenous rather than exogenous factors. (Tiryakian 1992: 78)
This may be the steepest contradiction within modernization theory: between modernization as an endogenous and an exogenous dynamic. It may also be the most significant contradiction in development thinking generally: the hiatus between development as an endogenous process and as externally induced change, under the aegis of imperialism, capitalism, globalism.
The theory of dualism, developed in the 1940s and 1950s by Boeke, Lewis and Kuznets, accommodates this contradiction with the idea of a traditional and modern sector. In effect the traditional sector represents endogenous growth and the modern sector the interaction with outside forces, in terms of production techniques, trade, values and aid. The diffusion approach was institutionalized in the 'geography of modernization', focusing on transportation and on core urban areas as the vehicles for the 'mobilization of the periphery' (Brookfield 1975: 110-16). Phrased in another way, there is a hiatus between development theory as a national project and as an international or global dynamic. From the outset the main development theories, both economic and sociological, have been a national, or more accurately, a state project. Neomercantilism, 'socialism in one country', Keynesianism, self-reliance all represent state projects. By contrast, the market-oriented approaches of neoclassical economics and neoliberalism have been equally comfortable in national and international domains.
This may give us a clue to the impasses of development theories. The major turns in development have been shaped by supranational dynamics entirely outside the scope of standard development theory: the breakdown of the Bretton
Pacific era, the shift to flexible production. Time and again crisis has been a greater teacher than theory: the energy crisis, the debt crisis, the ecological crisis the> crisis of currency instability - and each crisis concerns supranational dynamics' Neomarxism, dependency theory, world-system theory follow the external model: capitalism flows in, travels from the centre to the periphery 'external areas' are incorporated into the world system. Their positive programmes however, at any rate in the case of dependency theory, defend development as a national logic. Cardoso and his notion of 'dependent development' represented a more sophisticated position that did take into account external influences The difference between Bill Warren and most dependency thinkers was that Warren followed a transnational and diffusionist approach to accumulation and development, whereas the dependentistas operated within nationalitarian logic Likewise the key concepts of critical and alternative development thinking implicitly echo and revisit endogenous development as the norm: the self-reliance, autocentnc development and delinking advocated in some forms of dependency theory histoncist views on modernization, polycentrism, indigenization, and 'another development'.
The unit of development, however, is not a given or a constant. The boundaries between what is internal and external are by no means fixed. Development discourse and its implicit assumption of the 'country', 'society', 'economy' as the developing unit papers over this issue and assumes much greater nationwide cohesiveness and thus state control than is realistic. This relates to the familiar question of the reach and strength of the state (Migdal 1988). The assumption itself has been questioned on several grounds. The by now classic argument of world-system theory maintains that it is not the society that is the developing unit but the 'world system' (i.e. the unit integrated by an international division of labour of goods necessary for reproduction). Michael Mann (1986) contends that the very term 'society' is misleading and proposes instead 'social networks' that sprawl across borders. Crossborder enterprises such as the maquiladores at the Mexican-US border have also drawn attention. The unit of development is shifting further in light of the growing concern with regions and localities as the sites of development, which finds expression in the regionalist turn (Amin and Thrift 1993) and the 'new localism' (Goetz and Clarke 1993).
The nation state is caught in a dialectic of subnationalism and supranational-ism. Still, the weakening of the state is by no means a straightforward process One of the paradoxes of the late twentieth century is that the tendency of the state to intervene in economic affairs has increased - political rhetoric notwithstanding -at a time when the effectiveness of its interventions has declined' (Griffin and Khan 1992: 64). There is no question as to the central and enduring importance of the state. In the words of Robert Kuttner: 'until world government arrives the nation state is the necessary locus of social contracts between market and society' (1991: 9). Unfettered markets increase inequality and in the age of information economies, which puts a premium on human resource development, inequality is an economic liability. Generally, then, current arguments go far beyond the ideological dispute of state versus market; the real issue is the kind of role that the state is to play. Martin Carnoy (1993: 91) contends: 'The role of the nation-state
in creating an innovation society is thus absolutely crucial to the well-being of its citizens in the information age.'
The debates in development economics are closer to policy than those in development sociology. The policy options in most countries remain narrow: internationalization or globalization meaning liberalization; state-led internationalization with restrictions and regional cooperation; and alternative or 'another' development.'
Critical Globalism
The argument of this chapter is that an essentialist notion of development, of good, natural, endogenous development bedevils development thinking. What else is the notion of'stunted development' (Marx on Ireland), 'stagnation' (Marx on India), underdevelopment (dependency theory), 'maldevelopmenť (Amin 1990c) but the deviation from a norm of good, that is natural development? This might explain the appeal of Nisbet's kind of approach for it asserts an organic model of development as the norm. Even modernization thinking, which is highly diffusionist in policy, remains endogenist in theory. One reason for this is that as such it can be assimilated in the general strain of 'organic development'. In addition to the trend toward discursive consonance and consistency there are political reasons why endogenism is appealing.
The politics of development, from the earliest iate developer' to the latest, has in the main been state politics. Endogenous development, which is intrinsic to the developing entity, is by definition controllable by the state. The career of modern development theory is synchronic with the career of decolonization and to a considerable extent it has served as a state doctrine of new nations. If endogenism is a powerful political tool, it is also a prism through which exogenous influences can be negotiated, a screen behind which contradictions can, in the name of the 'national interest', be concealed. In the age of globalization, however, endogenism backfires and a new settlement is required.
The weakness of the endogenous outlook on development is its single and narrow focus. In turning one's back to and seeking shelter from international turbulence one may in fact make development more vulnerable to it. Accordingly, what is needed is to rethink development as a regional, transnational, global project, such that the international domain is not left to the strong players and their 'might is right' alone; in a word, to theorize world development. Hettne (1990: 34) contends 'that the crisis in development theory is a reflection of the disparity between the growing irrelevance of a "nation-state" approach and the prematurity of a "world" approach'.
Part of the problem of development thinking is the hiatus between development economics and development sociology. Or, phrased otherwise, its lack of comprehensiveness: market-oriented approaches marginalize the state; state-oriented approaches marginalize market forces; both marginalize society; civil society-oriented approaches marginalize the state and often the market as well, and international forces remain largely untheorized. Market-oriented globalism (neoliberalism, monetarism, structural adjustment, export-led growth) clashes
processes depends on their place in the spectrum of types of NGOs. International advocacy NGOs can contribute to shaping national and international opinion climates in favour of democratic global governance. Part of this horizon is collective action operating across national and zone boundaries, as part of transnational civil society. Global democratization requires several intermediate steps conceptually and strategically, but that is not the subject here (cf. Nederveen Pieterse 2000a).
The outpouring of books in Western sociology concerned with problematizing modernity (e.g. Toulmin 1990, Bauman 1992, Beck 1992) inspired by poststruc-turalism and globalization, carries a potential for the renewal of development thinking and a new critique of modernization theory, especially if taken in combination with non-Western studies interrogating modernity.5 Development thinking needs to leave totalizing paradigms behind and to choose for diversified approaches, building on the critical resources that are available. This requires recognizing the heterogeneous, multivocal character of development theories. Doing so ties in with the current premise in development research of no longer homogenizing the 'Third World' and seeking general theories and explanations, but focusing instead on the diversity of development circumstances.6 When globalization and diversity are combined, as in 'glocalization', globalization can be conceptualized as changing patterns of diversification.
Notes
1 This is discussed at greater length in Nederveen Pieterse 1989: Ch. 15 and Nederveen Pieterse 1994.
2 This relationship between interests and development discourse is suggested for development ideology, not for development theory, which has greater autonomy.
3 On alternative development see Chapter 6 and on 'alternatives to development' see Chapter 7 below.
4 Cf. Hettne (1990: 244): 'there have been two kinds of bias in development theory: endogenism and exogenism. Both approaches are, if carried to their extremes, equally misleading. The obvious remedy is to transcend the dichotomy and find a synthesis.'
5 The historicist approach to modernization and the notion of multiple paths of modernization are well established in China, Japan and India (Singh 1989). In a broad way this parallels the theme of polycentrism, as against Eurocentrism (Amin 1989). Of some relevance also is the older tradition of comparative political studies (e.g. Macridis and Brown 1964). Cf. Chapter 2 above.
6 One option is to work with typologies. The regulation school offers neostructuralist typologies based on regimes of accumulation and modes of regulation; Mann (1986) focuses on different forms of organizational power; Mouzelis (1988) is concerned with modes of domination. These typologies differ from the bloc approach (North-South), from the continental or regional approach (Europe, Asia, etc.), as well as from the determinist, base-superstructure categories used in neomarxist (mode of production), dependency and world-system theories (core, semiperiphery, periphery), for they are neither geographical nor economistic.
DELINKING OR GLOBALIZATION?
To those who are familiar with his earlier work, Samir Amin's new books are not really new; they provide elaborations and further arguments in support of his theses rather than breaking new ground. But they offer an opportunity to reconsider the arguments of one of the most outspoken dependency theorists and a way to measure what has changed since the time that Samir Amin, along with Andre Gunder Frank and Immanuel Wallerstein, seemed to represent some of the most exciting and challenging work in international political economy. Revisiting these positions is an opportunity to gauge how part of this familiar family of perspectives and analytics of development Marxism is withstanding the time test of plausibility.
The focus of this chapter is Amin's argument of delinking - the keynote of his thinking as well as his most distinctive contribution to alternative development thinking. Delinking or autocentric development, as the positive part of his dependency argument, remains a significant policy orientation - at minimum, as the counterpoint to and polar opposite of what is now termed globalization and global-ism. The proposition of delinking, advanced in earlier works, is taken up in all the three books considered here, frontally in Delinking (DL: Amin 1990a), updated in Maldevelopment (MD: Amin 1990c), and in relation to cultural politics in Eurocentrism (EC: Amin 1989).
Amin cannot be accused of optimism. He objects to other forward development approaches such as the 'global Keynesianism' of the New International Economic Order proposals and the Brandt and Brundtland Reports, because the assumption that autocentric development would not be in conflict with worldwide interdependence is 'based on a naive illusion as to the laws governing existing world capitalism' (MD, 60). Nor does he share the optimism about NICs and likewise he rejects the category 'semiperiphery' proposed by the adherents of world-system theory; 'the NICs are not semi-peripheries on the way to catching up but in every sense the real peripheries of tomorrow' (DL, xi). He notes that NICs are the most indebted of all Third World countries and predicts: 'The real periphery of tomorrow will be the NICs of Asia and America ... while the African "fourth world" will no longer represent the "typical periphery", but the last remnants of the periphery of yesterday en route for destruction' (MD, 65).
Structural adjustment in his view is just another instalment of the liberal doctrine and the liberal Utopia, which is doomed to failure because it ignores the fundamental factor of unequal development as the reality of capitalism. This reality is 'recolonization, sweetened by charity' (DL, xi). The choice facing Third World countries therefore is 'adjustment or delinking' (MD, 70). In brief,
54
DEVELOPMENT THEORY
international political economy, at any rate not in Harvey, Jameson or Cox. But then, they do not take on grandiose historical analyses, on the basis of scant sources.
Eurocentrism, then, is not a novel departure theoretically; in fact, Amin restates and elaborates on what he wrote on the relation between modes of production and culture in works dating back to the 1970s.' Amin's approach, as a circumspect reformulation of historical materialism, is generally steeped in nineteenth-century epistemology, and accordingly his reading of history is itself deeply Eurocentric. The categories of barbarism for the communal mode and civilization for the tributary mode (EC, 15-16) come right out of the textbook of Eurocentrism. Amin's repeated recourse to the 'Socialism or Barbarism' rhetoric again reinvokes the evolutionist framework. Correlations between production systems and culture were first formulated in the French and Scottish Enlightenment and later entered Victorian anthropology and the analytics of Marx and Engels. Here they are recycled as instruments of historical analysis, without a sense of the historical character of the categories themselves.
A Eurocentric bias also comes across in some of the fine print of his history. Amin's reading of the Renaissance as the birth of Eurocentrism recycles another Eurocentric cliche: 'Things begin to change with the Renaissance because a new consciousness forms in the European mind' (EC, 75). According to Amin, we now say that this was due to the emergence of capitalism, but, he points out, 'At the time, Europeans attributed their superiority to other things: to their "Europeanness", their Christian faith, or their rediscovered Greek ancestry ... Eurocentrism in its entirety had already developed' (EC, 75).
This is an odd argument. First, it is an endogenist perspective on changes taking place in Europe, as if these were not conditioned by developments outside Europe. Secondly, why focus on the Renaissance - why not on the Crusades, as the first episode of Christendom trying to break out of the encirclement by the worlds of Islam and Byzantium? Thirdly, which Renaissance? The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the standard favourite from the Enlightenment to the present, or the twelfth-century Renaissance - that stood on the shoulders of the Islamic eleventh-century cultural awakening?2
That 'Eurocentrism in its entirety had already developed' by the fifteenth century is an unhistorical claim. Eurocentrism, in Amin's view, 'implies a theory of world history and, departing from it, a global political project' (EC, 75). For one thing, 'Europeanness' (rather than christianitas) does not come into the picture until the eighteenth century: the emergence of a 'European' consciousness dates from circa 1700 (e.g. Lively 1981). Why make such odd and unnecessary claims? This matches his criticism of Edward Said, according to whom Orientalism had its beginnings in the Middle Ages - and hence does not correlate with the epoch of capitalism. Since Amin rebukes Said for not acknowledging the differences between medieval Orientalism and the nineteenth-century version, he opens himself to the same criticism by not acknowledging the differences between Renaissance Eurocentrism and the nineteenth-century version. As a consequence he constructs Eurocentrism as a static and monolithic concept.
Amin takes on 'Islamic fundamentalism' as one of the culturalist constraints on the path towards delinking and because in the Islamic world it is itself an alternative
DELINKING OR CLOBALIZAI !ON< 33
project of delinking. Amin rightly criticizes the general clamour about Islamism in the West: 'There is an element of hypocrisy on the part of the West in lamenting current Islamic fundamentalism when it has fought in every way possible against the progressive alternative' (MD, 109). Yet the foundation of his own critique is the cliche dichotomous view of fundamentalism versus rationalism: 'Rationalism and fundamentalism constitute two states of mind irreducible to one another, incapable of integration' (DL, 184). This dichomotizing view is an instance of Marxist allegiance to Enlightenment thinking at a time when this is left behind as too simplistic in most other quarters. The tension between science and religion, rationality and the irrational is now perceived as far more problematic than in the age of Voltaire and Diderot. A more complex frame of analysis would enable us to see the modern and rational features (in a context of limited political options and vocabularies) of the Islamist turn, an approach which is now common to all but the most parochial Western accounts (e.g. Esposito 1992).
Amin's predictions are consistent with his analysis: in a book first published in 1985 he predicts that the socialist countries (USSR, China and others) will seek 'to retain control of their external relations' rather than submit to the exigencies of capitalist expansion and predicts catastrophe as a result of these developments in ten years' time (DL, xi).
All these features - evolutionism, Renaissance worship, dichotomy rationalism and irrationality, predictions of catastrophe - belong to a familiar profile: it may not be enough to be a neomarxist to be free from the rendezvous with nineteenth-century epistemology. Neomarxism does not mean reconstructed Marxism. Amin devotes an unremarkable chapter to the Eurocentric lineage of Marxism in which he observes that 'Marxism was formed both out of and against the Enlightenment' (EC, 119). Marx shared the excessive optimism prevalent in the nineteenth century, but actually existing capitalism has not homogenized but polarized the planet, and hence Amin's analytic medicine is, predictably: unequal development and centre-periphery contradictions. This step from Marxism to neomarxism leaves all the other questions about the Eurocentric lineages of Marxism unsettled - thus, how can one repudiate Eurocentrism and yet continue to talk of barbarism and civilization as if we are still in the nineteenth century? Why, for all its powerful analytics, does Marxism keep being delivered in packages of pig iron?
Unequal development becomes the answer to all questions. It is Amin's amulet and talisman against liberalism as well as classical Marxism, the backbone and central tenet of his perspective. As a general view this is problematic in several respects. First, Amin presents unequal development not only as the basic law of capitalist development but in his view also the tributary mode is marked by centre-periphery relations (the Islamic world and Europe, China and Japan). In fact, the relationship between feudal China and Japan is presented as proof of the general validity of the centre-periphery principle, for this 'has produced the same "miracle" witnessed in the Mediterranean region: the rapid maturation of capitalist development in the periphery of the system' (EC, 64). Thus, peripheries in the tributary mode have a head start in capitalist development. This sounds like Trotsky's law of combined and uneven development fine-tuned by means of his argument of the advantage of backwardness. If this were valid as a general
56 DEVELOPMENT THEORY
law we would expect the Mongol Empire to have had a head start in capitalist development. Second, if in Amin's view there is a dialectical relationship between the tributary and capitalist modes, then it follows that a dialectics within the capitalist mode would be equally plausible. There is no acknowledgement however in Amin's work of such dynamics within capitalist relations. Quite the contrary, hammering on centre-periphery contradictions and rejecting the notion of semiperiphery, Amin does not show any awareness of historical movements of rise and decline within capitalism: centres declining to peripheries, peripheries ascending to core status - even though this is a well-developed line of analysis (e.g. Friedman 1982). In line with the principle of perpetual polarization, peripheries ever remain peripheries: 'all the regions that were integrated in the world capitalist system with peripheral status have remained like that to the present ... New England, Canada, Australia and New Zealand were never peripheral formations; by contrast, Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa and Asia - with the exception of Japan - were and have remained so' (MD, 169).
Third, 'centre' and 'periphery' are adopted as unproblematic categories across history, as transhistorical coordinates - as if these nodal points themselves are not historical constructs, which cannot simply be extrapolated backward or forward in time. Thus, in the context of post-Fordism and flexible accumulation, centre and periphery carry quite different meanings than in the context of Fordism and, in turn, during the accumulation regimes of competitive and monopoly capitalism. These notions themselves need to be rethought and reworked, as part of a historical economic geography, or what Foucault called a 'history of space'. Moreover, there have been episodes of peripheries playing a central role (e.g. OPEC provoking the 1973 energy crisis). In fact, it may be necessary to mix and combine these polarities, as in the 'pericentric' theory of imperialism.3 Furthermore, in the context of the coexistence and articulation of modes of accumulation within the same space, spaces are layered in fulfilling multiple configurations - central in some relations, peripheral in others.
Amin rejects culturalism because of the tendency to treat cultural forms as trans-historical constants, but historical materialism is not exposed to the same scrutiny: its coordinates are unreflexively presented as transhistorical constants. Unequal development, centre and periphery are used as analytical tools as if they are constants from feudal times through the stages of capitalist development. Apparently Amin views unequal development as a transhistorical law of evolution. Thus stretched over time, the argument becomes proportionally thin and it becomes imperative to take into account countertendencies, which are absent in Amin's account, except for the instances mentioned. The result is a one-dimensional and one-sided representation of history. With respect to capitalist development, the overall result is a monolithic view in which polarization is recognized as the only dynamic. Amin's ignoring the dialectics within capitalist development is the corollary of and rationale for posing an alternative external to 'the system'. This is precisely the point of delinking.
The original form of delinking (decoupling, dissociation) was mercantilism, a strategy of states in the early stages of industrialization: close the borders to foreign products to protect infant industries. This was an option mainly for larger
DELINKING OR GLOBALIZAI ION? b/
countries, such as China and India, that had the potential to effect an industrial transition on their own. At present levels of technology, industrialization without foreign investment has become unrealistic: the cost and quality differential between domestic and imported end products has become too great. Besides, this was a matter of delinking for relinking, 'reculer pour mieux sauter', re-entering the world market once a certain level of competitive ability had been achieved. Presently, on the basis of backward technology, relinking would hardly be possible. The second form of delinking was disengagement from capitalism as part of the transition to socialism. This strategy of neomercantilist closure and 'socialism in one country' was not voluntary but imposed from without. A subsidiary plot in this scenario was ; a strategy of weakening world capitalism from without: 'In time, if enough peri-
pheral societies are closed, the capitalist world system will shrink, and ... this shrinkage will reduce prosperity in the core' (Chirot 1977: 169). If this might still have been believable in the 1970s (in combination with capitalist crisis), it is no longer now. The third form of delinking has been part of national liberation and anti-imperialist in content. With the wave of decolonization past and non-alignment at its lowest ebb, this is no longer on the cards. All along delinking has also been a statist project, premised on a strong and hard state capable of imposing tight controls and political repression. Now, with higher levels of communication and mobility, even if this kind of state-controlled closure were considered desirable, the scope for this option has considerably narrowed if not vanished.
The politics of delinking is the litmus test of Amin's perspective. But this case is not as obvious as it appears because his views have been changing over the years. In the early 1980s Amin defined delinking as semi-autarky (Amin 1982: 225). Now Amin repeatedly points out: 'De-linking is neither commercial autarky, nor chauvinist culturalist nationalism' (MD, 231). In every definition and discussion, Amin presents delinking as a national project that is to be based on a national and popular alliance. One wonders how, in the age of postnationalism, this is to materialize. Yet in another formulation, delinking parallels poly-centrism. Polycentrism (originally inspired by Togliatti) has been an ambiguous turn in Amin's thought. Does it supersede unequal development and centre-periphery relations? Doesn't it reproduce 'centrism' and centre-periphery relations on other, regional or internal, levels? Earlier, in 1982, Amin cautioned against 'regional subimperialisms' and 'mmi-hegemonisms' in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia. Now a section heading puts it in these terms: 'The genuine long-term option: transnationalization or a polycentric world and broad autocentric regions' (MD, 228). If delinking is now in effect redefined as an autonomous form of regionalization, how then is this to be carried off by a national and popular alliance? How does this mesh with delinking as a 'law of value of national application'? Are nationalism/populism not superseded by regionalization?
Amin's current formulations of delinking are so broad and opaque that delinking can mean almost everything to everyone, to the point that his prescriptions become self-contradictory. Delinking can mean, presumably, a popular anti-Western, anti-capitalist posture - yet Amin precisely wants to save 'the univer-salism begun by capitalism' 'at the level of a popular, cultural and ideological
umversal.sm' (MD 231). Delinking can mean self-reliant development- as such
^^Tnll^Z     t        SPCakS °f ddinkin8 " 3
On an empirical level too I believe Amin's general argument is belied by ongo-mg developments, more clearly now than ten or fifteen years ago: the deepens oi globalization; the overall develonmpnt r,f mt^      j        , ueePem«g
mg not the most obvious policy option. Actual delinking is presently the short longer been on™ rw t <u a        ^uuluIlct>   since tyxy this option has no
emphasis is anfi-impenalist and low on economic strategy; or in Cl At the present juncture, reg.onal integration may increasingly become one of
Central American cooperation), however, subscribe to regional delinking or 'collective self-reliance'. Rather the objective is, through pooling resources and sovereignty, to achieve economies of scale and scope, to attract more foreign investment by increasing market size, and to arrive at a stronger bargaining position vis-a-vis external forces. Regional integration, then, is itself a function and subsidiary mode of globalization, and not a counter to globalization.
The problem with Amin's position is that delinking offers a rhetoric of autonomy in combination with, apparently, a multipurpose politics. It is, therefore, a posture rather than an analytic or a distinct policy. The most pernicious problem with the delinking posture is that it is a posture of retreat, of turning one's back on the big bad world - in a world in which strength is generated through engagement with realities, no matter how unpleasant, and dialogue with opponents. 'In this world, the only thing worse than being part of the evolving economic hierarchy is being excluded from it' (Henwood 1993: 8).
Amin's perspective on development is narrower even than world-system theory. World-system theory at least acknowledges dynamics and dialectics within capitalist development; the notion of semiperiphery is part of that. Frank and Wallerstein never agreed with Amin's delinking strategy. In their view delinking had been neither successful nor voluntary. At the same time, world-system theory also theorizes capitalism as a closed system and shows the same tendency of seeking an alternative external to it, as in the concept of 'antisystemic movements'. Conversely Amin views social movements as part of the system (MD, 111). In other words, among the rejectionists of capitalism there are marked differences as to just where to find the exit from capitalism.
Amin's politics is statist. For Amin the state is 'the means to national protection and assertion, the instrument of what we have called "de-linking"' (MD,. 181). This places Amin squarely within the original tradition of national liberation. That he opposes neoliberalism is clear enough, but he does not seem to follow the subsequent developments - the development of an argument encompassing a state regulatory role along with other public agencies and NGOs. The greatest weakness of this body of work, ultimately, is that it is theoretically unreflexive, reproducing an unreconstructed neomarxism without adequately reflecting on its own principles of analysis.
There are underlying problems with this outlook, which are not confined to Samir Amin. One is the tendency towards stereotyped thinking about capitalism in terms of general laws of motion of capital written on stone tablets. While the greatest contribution of Marxism has been its powerful analytics in showing the varieties of capitalism, the greatest weakness of Marxism has been to underestimate the varieties of capitalist development.5
Notes
1 In particular Amin 1980, Chs. 2-4.
2 Episodes discussed in Nederveen Pieterse 1989, Ch. 5.
3 The pericentric theory of imperialism is discussed in Nederveen Pieterse 1989, Ch. 1.
4 Compare the balance sheet drawn by Chirot on 'The issue of closure' (1977: 203-8).
5 The varieties of capitalism and their interactions are taken up in Chapter 10 below. The present discussion does not address Samir Amin's later works (such as 1997 and 1999).
THE CULTURAL TURN
IN DEVELOPMENT: QUESTIONS OF POWER
After the cultural turn has upset most social sciences, it finally comes to economics and to the bundle of practices called development. Why is culture being introduced into development discourse? Western ethnocentrism as the implicit culture of developmentalism is no longer adequate in the age of 'polycentrism in a context of high interaction', or globalization. In relation to global concerns such as ecological questions the West is no longer a privileged interlocutor. The old paradigm of modernization/Westernization is no longer valid not just on account of polycentrism but also in view of the questioning of modernity and the advent of the postmodern. Questioning Western itineraries is now no longer an anti-imperialist preoccupation but a matter of soul-searching in the West. The waning of the great Cold War ideologies has shifted the goalposts and ethnic and religious movements emerge in their stead. Hence 'culture' has been taking on a novel prominence.
How is culture 'put into' development discourse? The current reproblematiza-tions do not start from a blank slate but recycle and rework established discourses. The articulation of culture and development is both a renegade notion at odds with established practices and a new brick in the wall of cliches. Culture comes into development studies at a time of retreat from structural and macro approaches in development theory in favour of micro and actor-oriented approaches (e.g. Long and Villarreal 1993). If agency is prioritized over structure (such as the state, the national economy), the cultural worlds and maps of meaning of actors become a vital variable. The move away from structures to actors may be described, in part, as an informalization of development, and in that context, culture tends to be viewed as, so to speak, the structure of the informal. The crucial weakness of culture and development discourse, at any rate policy-oriented discourse, is that it misses the point that culture is an arena of struggle. Culture tends to be treated as if it is or conforms to a structure, on the analogy of the state or nation - existing out there, as an ambience one can step in and out of, a resource to be tapped, as national culture or, given the fragmentation of nations and retreat of states, as local culture. This chapter first discusses national culture, then local culture. National culture is worth considering also for the sake of raising the question whether the present preoccupation with local culture risks repeating the same mistakes as were made by the talk of national culture earlier. The key questions are
Questions of nower: how is the relation hetwpen rnltiirp anH nnwpr rnnr-fntiiali^rl
THE CULTURAL TURN: QUESTIONS OF POWER
61
1 1
1
in these different discourses? The final section returns to culture and development discourse, under the heading: 'Add culture and stir'.
National Culture
The discourse of national culture carries instrumentalist overtones: culture as a device in nation building. Following the tracks of decolonization and Third World nationalism, anti-colonialism involved a cultural argument all along. Thus Amilcar Cabral argued in 'National liberation and culture':
A nation which frees itself from foreign rule will be only culturally free if ... it recaptures the commanding heights of its own culture, which receives sustenance from the living reality of its environment and equally rejects the harmful influences which any kind of subjection to foreign cultures involves. Thus one sees that if imperialist domination necessarily practices cultural oppression, national liberation is necessarily an act of culture. (Cited in Miller 1990: 46)
The liberation movement, according to Cabral, must bring about 'a convergence' toward 'a single national culture', which itself is a step toward 'a universal culture' (ibid.). Fanon, likewise, devoted a chapter to 'national culture' in The Wretched of the Earth (1967). Here he outlined three phases in the cultural development of colonized peoples: (1) assimilation of the culture of the colonizer,
(2) recollection of original cultural resources, but removed from the masses, and
(3) combat, revolution and the formation of a national culture in which the artist 'rejoins the people'. Recent discussions of the role of cultural struggle in South Africa, Palestine and Northern Ireland show similar politicized discourses. In South Africa it prompted the slogan of 'cultural weapons' as Inkatha's response to the ANC's 'culture as a weapon'.
In postcolonial countries, calls for 'cultural protectionism' are not uncommon. In an African context, this is advanced as part of a wider programme: 'The New African Cultural Order would consist of researching and safeguarding the African personality and culture. This is a task for every one of us, but it must be stimulated and coordinated by conscientious, capable and responsible African politicians' (Gbotokuma 1992: 28).
In the Philippines, Renato Constantino criticizes the 'new cultured Filipinos' as 'a breed apart from the mass of Filipinos', 'a class without roots - adopted children of a foreign culture'. 'In the end, it is the people and their culture that will endure. National culture will be developed by and will emerge from the real people' (1985: 48-9).
There are several strands in this discourse: the identification of cultural identity with the nation; the subsumption of culture under a political agenda; the nomination of politicians as custodians of culture; a culture talk derived from other discourses - from politics of struggle, or from economics Soviet style, in the 'commanding heights'. Culture is denied autonomy and encapsulated within the political discourse of 'anti-colonialism equals nationalism'. The same options that pertain to the postcolonial nation are extended to culture. Dependency theory - which serves by and large as the political economy of Third World nationalism - is stretched to apply to culture: protectionism, dissociation, endogenous development are
prescribed for national culture as they have been for the national economy What ensues is cultural dependency theory.
The national culture argument also structures the wider terrain. As Tomlinson notes: 'a majority of the discourses of cultural imperialism, and certainly those with the most prominence - the UNESCO discourse, that thematized by the term Amencan.sat.on", much of the talk of media imperialism - treat the issue as one of domination of national culture by international culture' (1991: 73) UNESCO's institutional discourse follows the same nationalitarian tracks: 'National culture is the mould into which, by the very nature of UNESCO as an inter-national body cultural identity tends to be squeezed' (ibid.: 72). Another current in UNESCO discourse is towards pluralism, and in this context cultural identity is discussed in terms of 'people' rather than 'nations'. However,
The UNESCO discourse cannot negotiate this complexity with any coherence In its recommendations on the .ssue of cultural domination it urges member states to-strengthen national languages with a view to affirming cultural identity and helping it o recover ,ts natural role which is that of expressing the different aspects of activity and lite and thereby furthering national development'(ibid.)
References to 'cultural democracy' are not sufficiently clear to settle these issues. When virtually all the world's societies are multicultural in composition equating cultural identity with national identity is a fallacy, as is obvious, for instance, m the case of language as a centrepiece of cultural identity
With respect to cultural imperialism the 'national' formulation breaks down as I omlinson points out, in two ways: 'not only may there be difficulty in identifying a unified national cultural identity in the "invaded" country, but the same might be said of the putative "invader". What, then, is the "American way" that threatens global hegemony?' (1991: 74).
'National culture' discourse displays a particular logic. In postcolonial countries, at least in the new nations among them, there has been a replication of the process of nation building in the West. In France, as the saying goes, it took two hundred years to create 'Frenchmen'. In late nineteenth-century Europe nation building was in its most intense phase - by means of public education the mass production of monuments and the large-scale invention of traditions (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983). It concerns, in effect, a process of state building through nation building. In postcolonial countries the erection of prestige architecture has the function of creating markers for national consciousness and identity, in the process inviting genuflection before the nation's leadership (Schudson 1994) This has also been a profoundly gendered process: the state (masculine) protects (nurtures, guides) national culture (feminine); nationalism has been a profoundly mascuhnist discourse. The relationship between feminism and nationalism, West and South, has been fraught with ambivalence (e.g. Kandiyoti 1991, Enloe 1990) In Western countries the project of nation building involved'intense strife because it intervened in the existing cultural division of labour along lines of region, religion, language, class, gender. The Kulturkampfm Germany is a case m point. What ensued was not cultural homogeneity but rather particular state-managed settlements. Dutch pillarization, in force from 1917 into the 1960s is a
well-known instance. The construction of national identity, then, is a matter of cultural struggle - usually conducted along lines of language, religion or region. The contemporary terminology for this kind of conflict is ethnicity.
National culture can serve as a first-rate excuse domestically and internationally. Thus, culture has been working overtime in Japan:
when 'culture' is used to explain Japan, statements such as 'we do this because it is our culture' (i.e. 'we do this because we do this') are not perceived as tautology but are believed to give a valid reason for accepting all manner of practices whose political nature has been lost sight of. Culture thus becomes an excuse for systematic exploitation, for legal abuses, for racketeering and for other forms of uncontrolled exercise of power. In the international realm, culture is made an excuse for not living up to agreements and responsibilities, and for not taking action in the face of pressure from trading partners. (Wolferen 1990: 322)
When several years ago the Dutch minister of foreign affairs protested against the execution of political prisoners in Indonesia after they had been imprisoned for many years, his Indonesian counterpart pointed out that this was in character with Indonesian culture.
Accordingly, the subsumption of cultural identity under national identity is not an innocent move. Endorsing the myth of national culture and cultural unity, it glosses over the dark side of nationalism. The politics of nation building involves the marginalization of aliens, suppression of minorities and of indigenous peoples - a process sometimes captured under the heading of internal colonialism. While on the one hand national monuments are erected, on the other hand, outside the glare of the spotlights, aliens are expropriated, minorities constructed and refugees created. The harvest of this policy is the contemporary wave of ethnic mobilization for in virtually all cases of ethnogenesis, ethno-politics and movements for regional autonomy or secession, the main catalyst is the imposition of monocultural control by the state. National culture serves as a code for state culture.
Local Culture
National culture as the corollary of nation building has been part of modernization discourse. Current culture and development discourse is primarily concerned with local culture. In the terms of a recent discussion: 'The first cultural dimension of development is the local level' (Kottak 1985: 46); national culture is next in the line of priorities, followed by the culture of the planners.
Privileging local culture is interpellated with several arguments. In the strong version of this perspective the local is mentioned in one breath with the grassroots, indigenous, informal, micro. In some culture and development arguments (e.g. Verhelst 1990) these are represented as the last frontier of cultural authenticity. The tendency is to view local culture in terms of prelapsarian purity and unity, homogenizing the local community as the last stand of Gemeinschaft, in a manner reminiscent of the way ethnographers used to speak about 'their' villages, or their cultures, as cultural wholes or configurations. The local as a privileged site may imply an argument about how culture develops: organically, from below and within, by way of 'roots', according to a horticultural anthropology.
Conventional developmentalism could be viewed as a form of 'symbolic violence': 'the violence which is exercised upon a social agent with his or her complicity' (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992: 167). Understanding development as a politics of difference is a step toward making development practice self-conscious with regard to its political and cultural bias, a step toward a practice of reflexive development.
C&D may offer relief from development steeped in Eurocentrism, occidental narcissism or trilateralist arrogance, but the remedy against the chauvinism of 'great traditions' is not to adopt the inverse missionary position and the chauvinism of 'little traditions'. C&D is not simply a matter of including culture but also of interrogating culture as a terrain of power, culture as ideology. Anti-ethnocentrism, as David Crocker (1991) points out, may ultimately be based on another partial, particulars perspective. This is a question that is not settled in C&D. The alternative advocated by Richard Rorty (1991) is 'anti anti-ethnocentrism', or returning towards the historical tradition of one's own group as the basis for moral judgement. This is the position of what he terms postmodernist bourgeois liberalism. This tradition however can be interpreted in many ways; in the case of the United States it is read differently by Allan Bloom and Noam Chomsky, and on the basis of the tradition there is no way of deciding among these readings, precisely because the tradition is heterogeneous and mixed. What is needed is to find a sense of balance that does not yield to futures mapped from above nor to nostalgia for the rear exit, a new sense of balance between universalism and localism
MY PARADIGM OR YOURS?
VARIATIONS ON ALTERNATIVE DEVELOPMENT
Human nature being what it is, while everyone likes to be a social engineer, few like to
be the objects of social engineering. (Ashis Nandy, 1989: 271) This chapter is an inquiry into critical currents in development thinking. The objective is to go beyond the fraternity of rhetorical consensus in criticizing mainstream development and to hold the claims and aspirations of these critical positions themselves against the light. The focus is not only on the critical but also on the affirmative part of these positions. This exercise is not meant as a critique for critique's sake; the question is what these positions tell us analytically and where they lead us in terms of policy and action.
My views on alternative development have been changing over the years. Initially my impression was that alternative development presents a loose profile of critical sensibilities and alternative practices that leaves so many areas open that its claim to present an alternative model or paradigm to mainstream development thinking is exaggerated and misplaced. Further delving and reading enthusiastic accounts (such as Korten 1990, Max-Neef 1991, Rahman 1993, Carmen 1996) persuades me that there is a profound and principled challenge to mainstream developmentalism. Possibly this can take the form of an alternative development paradigm, but closer reflection on this position and its ramifications causes me to question this. I wonder not only how such an alternative development paradigm should be conceived, in terms of analytics and politics, but also whether thinking in terms of paradigms is appropriate at all.
Rather than pursue a single line of argument I have decided to keep these changing positions and moments of reflection in this chapter. Doing so enables me to look at alternative development from more angles and probe further than if I were just presenting a single case. Others may have experienced a similar process of questioning. The structure of the chapter, then, roughly follows the logic of these three positions: (1) alternative development as a loose profile; (2) alternative development as a paradigm; (3) a post-paradigmatic way of thinking about alternative development. Each of these is a different way of constructing alternative development and the relationship to mainstream development. Each of these has its chemistry, reasoning and limitations. During this stroll past alternative development positions my own views shift from critical to supportive to revisionist. Advancing three arguments allows me to say more than if I would just present one; nevertheless the third position is the one I arrive at by travelling through the others.
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within a general orientation of pluralism and fostering cultural difference. The latter is a welcome qualification in view of the limitations of the concept of community (e.g. Young 1991).
The counterargument to the territorial reification of culture is that culture cannot be localized because it is not in itself a spatially bounded category. If culture is territorialized, as in national culture or local culture, the boundaries are, ultimately, political frontiers that require political analysis. Culture is intrinsically translocal because human learning is. At minimum, then, what is required is to differentiate between open and closed concepts of culture, between trans-local and territorial notions of culture (discussed in Nederveen Pieterse 1995).
One can also think in terms of historical layers of culture and intersecting circles of cultural influence. For instance, in Pakistan traces of a deep historical layer of the Indus Valley Mohenjodaro culture mix with the intersecting spheres of influence of Central Asian, Arab and South Asian cultures, all leaving their imprint in language, technology and identity (Junejo and Bughio 1988). In addition, the distinct regional cultures of Baluchistan, Sind, the Punjab and others are overlaid by, on the one hand, Islamic culture and, on the other, rural/urban and gender differences across the regions. Within urban culture we can further distinguish various occupational circles such as the cultures of the military, the bureaucracy, traders and so on. Somehow perched on top of this is 'national culture' (Jalibi 1984). In such a context, what is the statement that 'development must be ' I based on culture' supposed to mean?
An interesting way of thinking about this is to examine how cultural diversity and exchange have influenced 'development' (which is taken up by Griffin 1996 and World Commission 1996). Another way of thinking about this is in terms of cultural mixing and hybridity. From the point of view of any given place, cultures are hybrid: their wholeness consists in their being situationally relevant, strategic sets of borrowed improvisations (Nederveen Pieterse 1995). The localization of culture can be questioned from the point of view not only of history but also of geography and the question of 'place'. What comes to mind is Deleuze and Guattari's argument of deterritorialization and Harvey's work on the relationship between space and place: 'from space to place and back again' (1993). Doreen Massey argues for a 'global sense of place': 'a sense of place which is extra-verted, which includes a consciousness of its links with the wider world, which integrates in a positive way the global and the local' (Massey 1993: 66). Rethinking the meaning of boundaries in the age of cultural translation is a keynote in Bhabha's work (1994).
Several of these issues translate into a wider question: the issue is not simply to bring anthropology back into development, but what kind of anthropology -conventional anthropology or reflexive anthropology? C&D connects development and anthropology at a time when anthropology itself is in crisis. Part of this is the crisis of representation in anthropology and of the authority of the ethnographic text. In response, Marcus and Fischer (1986) propose 'the repatriation of anthropology as cultural critique'. This means in effect the merger of anthropology and cultural studies. The limitation of C&D is that in leaning towards applied anthropology it tends to ignore poststructuralist anthropology and its critical
THE CULTURAL TURN: QUtS 1 lONb Uh KUWtK /1
innovations, and in looking south to postcolonial countries it ignores the work done in cultural studies in post-imperial countries as well as in the South.
Cultural studies involve different outlooks and concepts. For instance, as a concept popular culture is a notion more challenging and fruitful than local culture (or than national culture) because its hybrid character - mixing high and low culture, local and global cultural flows - is implied from the outset (e.g. Rowe and Schelling 1991). By using concepts such as these several of the unnecessary dichotomies which burden and constrain C&D can be overcome and reworked on a more subtle and more productive level of analysis and ultimately policy.
An element that tends to be relegated to the background in C&D literature is the engagement with capitalism - as if the shift toward a cultural definition of problems is also a shift away from a political economy perspective. This is shortsighted because it glosses over the character of 'development' as a stand-in for and an attempt to manage and steer the spread of capitalist relations, and because it ignores a wide body of literature on the cultural dynamics of global capitalism and uneven development (e.g. Pred and Watts 1992, Taussig 1980).
The cultural turn in development is not without its ironies. The tables are being turned, as is altogether appropriate in a post-imperial and postcolonial world in the throes of globalization.
Over the last few years, at various meetings of men and women and representatives of majority and minority groups from First and Third World countries, I have found that the indigenous 'voice' of the Third World is most likely to be voiced by a Westerner, while the voice of Western theory often comes straight out of Africa or Japan. The effect of all that intellectual place switching is to induce a sense of metaphysical jet lag across genders, cultures, and continents and to open up a conversation about the full range of interpretive possibilities for thinking about the significance of 'difference'. (Shweder 1993: 282)
Development is a cultural practice and in this respect development as a category is no different from culture in that they are both elusive concepts.fDefining diem is as cUfficuIfaMo use a Spanish proverb, puttingpaWcSn an octopus. Development thinking if considered carefully is a series of improvisations and borrowings, zigzagging through time, itself a hybrid project intellectually and politically, and not quite the consistent edifice that both its adherents and opponents tend to consider it. The transformations denoted as 'development' change along with the tides and currents of conventional wisdom (Chapter 3).
Development is intrinsically an intercultural transaction. At the cusp of millennium, culture is the major marker of difference. It assumes the role religion performed in the Middle Ages, biology ('race') along with time (evolution) in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and ideology in the first part of the twentieth century (cf. Robertson 1992: 98-9). As such, culture has come to mean 'otherness'. Taken in this sense, the statement that culture is to be the basis of development, reads: the other (others, otherness) is to be the basis of development. Development politics, then, is a politics of difference, navigating and negotiating multicultural cohabitation locally and globally. The differences at stake are multiple and of diverse kinds, not just between developed and developing zones and countries, but also within them and crosscutting the difference between developing/ developed.
ciciiiciiis wun respect to development methodology (participatory, endogenous, self-reliant) and objectives (geared to basic needs). But is saying that development must be undertaken from within and geared to basic needs an adequate way of redefining development, or is it only a polemical position? The alternative referred to is alternative in relation to state and market, but not necessarily in relation to the general discourse of developmentalism. It would be difficult to maintain that alternative development has evolved a theory, although among others Hettne (1990) has tried to make such a case, arguing that it represents a counterpoint to mainstream development.1
Thus Friberg and Hettne (1985: 207) argue that 'Opposed and dialectically related to the predominant paradigm, there has been a Green Counterpoint'. They relate this historically to the 'populist tradition', including narodnism (i.e. populism in Russia), criticisms of the division of labour, the 'return to Gemeinschaft', as well as 'Third World populism', Gandhi, Maoism and Buddhist economics! Their premise is a radical questioning of development: 'it is the development process itself which engenders most of our problems.... If we have been floating along the stream of evolution, we are now starting to doubt whether it will carry us to the promised land. Instead we hear the roaring from the approaching waterfall. Almost all the traditional indicators of development have changed their emotional loading from plus to minus' (Friberg and Hettne 1985: 215).
A critique of capitalism is part of this perspective: 'The capitalist economy is in fact a parasite upon the non-capitalist economy', capitalism is a form of 'shifting cultivation' (233-4). They anticipate the 'possibility of a slow decline over the coming 500 years without any particular dramatic events as the turning point' (234). They envision a post-capitalist world, to which there are two different roads: the Red road of continued modernization toward a socialist world order, and the Green road of demodernization, informed by the values of cultural identity, self-reliance, social justice and ecological balance (234-5). The 'global Green movement', in their view, derives strength from three different sources: traditionalists in the peripheries, marginalized people at the middle level, and postmaterialists in affluent societies at the centres. Nations founded upon ancient nations or civilizations such as China, Iran, Egypt, Vietnam and also Mexico, Turkey, Japan and India can be 'seen as the main sources, actual or potential, of alternatives to the Western model of development' (238).
This has been quoted extensively because it shows how quickly sensibilities date, or at any rate their articulation, and because it brightly illustrates features that run through various forms of alternative development thinking.
The tendency to represent alternative development as a counterpoint that unites all dissident social forces critical of development, which in turn reflects an underlying desire to forge a grand coalition of opposition forces. The tendency to equate development with modernization and alternative development with demodernization, premised on the 'incompatibility between modernization and human development' (Friberg and Hettne 1985: 235). The tendency to view and represent alternative development as an alternative external to the mainstream, a counter-utopia carried by different social actors
□
□
□
in the interstices of the mainstream and in countries supposedly outside the thrust of Western developmentalism; in other words, an enclave or 'liberated zone' approach to alternative development.
□ The alignment of all forms of criticism of mainstream development together as if they form a cohesive alternative, but all good things together do not necessarily make a great thing. Friberg and Hettne (1985: 220) mention 'possible priority conflicts between the subgoals of development' but maintain that they form a coherent whole.
This particular formulation of alternative development is clearly dated and marked by the 1980s upsurge of Green movements. It very much resembles the post-development perspective that took shape in the 1990s (Chapter 7 below). In later formulations Hettne (1990, 1992) abandoned the demodernization/anti-development perspective. Some of the weaknesses of this kind of position (anticipating the discussion of post-development) are the following:
□ 'Mainstream development' is simplified as a single, homogeneous thrust toward modernization and its diversity, complexity and adaptability are underestimated.
□ While the theoretical claim is for a dialectical relationship between mainstream and alternatives, the actual argument takes the form of a simple dual-istic opposition and the dialectics, the ways in which mainstream and alternatives shape and influence one another, slip out of view.
□ In order to maximize the opposition between mainstream and alternative, the appeal of the mainstream to various constituencies is underestimated.
Several of these features resemble and replay the narrative of dnti-capitalist opposition. The tendency to transpose forms of struggle opposing early industrial capitalism to late capitalism indicates a failure of oppositional imagination. It recycles a struggle scenario under different circumstances and envisions no path but that of rejectionism. This might be one of the problems of alternative development: postconventional ideas and approaches are straitjacketed in conventional political imaginaries. In the process alternative development is loaded with aspirations beyond its scope. Subsequent claims for alternative development by Hettne and others have been more modest, while this kind of grandstanding has now taken the form of post-development. Broadly speaking, then, the development terrain seems to be marked out into three overall positions: mainstream development (which, I will argue later, is by no means a coherent position), alternative development (which itself involves a range of perspectives), and post-development.
At this point, a hostile criticism would be that inflated to 'alternative development' this approach is pretentious because it suggests more than it can deliver, unclear because the difference between what is alternative and what is not is not clarified, and fuzzy to the point of hypocrisy because it sustains the overall rhetoric of development while suggesting the ability to generate something really different within its general aura. Alternative development has been fashionable because it coincided with a crisis in development thinking, and because it
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The argument runs as follows. Alternative development has been concerned with introducing alternative practices and redefining the goals of development. This has been successful in the sense that key elements of both have been adopted in mainstream development. Even if not consistently practised it is now generally accepted that development efforts are more successful if the community participates. NGOs now play key roles on the ground and in development cooperation. This success reflects not simply the strength of NGOs and grassroots politics but also the 1980s rollback of the state, the advance of market forces and the breakdown of regulation. All the same, the goals of development have been generally redefined. It is now widely accepted that development is not simply a matter of GDP growth and human development is a more appropriate goal and measure of development. This also means that alternative development has become less distinct from conventional development discourse and practice since alternatives have been absorbed in mainstream development. In the context of alternative development several pertinent positions and methodologies have been developed -views on the agency, methods and objectives of development. However, alternative development has failed to develop a clear perspective on micro-macro relations, an alternative macro approach, and a coherent theoretical position, although it is often claimed that there is an alternative development paradigm. But is the concept of paradigm appropriate to contemporary social science? Besides, is formulating the relationship between alternative development and mainstream development as a paradigm break substantively tenable and politically sensible?
These reflections on alternative development are followed by queries on mainstream development, which is increasingly caught on the horns of a dilemma between the aims of human and social development and the constraints of structural adjustment and global monetarism represented by the international financial institutions. Presently, unlike the 1970s, the big hiatus no longer runs between mainstream and alternative development, but between human and alternative development on the one hand, and the Washington consensus of structural reform on the other (see Chapters 8 and 10 below).
Alternative Development
To start with there are different ways of conceiving what alternative development is about and what its role is. Alternative development can be viewed as a roving critique of mainstream development, shifting in position as mainstream development shifts, as a series of alternative proposals and methodologies that are loosely interconnected; or it can be viewed as an alternative development paradigm, implying a definite theoretical break with mainstream development. It can be viewed as concerned with local development, with alternative practices on the ground, or as an overall challenge to the mainstream, and part of a global alternative. In many discussions this question of the status and scope of alternative development remains unsettled.
An elementary distinction, following Sheth (1987), runs between structuralist and normative approaches to development alternatives. This involves two basic differences. Structuralist approaches, such as dependency theory and the Keynesian
MY PAKAUIUM UK YUUKM
reformism of the new international economic order, emphasize structural macroeconomic change - just as mainstream modernization thinking does -whereas alternative development emphasizes agency, in the sense of people's capacity to effect social change. The second difference is that dependency critiques of mainstream development do not usually question development per se but only dependent development (or underdevelopment).
A basic question is whether alternative development is an alternative way of achieving development, sharing the same goals as mainsfre^ development but..
T^g-difieainlmeans. paitičlpatprv.andpeopie-centred. It would seem this way if we consider the enormous increase of development funds being channelled or rechannelled through NGOs during the past two decades (which now exceed the total annual disbursements through the IMF and World Bank). This suggests ample peaceful coexistence between mainstream and alternative development. Yet the usual claim is that alternative development refers to an alternative model of development. Let us consider how this claim runs.
In the 1970s dissatisfaction with mainstream development crystallized into an alternative, people-centred approach to development. According to the 1975
' report of Has Dag Hamrnarskjold Foundation 'What now? Another Development', deveMpmerjt should hé"'geáfed to the satisfaction of needs', 'endogenous
"and self-reliant' and 'in harmony with the environment'. Whether this was meant to" be an alternative practice of development apart from the mainstream or whether it was also to change mainstream development was not quite settled. This approach has been carried further under the heading of alternative development. Over the years alternative development has been reinforced by and associated with virtually any form of criticism of mainstream developmentalism, such as anti-capitalism, Green thinking, feminism, ecofeminism, democratization, new social movements, Buddhist economics, cultural critiques, and poststructuralist analysis of development discourse.
'Alternative' generally refers to three spheres - agents, methods and objectives or values of development. According to Nerfin (1977), alternative development is the terrain of 'Third System' or citizen politics, the importance of which is apparent in view of the failed development efforts of government (the prince or first system) and economic power (the merchant or second system). Often this seems to be the key point: alternative development is development from below. In this context, 'below' refers both to 'community' and to NGOs. In several respects alternative development revisits Community Development of the 1950s and 1960s. Community Development goes back to American social work, which via British colonialism entered colonial development, and in the 1950s supplemented modernization efforts (Carmen 1996: 46-7). This genealogy accounts for the ambiguity of some of the key terms in alternative development, such as 'participation'.
Alternative development is frequently, identified with development»by«NGOs-(e.g. Drábek 1987). But given the wide variety of NGOs and NGO practices, the equation 'alternative development is what NGOs do' would obviously hejnad-equate. NGO ideology is organization-led and too limited to account for alternative development. Alternative development involves further distinguishing
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MY PARADIGM OR YOURS?
79
matched general doubts about the role of the state, both among neoliberals and from the point of view of human rights. The 'alternative' discourse was a way of being progressive without being overly radical and without endorsing a clear ideology; it could be embraced by progressives and conservatives who both had axes to grind with the role of states. It was a safe, low-risk way of being progressive and its structural obscurity ensured broad endorsement. It was a postmodern way of being post-ideological. It was everyone's way out except that of the last bureaucrat.
Hettne (1990) presents 'Another Development' as a combinatiotL.fl£.hasic
needs^ self-reliance, sustainable and endogenous development. Attractive as this___
melange Tooks^
T5ece53^rily~add ujTto a paradigm. Part of this is the problem of articulation . (cf. Laclau and Mouffe 1985). To the extent that each of these discourses has its own logic and autonomy, there is no guarantee that they will blend well together. Their actual course depends on their articulation with other discourses, which may turn out to be progressive or conservative. There is no preordained outcome to the politics of hegemony. At best this gives us an unstable articulation, which is too weak a basis to constitute an 'alternative model'^Jitfmodey^rmiejttjnay       j |-clash with ecodevelopment, or may take an ethnonationalist turn. Self-reliance     1 I may require economies of scale, which clash with ethnodevelopment. Feminism may clash"with indigenous culture, and so on. Running the risk of "flippancy, one might say that the kind of world in which alternative development works is a world that does not need it. Thus, while pertinent as an orientation, it is too     i I unstable and narrow to serve as a 'model'. I
Hettne seeks to establish a sharp boundary between mainstream development and alternative development but fails to do so. Hettne's schematic representation of mainstream development theory versus counterpoint theory overrates the coherence and consistency of'development'. Besides, if alternative development is defined as a counterpoint to mainstream development, it is reduced to a reactive position: if mainstream development shifts, so would alternative development. Furthermore, the alternative components mentioned by Hettne are now no longer distinctive: basic needs, participation, sustainability have long been adopted in mainstream development." 1 ■
The problem is ttiat there is no clear line of demarcation between mamstreani    Jj I and "alternative: aitetoativesTare cdopted and yestefday's alternatives are today's-institutions. The difference between mainstream and alternative, then, is a conjunc-rural difference, not a difference in principle, although it tends to be presented as    11 if it is. In itself 'alternative' has no more meaning than 'new' in advertising. With    Ji ■ Nandy (1989) we might term this the problem of the ' standardization of dissent'. In this sense alternative development replicates 'the value of the new', which is a pathos intrinsic to modernity (Vattimo 1988). As such, alternative development partaikeTof'tiie momentufiBTrfTnodeniity and the everlasting hope that the future    | I
will redeem the present.
So far, then, it would be difficult to claim that alternative development repre-
disparate theoretical strands, is in flux, not fully developed, and its status remains unclear. Part of the polemics of development and situated on its cutting edge, it's made up as one goes along and remains intrinsically controversial and unsettled. Understandings of alternative development vary widely: whichever aspect of mainstream development the spotlight is on, alternative development is held up as its counterpoint. If mainstream development is viewed, as it has been through most of the career of modern developmentalism, as state-led, then alternative ^eveloprnen movements and NGOs.
Qtner hand mainstream development is viewed under the sign,of libemli: zatiao^js.has-beeB.Aexase.suica the 1980s wave of neoliberalism, then the-alter-. natiyabecomes-,...the .state. Thus, under the heading of Alternative Development Strategies in sub-Saharan Africa, Stewart, Lall and Wangwe (1993) argue for import-substitution industrialization and state protection for industry, a strategy which, in other times and contexts, was itself part of mainstream development repertoires.
This variability is intrinsic to alternative development to the extent that alternative development is by definition reactive, contrapuntal. At a time when there is widespread admission that several development decades have brought many failures, while the development industry continues unabated, there is continuous and heightened self-criticism in development circles, a constant search for alternatives, a tendency towards self-correction and a persistent pattern of cooptation of whatever attractive or fashionable alternatives present themselves. Accordingly, the turnover of alternatives becoming mainstream has speeded up; the dialectics of alternative development and mainstream development has accelerated.
Green thinking about sustainability, a radical position twenty or so years ago, has long been institutionalized as 'sustainable development'. The informal sector, a twilight zone unnoticed by mainstream developers mesmerized by the state, has been put in the limelight by Hernan de Soto (1989) and embraced by establishment development agencies. The accompanying message of deregulation and government rollback of course beautifully matched the prevailing neoliberal outlook. NGOs, after decades of marginality, have become major channels of development cooperation. Governments go non-governmental by setting up Government Organized Non Government Organizations. In countries such as Mozambique and Bangladesh the resources of NGOs, domestic and international, exceed those at the disposal of government. Women's concerns, once an outsider criticism, have been institutionalized by making women and gender preferential parts of the development package. Criticism of foreign aid as development assistance has led to its being renamed 'development cooperation'. Capacity-building which used to be missing in conventional development support is now built in as a major objective. Mega-summits - in Rio, Cairo, Copenhagen, Beijing, Istanbul - have been forums for the alignment of official and unofficial discourses.
In other words, forms of alternative development have become institutionalized as part of mainstream development, and in some circumstances have become or overtaken mainstream development, to the point that MAD, or mainstream altema-
We can regard alternative development either as an open-ended poser, or as a set of ideas and practices that in time have themselves been institutionalized, and while critically scrutinizing the latter we can keep open the former. The advantage of alternative development as an open-ended poser is that it provides a flexible position of critique. Of course this principle can be adopted without any reference to 'alternative development'; instead development itself can be defined as 'constant consideration of alternatives' (e.g. Coetzee 1989: 11). The disadvantage is that without a theory alternative development is like a ship without a rudder.
Alternative Development Paradigm
While much alternative development thinking makes a diffuse impression, this has gradually been giving way to a sharper and more assertive positioning on account of several trends. (1) The enormous growth of NGOs in numbers and influence generates a growing demand for strategy and therefore theory. (2) The importance of environmental concerns and sustainability has weakened the economic growth paradigm and given a boost to alternative and ecological economics. (3) The glaring failure of several development decades further unsettles the mainstream paradigm of growth. (4) The growing challenges to the Bretton Woods institutions lead to the question whether these criticisms are merely procedural and institutional (for more participation and democratization) or whether they involve fundamentally different principles.
These diverse trends generate various lines of tension. One line of friction runs between the general alternative development preoccupation with local and endogenous development and the growing demand for global alternatives Globalization under the S1gn of the unfettered market is denounced because it clashes with endogenous development, while the mushrooming of NGOs itself is a manifestation of the growing momentum of global civil society, in other words represents another arm of globalization. Another line of friction runs between diffuse alternative development and an alternative development paradigm the former implying a soft and the latter a hard boundary with mainstream development, and theoretical openness or closure. These tensions find expression in more or less subtle differences among alternative development positions
In view of the holistic aspirations of alternative development it would be desirable for disparate alternative development knowledge pools to be grouped together yet in view of the different functions that alternative development fulfils -animating local development, guiding international NGO strategy, informing global alternatives - this will not necessarily happen. Alternative development serves dispersed discourse communities. International NGOs tend to look both ways, at local grassroots development and at global alternatives. These different functions overlap and intersperse and are not necessarily incompatible but rhyming them requires making them explicit, which is not often done, and an effort at synthesis, which requires more reflection on local/global and micro/mega interconnections than is common in most alternative development literature
Oddly, in view of the claim to an alternative development paradigm and its growing appeal, attempts to theoretically develop alternative development have been
relatively few.3 There may be several reasons for this. Alternative development tends to be practice oriented rather than theoretically inclined. The world of alternative development is not a 'library world'. Part of alternative development logic is that as development is people-centred, genuine development knowledge is also people's knowledge and what counts is local rather than abstract expert knowledge. With the local orientation of alternative development comes a certain regional dispersal in the literature, which looks like a scattered archipelago of primary local knowledges, with little overarching reflection. Besides, alternative development travels under many aliases - appropriate development, participatory development, people-centred development, human-scale development, people's self-development, autonomous development, holistic development; and many elements relevant to alternative development are developed, not under the banner of alternative development but under specific headings, such as participation, participatory action research, grassroots movements, NGOs, empowerment, con-scientization, liberation theology, democratization, citizenship, human rights, development ethics, ecofeminism, cultural diversity, etc. Such dispersion does not facilitate generating a coherent body of theory. Many alternative development sources do not in any methodical way refer to one another but keep on generating alternatives from the ground up, in the process reinventing the wheel without zeroing in on fundamentals or generating 'expert opinion' and debate. In part this may be a matter of the 'alternative' character of alternative development, alternative in the sense of a habitus of subversion, an intuitive aversion to method, to systematization and codification, which implies a distrust of 'experts' and even of theory itself. This weakens the claim to deliver a different paradigm.
Alternative development is not necessarily anti-theoretical but it is intellectually segmented. The work of several alternative development authors can be con-textualized in terms of their social location. David Korten is an NGO strategist who contributes both to local development and global alternatives. John Friedmann is primarily concerned with local and regional planning. Anisur Rahman mainly addresses local and grassroots development. Manfred Max-Neef and Hazel Henderson are alternative economists, the former engaged with local development and the latter with global alternatives. Training, teaching and research are other contexts in which alternative development is being articulated, across a wide spectrum from small local institutes to university programmes.4
While alternative development is often referred to as an alternative development model or paradigm, which implies an emphatic theoretical claim, what is delivered on this score is quite uneven. Critics of the Bretton Woods institutions as bulwarks of mainstream developmentalism increasingly claim to present a paradigm shift in development. The same elements keep coming back: 'equitable, participatory and sustainable human development' (e.g. Arruda 1994: 139). 'The new approach to development includes the values of equity, participation and environmental sustainability, as well as improving physical well-being' (Griesgraber and Gunter 1996a: xiv). Is this sufficient as the basis of a new paradigm? It concerns the 'how to's' of development rather than the nature of development as such. It identifies aspirations rather than attributes of development. As such it can easily be 'added on' to mainstream development discourse
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and indeed often is. Since mainstream development nowadays embraces and advertises the same values, the outcome is a rhetorical consensus rather than a paradigm break.
Rahman (1993) contrasts a consumerist view of development, which treats people as passive recipients of growth, with a creativist view, according to which people are the creative forces of development, the means as well as the end of development, for development is defined as people's self-development. This refers to a set of normative orientations, rather than to a different explanatory framework. Such elements may add up to a distinctive alternative development profile but not to a paradigm. The distinguishing element of alternative development should be found in the redefinition of development itself and not merely in its agency, modalities, procedures or aspirations.
Dissatisfaction with development-as-growth is an increasingly common position, not merely since the Club of Rome's report on The Limits to Growth (Meadows et al. 1972). Yet if development is not about growth, what is it? One option is to redefine development as social transformation (e.g. Addo et al. 1985). In itself development as transformation is vague because it is like saying that development is change - change from what to what, what kind of change? 'Good change', according to Robert Chambers (1983). Institutional transformation adds some concreteness but still needs context. Korten (1990) defines development as transformation towards justice, inclusiveness and sustainability. Again these are normative clauses, but ethics of development (e.g. Goulet 1992) does not necessarily add up to redefining development. Alternatively, might the character of alternative development be found in a distinctive development style? Max-Neef (1991: 86) mentions 'avoiding bureaucratization' and for Korten the surest way to kill a social movement is to throw money at it. But the downside of this position is the romanticization of social movements (as in post-development).
It may be argued that theory is a central concern of alternative development, for it is about the redefinition of development. Korten (1990: 113) notes that 'it is impossible to be a true development agency without a theory that directs action to the underlying causes of underdevelopment. In the absence of a theory, the aspiring development agency almost inevitably becomes instead merely an assistance agency engaged in relieving the more visible symptoms of underdevelopment through relief and welfare measures.' Indeed, 'an organization cannot have a meaningful development strategy without a development theory' (1990: 114). Korten (1990: 67) proposes a redefinition of development as follows: --
Evelopment is a process by which the members of a society increase their personal and titutional capacities to mobilize and manage resources to produce sustainable and justly tributed improvements in their quality of life consistent with their own aspirations^^
The same point in different wording: 'The heart of development is institutions and politics, not money and technology, though the latter are undeniably important' (144). 'The most fundamental issues of development are, at their core, issues of power' (214). The kind of issues that Gunnar Myrdal raised years ago in Asian r>mmn fl968V issues of land ownership and distribution of power, issues that
MY PARADIGM OR YOURS?
83
and other fads, which made little or no difference in relation to poverty: these fundamentals are now put centre-stage.
This position may be distinctive enough to establish a break with conventional development. For Korten it constitutes a break with the various approaches that coopt alternative values by 'adding them on' to the growth model. 'The basic needs strategies that gained prominence during the 1970s, and are still advocated by organizations such as UNICEF, are a variant of, usually an add-on to, a classical growth-centered development strategy' (1990: 44). The same applies to the approaches that have been concerned with giving structural adjustment a 'human face'. 'The basic services for which they pleaded were best characterized as a facade, putting a more palatable face on actions that are based on flawed analysis and theory, rather than coming forward in support of more basic, but politically controversial reforms' (45). The report of the World Commission on Environment and Development on Our Common Future (1987), known as the Brundtland Report, is also criticized for merging sustainability and growth in the notion of 'sustainable growth'(166).
A further question is whether, beyond an alternative definition of development, alternative development has a distinctive methodology, epistemology and policy agenda. A review of alternative development positions on questions of agency, endogenous development, indigenous knowledge and development cooperation,' may serve to fill in and give substance to an alternative development paradigm or profile and also to detect whether there are contradictory elements among them. Since the literature is extensive, uneven and dispersed this is only a provisional review.
Agency
With regard to agency there have been marked changes over time in alternative development thinking. Generally alternative development combines the aims of development and emancipation. As development 'from below' it is part of the general concern with civil society. In 1970s alternative development manifestos the forces that were to carry and implement 'another development' were the community and informal sector, or the 'third system'. Of the big three - state, market, society - the emphasis was entirely on society as the foundation for' another development. Clearly at the time alternative development was a protest position against state-led development. The strength of NGO discourse on the other hand is also a weakness: neglecting the role of the state. ^s-raeh4he.age of NGOs may.
XToyeJ,a87-)r-When in the 1980s the private sector came to beviewed as the leading sector of development, the scope of alternative development widened to include the state. Thus Friedmann (1992) and others argue that a strong civil society and a strong state go together. A strong, activist state in this view does not necessarily mean a dominant state. In alternative development the role of the state is not viewed in the same way as in conventional development: the state is to act as an enabler, a facilitator of people's self-development. For the state to perform
What about the third of the big three - market forces? Gradually this is being roped in, moving beyond not only anti-state but also anti-market understandings of people-centred development. 'Step-by-step we have moved to a recognition that government, business and voluntary organizations all have essential roles in development' (Korten 1990: 95). Not only practices but also prescriptions increasingly involve synergies between government, NGOs and firms, and elements such as fair trade, corporate codes, socially responsible business and banking. Thailand's Five Star Partnership Programme integrates the efforts of government, NGOs, private sector, religious communities and academic institutions to facilitate community and provincial development. Sato and Smith (1996) present this as a practice exemplar as part of an alternative development paradigm. A trend at the other extreme is for the market logic to take over to the point that private aid, as part of the development industry, becomes a business undertaking (Sogge 1996).
NGOs
The struggle of alternative development, according to Smitu Kothari (1994: 50), is 'nothing short o£reversing the conquest of society hy the egpnorny' This calls to mind Sukhamoy Chakravarty's saying that the market is a good servant but a bad master (quoted in Hettne 1992). Where the state EasTittle autonomy in rela-~" tion to business interests, foreign or domestic, social forces can operate as a countervailing power. In a situation where various forces seek to influence or control the state - strategic business groups, foreign corporate interests, multilateral agencies - organized civil society can operate as a check on the 'privatization' of the state and the public sphere.
The political economy of dependencia involved Third World intellectuals relying on the state and on the emergence of a national bourgeoisie. As intellectuals of Third World nationalism and anti-imperialism, at times they played the part of alternative mandarins. What is the political economy of alternative development? Which political and social forces sustain the world of everyday and really-existing alternative development? Whom does alternative development discourse serve? Who are funding NGOs and alternative development consultants? (See e.g. Gow 1991, Sogge 1996.)
NGOs have become part of the development industry, another component in the package. The rise of NGOs during the 1970s and 1980s was hoth a by-product of and compensation for the wave of neohberahsm roufiield 1996). Civil society, ' socTaT nTovements and NGOs are a mixed bag, all the more because, mushrooming amidst the breakdown of regulation (or informalization), they are unregulated themselves. Some NGOs such as church organizations were active long before the development era. There are steep differences between NGOs as public service contractors and people-oriented NGOs (e.g. Korten 1990, Edwards and Hulme 1992). NGOs suffer similar problems (bureaucratization, hierarchy, scale, corruption, dependence) as any organization. If they are sites of power outside the reach of the state they are within the reach of donors, who in turn move within the orbit of their funders, state or private, and their cultural and discursive agendas
(e.g. Black 1992 about the career of Oxfam). NGOs can function as parastatals, subcontractors of the state or Governmental NGOs, but outside the channels of accountability and control. NGOs can just as easily be conservative agencies, such as evangelical movements broadcasting the theology of quiescence or the prosperity gospel of individual achievement, charismatic movements propagating new forms of ritualism; not to mention agencies such as the Summer Institute of Linguistics which is on record as having served as a CIA conduit.
Development NGOs have been denounced as 'new missionaries' engaged in recolonization, as 'unguided missiles' (Hanlon 1991), or as 'the new East India Company' (Burne 1995). They have been accused of neutralizing popular resistance and facilitating popular acceptance of structural adjustment (Arrelano-Lopez and Petras 1994). NGOs can contribute to democratizing development (Clark 1991), serve as vehicles of transnational networking building global civil society (Henderson 1993), as liaisons in 'innovation networking' (Mytelka 1993), or channels of outside interference beyond the controls of normalized politics and international relations (e.g. African Rights 1994). The role of NGOs is now viewed with less naivety and more discrimination concerning the institutional, discursive, economic and political constraints under which they operate.
New Politics
Alternative development literature is sprinkled with pleas for unity. In an Indian context, for instance, Smitu Kothari (1994: 51) notes: 'The pervasive fragmentation of the entire democratic spectrum has to be replaced by coalescing our dispersed efforts'. In part this reflects nostalgia, not so much for Gemeinschaft but for the 'old politics' characterized by clearly divided camps and neat ideological boundaries. Laclau and Mouffe (1985) contrast this with hegemonic politics,-which is characterized by unfixed identities and fragmented space, in which nodal points nonetheless matter. In hegemonic politics coalitions are not stable as in the old-time coalitions because the subjectivities are not as stable. Alternative development may involve novel coalition politics of new and old social movements, with a view to a new convergence of concerns and interests, in relation both to local and to global politics. The case for a 'convergence of radicalisms' (Shiviah 1994) fails to persuade because in these kind of pleas the interests, identities and subjectivities involved tend to be taken as static and given, rather than as constructed in the process of articulation.
In alternative development, agency can be defined narrowly or broadly; it can be defined loosely, in diffuse alternative development, or sharply, in the alternative development paradigm. At any rate, what is more appropriate than a static coalition politics or a new kind of political 'unity' is the idea of synergies among pluralistic actors, synergies that are flexible and mobile and do not require ideological consensus. Thus, the World Bank's NGO desk is making tripartite negotiations between government, NGOs and international institutions a feature of its approach. Defining development policy as public action (Wuyts et al. 1992) is an approach that involves synergies among diverse actors and across sectors.5
86
DEVELOPMENT THEORY
Endogenous Development
The notion of the 'endogenous' refers to a social, cultural and symbolic space. Endogenous development implies a refutation of the view of development = modernization = Westernization. Self-reliance, then, does not simply concern the means but the end of development: the goals and values of development are to be generated from within. 'Development is endogenous - there are no front runners
Jo be followed' (Rahman i99~3:.2T7y An impncanon"is that modernityl?Viewed~ as generated/row within. Modernization then is not a matter of importing foreign models but also the 'modernization of tradition'. Imported modernization means the destruction of existing social and cultural capital - as in the cliche modernization view of tradition as 'resistance to change', modernization as the development of enclaves (rooted in colonialism) and the resulting dualistic sfoicmre7ir"By contrast, modernization-from-within means the revalorization and adaptation of existing social and cultural capital. Rahman (1993) relates how traditional self-help groups in West Africa, the Naam, have taken on other functions. A broad stream of literature discusses many instances of grafting development on to 'traditional' organizations (e.g. Carmen 1996, Burne 1995, Pradervand 1989, Verhelst 1990). These instances open up our understanding of development as well as modernity. The 'modernization of tradition' releases local and popular energies in a way that the modernization approach of top-down mobilization and outside-in imposition could never achieve.
An endogenous outlook is fundamental to alternative development. Yet endo-genism is difficult to turn into a 'hard' principle. Generally the boundary between inside and outside is one of the fundamental problems of development thinking (e.g. Gordon 1991). For what is the unit of development? The conventional framework used to bejhe_.isQci£ty' (read nation: reacl state'!, a position that was challenged hy,,Waller.stein,(.l.9.7.9). who argued that the actual unit of development
_is_the. world-systemJ.i.c. thejzonejrrteg^
duction of goods necessary tor reproduction). Alternative development introduces a diffuse range of alternative sites of endogeneity: people, community, local, grassroots.7 Who are the people in 'people power'? Is it 'people' or 'the people' - in which case we are back with 'society'? Or does it involve a class element, as in 'popular sectors'? If endogenous means within the community, it leads to the question of ethnodevelopment (see below). If endogenous means within society, it leads to the question of globalization and the blurring of borders. External change agents or animateurs often play an important role in stimulating local processes or acting as brokers: this is another limit to endogeneity as a horizon (a point made by Friedmann 1992).
How far to take endogenism? For instance, are Islamic approaches to development part of alternative development? They match the basic criteria of being endogenous, geared to basic needs, participatory and sustainable. Would this also apply to Islamist grassroots and social organizing (e.g. in Egypt, Turkey, or for that matter Algeria)? The community activities of Shiy.Sena Jn.fiombay - an extreme rightwing Hinduist organization - have been praised for their alternative
development efforts (Esman and Upton 1984: 8). Organizations such as the
MY PARADIGM OR YOURS? 87
J[^BiLTigers (LTTE) are also known to be effective conimunity.Qrganizeis. After endogenSnTEeTiex't stop may be ethnochauvinism.
Ethnodevelopment
Endogenous development implies that each society should find its own strategy. But what is a society? An idea originally advocated by Rodolfo Stavenhagen (1986), with reference to the indigenous peoples in Latin America, and taken up by Hettne (1990) is ethnodevelopment. * In the words of Friberg and Hettne (1985: 221), states are 'artificial territorial constructions' and 'small communities of human beings are the ultimate actors'. 'The concept of nation-state implies that the territorial boundaries of the state coincide with the boundaries of a culturally homogeneous nation. This is the exception rather than the rule in a world with about 1500 peoples or nations but only 150 states.' Therefore, 'The tribes and nations of the world are much more basic units of development, because they allow for the forging of a genuine consensus between their members. Normative convergence can only be obtained where people share a framework of social reasoning.' (ibid.).
Under the guise of alternative radicalism, this is not merely a nostalgic and conservative but a reactionary programme. It evokes false and illusory notions of 'consensus' and group boundaries based on a reification of ethnos = community. Friberg and Hettne note that 'Modernization always implies the decline and disintegration of natural communities' (1985: 233). First, this narrows modernization to exogenous modernization, eliminates the idea of modernization-from-within and thus denies the very idea of endogenous development. Secondly, should one accept these criteria as part of alternative development, it would mean alternative development upholding the same arguments as rightwing opponents of multi-culturalism in the West (and not only in the West): in the name of 'natural communities', immigrants can be banned; in the name of 'cultural homogeneity' as a condition for sharing 'a framework of social reasoning', multiculturalism can be declared inoperable. 'Natural communities' is the terminology of blood and soil politics. It is the kind of terminology that the followers of Hindutva in India would embrace. Endogenous development hardened to ethnodevelopment is a programme for separate development, for neo-apartheid and Bantustan politics, a programme for inward-looking deglobalization in the age of accelerated globalization.
This is alternative development at its worst. It evokes the spectre of ethno-fundamentalism. The reasoning is insinuating: 1500 peoples, therefore 1500 nations-in-waiting? Once 'genuine consensus' among group members is the working criterion, an infinitesimal process of fissure is on the cards. In the contemporary world of 'ethnic cleansing' this sounds unbelievably naive. There may be constructive ways of valorizing ethnicity, e.g. in conjunction with local culture and policies of decentralization. But a prerequisite for reconstructing ethnicity is deconstructing it, in the sense of recognizing its constructed character (Nederveen Pieterse 1996), and not recycling static notions such as 'natural communities' and blood and soil politics.
'Green authors tend to visualize the future as a world of cooperating and federated natural communities without strong centre-periphery gradients between
them (Fnberg and Hettne 1985: 223). A further perennial problem of visualizing a future of autonomous communities, as in Green notions of bioregionalism is that the relationship among communities or regions, which are inevitably differentially endowed in terms of resources, is not settled (cf. Young 1991) Fribere and Hettne are not unaware of the dark side of populism and the possibility of ecofascsm: they mention the resemblance of the Green movement to Fascist
a985ra2e2no) ^ 19308 Wlth 3 Slmilar CmphaS1S °n natUrC and f°lk Culture Methodology
The hallmark of alternative development methodology is participation Participatory Action Research, Rapid Rural Appraisal as well as conscientization critical pedagogy and empowerment are further elements in the alternative development repertoire. These elements are not specific or exclusive to alternative development. They have been developed in education (e.g. McLaren 1995) hberation theology and general development studies. Arguably what is specific to alternative development is the local and popular context in which they are applied. Participation is a deeply problematic notion; it is an improvement on top-down mobilization, but it remains paternalistic - unless the idea of participation is radically turned around, such that governments, international rvTopment0' ^ ^ C°nSldered 35 Part'clP^g * people's local
Epistemology
Korten (1990) mentions the phenomenon of 'believing is seeing', or paradigms contro ling perception. We tend to select and suppress information according to our beliefs Alternative development in this sense claims a 'Copernican revolution in understanding development. The key resource becomes not the country's aggregate GNP but people's creativity. This would also imply, for instance that poverty as such disappears as a clear-cut development indicator. Poverty as an indicator follows from the development-as-growth paradigm: 'the poor' are the target of development because they lack economic resources. But if development is not about growth but about institutional transformation, then the concern is not mere y with economic capital but as much with social, cultural, symbolic and mora capital and ,n these respects poor people can be rich. This introduces different distinctions such as the 'rooted' and the 'uprooted' poor (Carmen 1996) Stereotypes of poverty as wholesale deprivation, the 'culture of poverty' etc are disabling elements of development discourse. They evoke the notion of development as external intervention. The keynote of alternative development epistemology is local knowledge.
Indigenous Knowledge
Another keynote in alternative development and post-development thinking is critique of science. In India, the work of Ashis Nandy, Shiv Vishvanathan!
Claude Alvares and Vandana Shiva is part of a wider critique-of-science movement. Vandana Shiva (1991) criticizes the Enlightenment model and seeks to formulate 'an alternative development paradigm'. Critique of science is also well developed in Latin America. According to Escobar (1992b), Western science through development exercises a form of 'cultural violence on the Third World' and what is needed are 'alternative conceptions of knowledge'.
Critique-of-science movements involve dissident intellectuals, popular organizations and NGOs who oppose mainstream development expertise and policy, and network with movements in the West and Japan. Beck (1992) regards critique of science and technology as the main form of struggle in the 'new modernity' of 'risk society'. In view of the globalization of risk - such as global ecological hazards, the export of polluting industries and waste materials, the risks of biogenetic engineering, the spread of reproduction technologies - this is rapidly becoming a global contestation. In the South 'indigenous knowledge' is a countervailing position to Western science.
Tariq Banuri formulates a cultural critique of modernity focusing on what he calls the 'impersonality postulate of modernity: That impersonal relations are inherently superior to personal relations' (1990: 79). This yields a continuum of contrasting positions, with respect to ontology: from individualism to holism; with respect to cosmology: from instrumentalism to relational context; and epistemology: from positivism to hermeneutics. These contrasts parallel Carol Gilligan's (1982) distinction between masculine/feminine and impersonal/relational perspectives.10 Banuri links a Foucauldian agenda of resistance and 'resurrection of subjugated knowledges' to a vision of the future in the South. He argues in favour not only of a 'decentralized polity, economy, and society' but also of epistemological decentralization.
The problem, however, with the poststructuralist turn in development thinking is the same with poststructuralism in general: the critique of the Enlightenment easily slips into adoption of the 'other Enlightenment' - romanticism and unre-flected reverence for tradition and community; or a postmodern conservatism, which in the end is indistinguishable from anti-modern conservatism. Critique of science is inherent in late modernity and therefore also in development thinking in its present late phase; but it can take an unreflected or a reflexive form. If unre-flected, it verges on anti-intellectualism, or possibly, intellectual anti-intellectualism. I will conclude this chapter (and this book: see Chapter 10) by arguing for a reflexive development, which involves a reflexive, rather than a rhetorical and wholesale critique of science.
The notion of indigenous knowledge has developed out of the regard for local knowledge (Chambers 1983; Brokensha et al. 1980; Hobart 1993). 'To ignore people's knowledge is almost to ensure failure in development' (Agrawal 1995b: 3). Indigenous knowledge, or the practical knowledge of people in other cultures, gives substance and depth to otherwise rhetorical categories such as endogenous development.'1 Yet it is difficult - as in the case of other alternative development orientations - to turn indigenous knowledge into a clear-cut principle in view of the absence of a hard boundary between indigenous and other forms of knowledge. After all, what is 'indigenous'? This is also a construction (like 'modernity')
90 DEVELOPMENT THEORY
and one that is not devoid of romantic overtones. Agrawal (1995a) makes a persuasive case that there are no principled grounds on the basis of which indigenous knowledge can be distinguished from scientific knowledge. Rather than pursuing indigenous knowledge per se, Agrawal advocates the combination and blending of knowledge systems. This note of caution is not meant to neutralize criticisms from an 'indigenous' point of view but is the kind of qualification that is necessary if one wants to take these concerns seriously, for instance in relation to questions such as indigenous intellectual property rights or traditional resource rights (e.g. Posey 1994).
Development Cooperation
With redefining development comes a different assessment of international development cooperation. The general trend is away from development assistance to cooperation and partnership. As Korten notes, the consequences of development assistance or international aid have all too often been anti-developmental: 'it reduces capacities for sustained self-reliant development' (1990: 139). Conventional development assistance is a matter of 'moving money' rather than 'building capacity'. This involves the familiar distinction between relief (welfare) and development: 'Where the needs are chronic, rather than temporary, increasing the amount of humanitarian assistance, especially food aid, is likely to exacerbate the problem' (ibid.).
The principle of people's sovereignty or popular legitimacy as the basis of sovereignty involves a redefinition of development cooperation as principally a matter of people-to-people relations in which governments play a mediating and enabling role. Development cooperation then needs to be redefined as a process of'mutual empowerment' (Korten 1990: 146-7, cf. Duffield 1996).
If we would group the elements discussed above as an alternative development model in contrast to a conventional development model centred on growth, the result might be as shown in Table 6.1. Still the question remains whether this would constitute an alternative development paradigm or profile; for now the slightly more neutral terminology of models is adopted. Since the profiles in each model differ over time, in several boxes multiple options are indicated.
Accepting these as the contours of an alternative development paradigm would have several attractions. Alternative development ceases to be any alternative in relation to mainstream development. Alternative development as a diffuse position might be effective for alternative development as critique but not as a programme to be implemented. An alternative development paradigm might help the chances for alternative development to gain recognition and institutional support, which is necessary if it is no longer about marginal local initiatives supported by NGOs but if it aims to be a large-scale overhaul of development as such. If alternative development is about wide-ranging synergies between communities, government agencies, international institutions and business, then its profile must be both distinct enough and acceptable enough to generate support in institutional circles and diverse communities of interest. Yet this raises different nuestions
MY PARADIGM OR YOURS? 91 Table 6.1   Development models
Models	Growth	Social transformation
Objectives	Accumulation	Capacitation, human
		development
Resources	Capital, technology, trade,	Human resources, social
	foreign investment, external	capital, local knowledge
	expertise	
Features	Growth-led	Equity-led
Agency	State-led or market-led	People, community.
		Synergies between society,
		government, market
Epistemology	Science	Critique of science,
		indigenous knowledge
Modalities	Exogenous examples,	Endogenous development,
	demonstration effect,	modernization from within,
	modernity vs. tradition,	modernization of tradition
	technology transfer	
Methods	Import substitution	Participation, sustainability,
	industrialization, export-led	democratization
	growth, growth poles,	
	innovation, structural	
	adjustment	
Social policy	Trickle-down. Safety net	Trickle-up. Social
		capacitation through redistribution
Development	Aid, assistance	Partnership, mutual
cooperation		obligation
Indicators	GDP	Green GDP, Human
		Development Index,
		institutional densities
A serious discussion of alternative development as a paradigm would involve its negotiation, renegotiation and fine-tuning in wide circles. This treatment cannot prejudge such a broad discussion; but what does arise is a more fundamental question: whether the notion of paradigm is applicable at all.
Paradigm Politics
The world is tired of grand solutions. (Manfred Max-Neef 1991: 110)
To match Kuhn's concept, a paradigm shift in development would have to meet three conditions: it must provide a metafheory, be accepted by a community of practitioners, and have a body of successful practice, including exemplars that can be held up as paradigms in practice. Sato and Smith (1996: 90) mention these requirements, but their brief chapter fails to deliver a metatheory. In my view more fundamental questions need to be asked. What is the status of a paradigm and is this concept and that of paradigm shift relevant to social science'? A paradigm in the sense of Thomas Kuhn (1962) refers to the explanatory power of a theoretical model and its institutional ramifications for the structure and
particularly in the natural sciences. Kuhn's position was that social science is 'pre-paradigmatic' because a scholarly consensus such as exists in physics or biology is not available in social science.
If we consider this more closely, in the social sciences positivism is largely a past station, except in some forms of economics. The interpretative character of social science has become widely accepted since phenomenology, hermeneutics and more recently the 'linguistic turn'. Also if one does not accept discourse analysis and deconstruction as analytic instruments, the time of blind faith in models and grand theories is left behind. It is generally understood that social sciences are of an extraordinary complexity because they involve political processes that are reflexive in nature, in the sense that social actors will act upon any theory, which is thus modified in action. Constructivism is widely accepted as a theoretical framework in relation to social phenomena as well as in relation to social science theories, which of course are also social phenomena. In constructivism, notions of paradigm and paradigm shift are built in. Pierre Bourdieu's analyses of social science in action are an example (1988) and so is his notion of reflexive sociology (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992). It follows that in relation to reflexive social science the concept of paradigm does not hold and that social science is basically 'post-paradigmatic' or, at least, non-paradigmatic. In social science 'paradigm' may be used in a loose sense but it does not serve the same function of critique of positivism as in natural sciences, nor does it adequately describe the organization of science.
Recent years have witnessed an outburst of claims for new paradigms in social science, development studies included - a kind of new paradigm epidemic. Paradigm shift is a central theme of postmodernism (McHale 1992, Bauman 1992, Santos 1996) and also figures in claims for 'new science' (Capra 1988). Lipietz (1995) presents political ecology as a new paradigm. Hazel Henderson's work centres on paradigm shifts (1991, 1996a, 1996b). Mahbub ul Haq (1995) proposes a human development paradigm. Norman Long's (1994) 'actor-oriented paradigm' refers to a critique of structuralist approaches in development and a return to anthropological sensibilities.
What is the point of these exercises in a general context of reflexive, construc-tivist social science? It does signal a watershed, at minimum a more reflexive mentality in social science. But is borrowing from the natural sciences an appropriate move? One impression is that the claims to paradigm shifts primarily serve a political purpose. What is at issue is a claim for political unity and convergence: by emphasizing the intellectual convergence of diverse elements, the chances for political cohesion of diverse constituencies may be enhanced. Part of the appeal of Kuhn's paradigm shift is the element of revolution or a drastic break in intellectual and therefore political practice. But in fact in current usages paradigm is used in a broad and loose sense of an 'intellectual framework', similar to discourse and episteme, and not in Kuhn's more specific sense of an explanatory framework that defines the practice of 'normal science'. More often it concerns normative values rather than explanatory and metatheoretical frameworks.
Development, even though it hinges on theory as the beacon of policy, is more concerned with policy than explanatory frameworks. In development, the claim
of a paradigm shift means that a policy framework has changed. Thus, ul Haq's human development paradigm refers to a set of normative orientations - equity, sustainability, productivity, empowerment - and not merely to a different explanatory framework. There are still further reasons why the notion of a paradigm shift may not apply to development or alternative development.
The first consideration is diversity in the South. If conventional develop-mentalism (growth, modernization, neoclassical economics) is no longer acceptable because of its linear logic and universalist pretension, why should an alternative development paradigm hold? There are now 'five Souths' (Group of Lisbon 1995: 47) and a wide range of local variations within each of these: how could a single paradigm encompass such a diversity of development paths, needs and circumstances? Besides, would a new orthodoxy really be desirable? Is what is needed not rather a post-paradigmatic perspective? The diffuseness of alternative development may also be an analytical advantage. Alternative development as a loosely interconnected ensemble of sensibilities and practices is more flexible in resonating with diverse situations than an alternative development paradigm. While a paradigm shift implies a revolution in relation to past work it means routinization in relation to future work. It would fix a practice of 'normal development'. In view of the diversity and flux of the development field such routinization may precisely not be what is desirable. In other words, the urge toward paradigm renewal may itself be inappropriate.
Further considerations in relation to an alternative development paradigm are the following.
□ The various elements of the alternative development package are each meaningful but none of them can be turned into a firm, hard principle: it follows that alternative development as a paradigm cannot stand up either. The strength of. alternative development positions is critical, rather than programmatic.
□ The elements of the alternative development paradigm are contradictory. In effect endogenism as a principle annuls any general formulation of alternative development. 'If the people are the principal actors in the alternative development paradigm, the relevant reality must be the people's own, constructed by them only' (Rahman 1993: 220, emphasis in original). By this logic, how can there be a general alternative development theory, let alone a paradigm? There can only be a sprawling archipelago of local alternative perspectives.
□ The valorization of indigenous knowledge has similar implications. Giving the alternative development paradigm the status of a metatheory - the usual way out of 'Zeno's paradox' ('the Cretan says that all Cretans are liars') - does not work in this case because it establishes outsiders as experts over insiders.
There is also an institutional dimension to this question. There may be political advantages as well as disadvantages to a sharp break with mainstream development. Sanyal (1994) argues that alternative development has withered because it has not found institutional support, which it has not because agencies, bureaucracies and ministries cannot handle sharp discontinuities in principles and practices (discussed further under 'Mainstream development' below).
1 V_7 K_J |\
The above considerations apply to the broad alternative development paradigm (a la Hettne, Rahman, Carmen and others) while the Bretton Woods challengers propose a much narrower alternative development paradigm of equitable, sustainable and participatory development. Here a different problem applies: the distinction between the narrow alternative development paradigm and mainstream development exists as a rhetorical claim only, for the sole distinctive feature is the insistence that development be equitable. This implies a critique of the trickle-down principle of neoclassical economics; but that too, even in the mainstream, is nowadays hardly a controversial point. This, then, is a clear instance of 'paradigm polities'.
Mainstream Development
Mainstream development here refers to everyday development talk in developing countries, international institutions and international development cooperation. It now seems a long time since development was defined as growth and simply measured by means of per capita GNP. Gradually, starting with basic needs and other heterodox approaches in the 1970s, development has been redefined as enlargement of people's choices and human capacitation (e.g. Sen 1985) and as if people, basic needs, health, literacy, education and housing matter. The Human Development Index (HDI) has become an influential standard. People-centred development is becoming a mainstream position.
This means that there is now considerable overlap between mainstream and alternative development, which share much the same rhetoric, ideals and definition of development: participation, work with the poor and vulnerable groups, local action. This overlap is not always apparent from alternative development discourses, which often tend to stereotype and fix mainstream approaches. This may be a matter of institutional lag or ignorance about changes in the mainstream; or a proclivity to antagonistic posturing in terms of 'us' and 'them', building up the alternative appeal by emphasizing the backwardness of the mainstream. Adherents of alternative development hold different views on the nature of the relationship between alternative and mainstream development. Two extreme positions are that alternative development is to be as distinct and separate from mainstream development as possible (e.g. most Bretton Woods challengers, Kothari, in some respects Korten), or that continuity between mainstream and alternative development both exists and is desirable (e.g. Wignaraja 1992). Most proponents of an alternative development paradigm posit a contradiction between growth and structural reform on the one hand and alternative development on the other. Ul Haq, as a proponent of human development (HD), does not see a contradiction between human development and structural reform. His human development paradigm is identical to the alternative development paradigm except that, characteristically, it includes production as a core value.
This also implies a tension between alternative and human development. The limitation of human development, according to some, is that critical concerns are being instrumentalized short of the overhaul of the development-as-growth model, so that in effect development business-as-usual can carry on under a
different umbrella. What we see is still a 'fetishism of numbers' (Max-Neef 1991). Friedmann (1992) mentions, besides human and citizen rights, 'human flourishing' as the value orientation of alternative development, precisely to counteract its operationalization in indices such as the Human Development Index. This affirms that alternative development is about something beyond merely another set of measuring standards, which is a point worth making - but only if we also consider the importance of indices such as HDI in influencing policy frameworks (Henderson 1996b: 122, ul Haq 1995). Implementation is desirable, practicalities are prosaic, and institutions need measurements. Human flourishing exceeds but also requires human development. In analogy with Moser's (1991) argument on gender needs, one could say that alternative development is not only about practical but also about strategic needs, i.e. a profound redistribution of resources within societies and on a world scale. Except that the alternative development paradigm stakes an even larger claim: the total overhaul of development.
According to Rajni Kothari (1993b), alternatives have been coopted, resulting in 'a world without alternatives'. Kothari complains of 'deep cooptation': not only organizations but mentalities have changed, a critical edge has been lost. He observes 'the consumerism and commercialisation of diverse human enteiprise, the basic crisis of vision - in a sense, an end of "alternatives" in the real and comprehensive sense of the term' (1993b: 136). This kind of pessimism, while understandable, seems somehow illogical: what reason is there to assume, short of a fundamental shift in human nature, that the creativity that has given rise to alternatives in one context will not find different avenues of expression, whatever the circumstances and indeed prompted by them? That emancipation can be successful should not be held against it - although it often is, as if a Sisyphean task were a seal of purity. But of course Kothari views cooptation not as success but as capitulation - but doesn't the record look much more varied?12 Cooptation, besides being logical in view of the way the development field is structured, may be desirable if it means a greater chance that once-marginal views are implemented. There is cause to regret cooptation mainly if one regards alternative development as a position external to the system; but this kind of island mentality is as sterile as delinking as a national development strategy. Governments and NGOs are factually interdependent in terms of agenda setting and funding. The entire field is changing, including government organizations.
An intermediate option is the 'growth plus' approach: growth plus redistribution, participation, human development, or 'sustainable growth'. 'Redistribution with growth' was a prominent position in the 1970s (Chenery et al. 1974). Structural adjustment with a human face has been an in-between position (Jolly 1986). Korten (1990) views 'adding on' as a weakness of alternatives and seeks therefore to establish as sharp as possible a break with conventional positions. However, from the point of view of policy implementation and institutional acceptance, 'adding on' may rather be a source of strength, because for bureaucracies in welfare ministries and international agencies total breaks are much more difficult to handle than additional policy options (Sanyal 1994). In view of such political ramifications, is it necessary or wise to formulate alternative development as
anti-growth? Ul Haq (1995) argues for continuity, rather than plain contradiction, between growth and human development (cf. Griffin and McKinley 1994). In his view the key issue is the quality of growth. Ul Haq builds on the 1970s redistribution with growth position; the difference is that, while arguing for theoretical continuity and policy refinement, he also claims the status of a new paradigm and a 'revolutionary' role for human development. A different consideration is that substantively the nature of economic growth itself is undergoing rethinking, also in the North. An increasingly prominent line of research concerns the links between growth and social development and the idea that social capital is crucial to economic development (see Chapter 8).
Conclusion
Development is not what it used to be. It might be argued that the big hiatus in developTiienl'now no longer runs between mainstream and alternative development but within mainstream development. Mainstream development now incorporates many alternative development elements and practices. It is the vast stretch of contemporary mainstream development, from the Bretton Woods institutions all the way to grassroots empowerment, that makes for its cacophonic, schizophrenic character. Broadly speaking, the divide now runs between human and alternative development, on the one hand, and the number-crunchinn approach to development, the positivism of growth, on the other. Institutionally this rift runs between the UN agencies and the IMF, with the World Bank increasingly - and precariously - straddled somewhere in the middle.
The differences between alternative and human development are significant enough but not as wide as those between them and the 'Washington consensus' (or what remains of it). By comparison to alternative development, human development is better positioned institutionally, from the UN system to economics and social welfare ministries in the South; on the other hand, it tends to be bureaucratic in outlook. The bottom line agency of the human development approach is the state, wrier eas the agency of alternative development is local, grassroots and 1 social movement activism. To alternative development there is a protest element, a polemics against development-business-as-usual which represents a 'local' and grassroots take on development that is probably irreplaceable: witness contributions such as participatory action research. Alternative development brings anthropology into development. Yet alternative development cannot walk away from the role of the state. Education and health care policies cannot be left to local alternative development. Economic development requires state action. This is realized in more recent alternative approaches, which argue that a strong civil society needs a strong state (as in Friedmann 1992, Brohman 1996). This also follows from the need to combine micro and macro approaches to development. Human development provides an enabling perspective on the developmental role of the state. Thus, alternative and human development together represent a combination of local, grassroots and state perspectives. Both approaches also involve different perspectives on global reform. Neither is complete: alternative development
cannot do without the state; human development cannot flourish without an active civil society, nationally and internationally. After all, what matters is the direction and character of overall development. In comparison to this question the differences between alternative and human development are relatively minor. The key issue is the relationship between social and human development and the policies followed by the Bretton Woods institutions.
Notes
1 The notion of counterpoint has been inspired by Wertheim's theory of emancipation (1974; cf. Nederveen Pieterse 1989, Ch. 3, 'Counterpoint and emancipation').
2 In the 1995 edition of his book, Hettne fine-tunes his position on alternative development in terms of three principles: 'The principle of territorialism as a counterpoint to functionalism. The principle of cultural pluralism as a counterpoint to standardized modernization. The principle of ecological sustainability as a counterpoint to "growth" and consumerism' (1995: 199). These reformulations are hardly improvements. Territorialism involves a spatial demarcation of development that is as problematic as the ideas on ethnodevelopment (discussed below). Cultural pluralism is now widely accepted and thematized in the culture and development approach (Ch. 5 above). Contrasting sustainability and growth is crude; ul Haq's (1995) point that what matters is not growth but the quality of growth is more to the point. I owe these quotes to a review of Hettne's book by Gasper (1996).
3 Sources include Dag Hammarskjold Foundation (1975). Nerfin (1977). Wolfe (1981), Klauss and Korten (1984), Drabek (1987), Korten (1990), Hettne (1990), Max-Neef (1991), Friedmann (1992), Rahman (1993), Carmen (1996) and a wide array of articles in books and journals (such as International Foundation for Development Alternatives, which dissolved in the early 1990s, and Alternatives). Critiques of alternative development are Latouche 1993, Sanyal 1994 and Cowen and Shenton (1996: 457-72).
4 This is the context of Carmen (1996), Coetzee (1989), Guha and Vivekenanda (1985) and also of my work. I teach in an MA programme on Politics of Alternative Development Strategies at a graduate school in development studies. As an anthropologist by original training and after years living in countries in the South, my interests span the range from local development to global alternatives.
5 Brown and Ashman 1996, 1999 discuss various factors that make intersectoral cooperation fail or succeed.
6 New modernization theory as So (1990) notes does take into account traditions as sources of innovation and not just as 'resistance to change'.
7 Sundaram (1994) draws a distinction between 'development from below', which he views as the domain of local, district or regional government, and 'development from within' as the terrain of the village or grassroots. This distinction between endogenous (local government) and within (village) is rather unusual. 1 owe this reference to Aurora Galindo.
8 Independent of these sources Somjee (1991: 153-7) also uses the term ethnodevelopment but here it means so much as people's development.
9 Carmen 1996 makes this point. See also critiques of participation by Estava 1985 and the treatment by Stiefel and Wolfe 1994. The concepts of participation, empowerment, resistance and emancipation are critically discussed in Nederveen Pieterse 1992b.
10 Western social theories, according to Banuri (1990), view everything - exchange, production, jurisprudence, education, political science, etc. - through the prism of impersonality. The cognitive shift from the personal to the impersonal parallels a shift from internal to external constraints: it represents an advantage for centralized institutions, structures of surveillance and control in knowledge, politics, and architecture. Banuri cites Ashis Nandy's definition of progress as 'an expansion the awareness of oppression' (1990: 91). Gilles Deleuze said about Foucault: 'You have taught something absolutely fundamental: The indignity of speaking on someone else's behalf (quoted in Banuri 1990: 96). From this follows a critique of the role of the expert: 'It is not for the outside expert to insist that the goals which he or she thinks worth pursuing are the ones which should be pursued by all