societies ... the crisis if any stems precisely from the centralized intervention itself (ibid.: 97). He concludes that 'the main task of the theorist ... is to help strengthen resistance against oppressive institutions'. See the critique of Cowen and Shenton (1996: 453-61) on the ironies of this position. 11 A relevant journal is Indigenous Knowledge and Development Monitor. In 1993 a Foundation for the Promotion of Indigenous Knowledge Based Development was set up in Mysore, India, along with a Centre for Advanced Research of Indigenous Knowledge Systems. See also Goonatilake 1999. 12 Tony Chiejina (1993) compares Kothari's earlier articles, as founding editor of Alternatives in 1975 and subsequently, with his 1993 position. Elsewhere Kothari (e.g. 1993a) is more positive about citizen movements and organizations, recognizing their socially innovative contributions. 7 AFTER POST-DEVELOPMENT The idea of development stands like a ruin in the intellectual landscape. Delusion and disappointment, failures and crime have been the steady companions of development and they tell a common story: it did not work. Moreover, the historical conditions which catapulted the idea into prominence have vanished: development has become outdated _ (Wolfgang Sachs 1992b: 1) Along with 'anti-development' and 'beyond development', post-development Is a radical reaction to the dilemmas of development. Perplexity and extreme dissatisfaction with business-as-usual and standard development rhetoric and practice, and disillusion with alternative development are keynotes of this perspective. I Development is rejected because it is the 'new religion of the West' (Rist 1990a), it is the imposition of science as power (Nandy 1988), it does not work (Kothari 1988), it means cultural Westernization and homogenization (Constantino 1985) and brings environmental destruction. It is rejected not merely on account of its results but because of its intentions, its worldview and mindset. The mindset of economism implies a reductionist take on existence. Thus, according to Sachs, 'it | Jsnot the failure of development which has to be feared, but its success' (1992b: 3). ; "TosFdevelopment starts out from a basic realization: that attaining a middle-class life style for the majority of the world population is impossible (Dasgupta 1985). In time this has led to a position of total rejection of development. In the words of Gustavo Esteva, If you live in Mexico City today, you are either rich or numb if you fail to notice that development stinks... The time has come to recognize development itself as the malignant myth whose pursuit threatens these among whom I live in Mexico.... the 'three development decades' were a huge, irresponsible experiment that, in the experience of a world-majority, failed miserably. (1985: 78) Post-development overlaps with Western critiques of modernity and techno-scientific progress, such as critical theory, poststructuralism and ecological movements. It parallels alternative development and cultural critiques of development. It stands to development as 'deep ecology' does to environmental management. There are different strands to this way of looking at development. Anti-development is rejectionism inspired by anger with development business-as-usual. Beyond development ('au delá de développemenť) combines this aversion with looking over the fence. In post-development, these are combined with a Foucauldian methodology and theoretical framework of discourse analysis and a politics inspired by poststructuralism. These positions are not all consistent and besides, as a recent approach, post-development thinking is not theoretically developed. The overlap among these sensibilities is sufficient to group them together here under the heading of post-development. Development is the management of a promise — and what if the promise does not deliver? Living in Chiapas or other oppressed and poor areas, chances are that development is a bad joke. The question is what is done with this assessment. Post-development is not alone in looking at the shadow of development; all critical approaches to development deal with its dark sides. Dependency theory raises the question of global inequality. Alternative development focuses on the lack of popular participation. Human development addresses the need to invest in people. Post-development focuses on the underlying premises and motives of development, and what sets it apart from other critical approaches is its rejection of development! The question is whether this is a tenable and fruitful position. In the 1980s these views crystallized around the journal Development: Seeds for Change. They have been taken up by intellectuals in Latin America (Esteva, Escobar), India (see Dallmayr 1996 on the 'Delhi school'), Pakistan (Rahnema and Bawtree 1997), Malaysia (Just World Trust 1995), France (Latouche 1993), Switzerland (Rist 1997), Germany (Sachs 1992a), Belgium (Verhelst 1990),' England (Seabrook 1994), Ireland (Tucker 1999), Japan (Lummis 1991). They have become prominent since they coalesce with ecological critiques and ecofemi-nism (Mies 1986, Shiva 1988b) and through bestsellers such as Sachs' Development Dictionary. First we will consider some of the overt positions of post-development - the problematization of poverty, the portrayal of development as Westernization, and the critique of modernism and science. The argument then turns to the methodological dimension of discourse analysis of development. We will then look at the difference between alternative development and 'alternatives to development'. The reasons why this difference is made out to be so large are, in my interpretation, anti-managenalism and dichotomous thinking. This exposition closes with a discussion of the politics of post-development and a critical assessment. Problematizing Poverty An insight that runs through post-development is that poverty is not to be taken for granted. In the words of Vandana Shiva: Culturally perceived poverty need not be real material poverty: subsistence economies which serve basic needs through self-provisioning are not poor in the sense of being deprived. Yet the ideology of development declares them so because they don't participate overwhelmingly in the market economy, and do not consume commodities provided for and distributed through the market...(1988b: 10) Poverty is in the eye of the beholder. Sachs (1999) distinguishes between frugality, as in subsistence economies; destitution, which can arise when subsistence economies are weakened through the interference of growth strategies; and scarcity, which arises when the logic of growth and accumulation has taken over and commodity-based need becomes the overriding logic. In this early work, Sachs' policy recommendation is to implement growth strategies with caution, building on frugal lifestyles. This matches the recommendations made by 'ecological developers' all along, such as the agronomist René Dumont (1965, 1974), to follow growth strategies in tandem with appropriate technology and maximum use of local resources. But the rejection of either growth or development does not follow. 'Poverty' is not simply a deficit, for that is simply to adopt the commodity-based perspective of the North; 'poverty' can also be a resource. Attributing agency to the poor is a common principle in alternative approaches such as con-scientization a la Paulo Freire, human-scale development (Max-Neef 1982, 1991, Chambers 1983), participatory action research and the actor-oriented approach. According to Rahnema, poverty is real enough, but is also a culturally and historically variable notion. 'The way planners, development actomaniacs and politicians living off global poverty alleviation campaigns are presenting their case, gives the uninformed public a distorted impression of how the world's impoverished are living their deprivations. Not only are these people presented as incapable of doing anything intelligent by themselves, but also as preventing the modern do-gooders from helping them' (1992: 169). This is a different issue: it concerns the representation of poverty. By way of counterpoint, Rahnema draws attention to 'vernacular universes' that provide hope and strength; to the spiritual dimension ('Most contemporary grassroots movements have a strong spiritual dimension'; 171); and to 'convivial poverty', 'that is, voluntary or moral poverty' (171). This suggests affinity with the lineage of the Franciscans, liberation theology and Gandhian politics. In this view, it is the economism of development that is truly pauperizing. While these considerations may be valid up to a point, a consequence is that poverty alleviation and elimination - for what these efforts are worth - slip off the map. Another problem is that less market participation does not necessarily imply more social participation - lest we homogenize and romanticize poverty, and equate poverty with purity (and the indigenous and local with the original and authentic). The step from a statistical universe to a moral universe is worth taking, but a moral universe also involves action, and which action follows? Development = Westernization The debate over the word 'development' is not merely a question of words. Whether one likes it or not, one can't make development different from what it has been. Development has been and still is the Westernisation of the world. (Serge Latouche 1993: 160; emphasis in original) According to Escobar, the problem with 'Development' is that it is external, based on the model of the industrialized world and what is needed instead are 'more endogenous discourses'. The assertion of 'endogenous development' calls to mind dependency theory and the 'foreign bad, local good' position (Kiely 1999). According to Rajni Kothari, 'where colonialism left off, development took over' (1988: 143).' This view is as old as the critique of modernization theory. It calls to mind the momentum and pathos of decolonization, the arguments against cultural imperialism, CocaColonization, McDonaldization, Disneyfication and the familiar cultural homogenization thesis according to which Western media, advertising and consumerism induce cultural uniformity. 102 DEVELOPMENT THEORY All this may be satisfying, like the sound of a familiar tune, but it is also one-sided and old-fashioned. In effect, it denies the agency of the Third World. It denies the extent to which the South also owns development. Several recent development perspectives originate to a considerable extent in the South, such as dependency theory, alternative development and human development. Furthermore, what about 'Easteraization', as in the East Asian model, touted by the World Bank as a development miracle? What about Japanization, as in the ; ; 'Japanese challenge', the influence of Japanese management techniques and Toyotism (Kaplinsky 1994)? At any rate, 'Westernization' is a lumping concept that ignores diverse historical currents. Latouche and others use the bulky category 'the West', which in view of steep historical differences between Europe and North America is not really meaningful. This argument also overlooks more complex assessments of globalization. A more appropriate analytic is poly-centrism. Then, the rejoinder to Eurocentrism is not Third Worldism but a recogni- , ' i tion that multiple centres, also in the South, now shape development discourse (e.g. Amin 1989; Chapter 2 above). ' ; Critique of Modernism Part of the anti-Western sentiment is anti-modernism. No doubt development suffers from a condition of 'psychological modernism', has erected monuments to modernism, vast infrastructure and big dams - placing technological progress over human development. States in the South have used science as instruments of power, creating 'laboratory states' (Visvanathan 1988), as in Rajiv Gandhi's hightech modernization drive in India and Indonesia's experiment in aircraft technology. In Latin America, the work of the cientificos is not yet complete. Brazil's commitment to high modernism is on display in Brasilia (Berman 1988). Islamabad in Pakistan is another grid-planned capital city without heart or character. The 1998 nuclear tests in South Asia are another rendezvous of science and raison d'etat (Subrahmanyam 1998). For Gilbert Rist development thinking represents the 'new religion of the West' (1990a), but indeed the worship of progress is not reserved to the West. Aversion to modernism also exists in the West; rationalism is one face of the Enlightenment and romanticism is another. There are many affinities and overlaps between critical theory and the counterculture in the West (Roszak 1973, Berman 1988, Toulmin 1990) and anti-modernism in the South. Schumacher ('small is beautiful') found inspiration in Buddhist economics (Wood 1984) and Fritjof Capra in Eastern mysticism, while Ashis Nandy's outlook has been shaped by Freud, the Frankfurt School and Californian psychology. Part of the critique of modernism is the critique of science. A leitmotif, also in ecological thinking, is to view science as power. 'Science' here means Cartesianism, Enlightenment thinking and positivism, an instrument in achieving mastery over nature. Critique of Enlightenment science runs through the work of Vandana Shiva (1991). But this is not a simple argument. For one thing, science has been renewing itself, for example in quantum physics and chaos theory, and undergoing paradigm shifts leading to 'new science'. In addition there are countertrends within AFTER POST-DEVELOPMENT 1UJ science, such as the methodological anarchism of Feyerabend and the work of Latour (1993). In social science, positivism is no longer the dominant temperament; increasingly the common sense in social science is constructivism. In economics positivism prevails, but is also under attack. Thus, for Hazel Henderson economics is not science but politics in disguise (1996b). A clear distinction should be made between critique of science and anti-science. Acknowledging the limitations of science, the role of power/knowledge and the uses made of scientific knowledge does not necessarily mean being anti-science. Critique of science is now a defining feature of new social movements North and South (Beck 1992). Ecological movements use scientific methods of monitoring energy use, pollution and climate changes. 'Green accounting' and 'greening the GDP' use scientific standards, but for different ends than previously.2 Anti-development at times sounds like twentieth-century Luddism, with more rhetoric than analysis and not altogether consistent (e.g. Alvares 1992).3 From a Third World point of view as well there are other options besides anti-science (e.g. Goonatilake 1999). It is more appropriate to view modernism as a complex historical trend, which is in part at odds with simple modernization. Thus, the dialectics of modernity are part of modernity, which has given rise to critical modernism and reflexive modernity (Beck 1992). Ironically, the aversion of modernism is also an expression of high modernism, advanced modernity and postmodernism (Lee 1994; cf. Chapters 9 and 10 below). Development as Discourse According to Escobar, the 'discourse of Development', like the Orientalism analysed by Edward Said, has been a 'mechanism for the production and management of the Third World... organizing the production of truth about the Third World' (1992b: 413-14). A standard Escobar text is: 'development can best be described as an apparatus that links forms of knowledge about the Third World with the deployment of forms of power and intervention, resulting in the mapping and production of Third World societies' (1996: 213). Discourse analysis forms part of the 'linguistic turn' in social science. It involves the careful scrutiny of language and text as a framework of presuppositions and structures of thought, penetrating further than ideology critique. Prominent in literature criticism, discourse analysis has been applied extensively in cultural studies, feminism, black studies, and now in social science generally. Discourse analysis contributes to understanding colonialism as an epistemologi-cal regime (Mitchell 1988), it can serve to analyse the 'development machine' (Ferguson 1990) and development project talk (Apthorpe and Gasper 1996, Rew 1997) and has become a critical genre in development studies (Crush 1996a, Grillo and Stirrat 1997). Discourse analysis applied to development is the methodological basis of post-development, which in itself it is not specific to post-development; what is distinctive for post-development is that from a methodology, discourse analysis has been turned into an ideological platform. Escobar (1992b: 419) concurs with Gustavo Esteva that development is a 'Frankenstein-type dream', an 'alien model of exploitation' and besides reflects 'The dream of Development is over ^ T • : J . fy be now a Past e™'. discurs,ve practice' itTZ ( \X ° CStabllSh 3 disc°«tinuity, a new ment< (414 5To fee, c T * " °f D^ -4 to opinup *EB ~ rTS- J dStVthTder " 4 ; gim 01 me development apparatus' (424) toalism, social movlment theo^" .7, C°mbmmg VOcabula^ Poststruc- centres on ant, deveta nbut t ^ UneVen m that the arg™ development Lal ITve rl , dlStmCtl°n between anti" hinges on a d^urs v * k Exaggerated in that his position 'DevelopmentTOiitselfmili^ P °f eqUatmg develoP™nt with homogenizes develop „ Lh TT aMlyS1S' cancatures a»d perspective onZtZ^J^ * development. His ™thmoreTheJXanZTc7 { ^ baSed 0" COnfused examP^- are 'all the ^^^^S^ *T- WmW Bank St°"es over time (e.g. redfstZt on S^t^C t" ^ ^ d*SC0UrSe the 1980s, and poverty alleviation S^S^^^^^!!1 Escobar and Esteva associate J I process. Steps in this direction include popular development (Brohman 1996) and public action theory. The contributions of chaos theory to social science are preliminary and schematic. The distinction between linear and non-linear dynamics is of some use but too sketchy to be of much use. Already at times development processes are regarded as curvilinear, rather than linear.10 Development refers both to a process (as in a society develops) and an intervention (as in developing a society). For Cowen and Shenton, this produces an intrinsic tension: 'Development defies definition... because of the difficulty of making the intent to develop consistent with immanent development' (1996: 438). Considering this kind of difficulty, would it make sense to think of the Tao of development? While the Tao of physics refers to a combination of physics and mysticism, the Tao of development is a more difficult combination because development is not merely a science or analytics (development theory) but also a politics. Taoism evokes an association of inaction, quietism. It is not clear whether this really applies to Tao, but there is no historical example of existing Taoism that disputes this and historically there is a dialectic between Taoism and Confucianism." Still this does not simply close the issue. For instance, by analogy, although existing socialism has not met expectations, Marxism continues to be relevant as a method. One of the core problems of development is its pretentiousness, the insurmountable arrogance of intervening in other people's lives. This may be balanced by an equally pretentious notion, but an entirely different kind of pretension -the Tao of development. Setting a high goal for development may be better than setting no goal at all, or declaring development over and done with - as in post-development approaches - while, in the meantime, development business-as-usual goes on. Setting an elusive goal for development may be better than carrying on with development as a positivist politics of measurement; although when it comes to, for instance, poverty alleviation there will obviously be different opinions on this. The Tao of development means acknowledging paradox as part of development realities: such as the antinomies between measurement and meaning, between intervention and autonomy, or the tension between the local and the global. These antinomies are part of the perplexities of the human condition. Development participates in these perplexities and is not in some fashion outside or beyond them. Some will regard this acknowledgement of complexity as a gain, and others - who are fighting a different kind of battle - as a loss. The Tao of development is asymptotic - never entirely approachable, like an ever-receding horizon. What it involves is a subtle and sophisticated sense of balance across different dimensions of collective existence. Balanced development in a conventional sense refers to a balance between economic growth and redistribution, and between growth across different sectors. Critical holism as a balancing act involves balance in a wider and more fundamental sense, across dimensions of collective existence, from the epistemologi-cal to the practical, which may take several forms. □ A multidimensional approach, or a balance between the horizontal and vertical dimensions of collective existence. The horizontal refers to the worldly and social spheres; the vertical refers to the inner dimension of subjectivities and meanings, to the depth of the social field, its layered character, which Anouar Abdel-Malek referred to as the 'depth of the historical field'. □ A multifaceted approach or a diamond social science, which reflects or shines light upon relations and dynamics across sectors (economy, politics, social, cultural) and levels (local, microregional, national, macroregional, global) and achieves a balance between them.12 This might be termed Gestalt sociology. □ A chiaroscuro social science which abandons the assumption of full transparency of society. The assumption of transparency is what lent the Enlightenment its totalitarian bend, as in Bentham's panopticism and in socialist state ideology (Laclau 1990). This is a matter of modesty, a sense of the contingency of knowledge, or self-limiting rationality (Kaviraj 1992)." Clair-obscur, originally a term to describe the play of light and shadow in oil paintings, here refers to a sense of balance and interplay between that which is known and unknown, conscious and unconscious, the day and night sides of life. □ A distinction between and combination of objective and subjective dimensions of development. Development thinking is now increasingly anchored in people's subjectivities rather than merely in overarching institutions - the state or international institutions. While development thinking has become more participatory and insider-oriented, as in the actor-oriented approach (Long 1994), development practice has not been democratized, particularly when it comes to macroeconomic management, so there is a growing friction between development thinking and practice. □ A trend in local and increasingly also in large-scale development is towards partnerships across sectors, or synergies between different development actors - government, civic associations and firms. This is a marked departure from times when development was seen as either state-led, or market-led, or civil society-led (cf. Chapter 6). This might be considered a holistic approach;14 but not a critical approach because talk of partnership in unequal relations of power is clearly apolitical (cf. Tvedt 1998: 224). □ Since development is concerned with the measurement of desirable change over time, it is chronocentric. For a more complex awareness what is needed is combining multiple time frames and a balance between 'slow knowledge' and the 'fast knowledge' of instant problem solving. 'Slow knowledge is knowledge shaped and calibrated to fit a particular ecological context' (Orr 1996: 31). The conventional time horizon of development policy - the mid-term time span of a generation, or shorter, down to five years or so, in the case of planning, development projects and project-based lending - has changed with sustainable development and the implied notions of intergenerational equity and 'coevolutionary development'. It is changing also as a consequence of the duration of the development era and the failures of 'development decades', which gradually brings to the fore the longue duree of development. Evolution, a long-time silent partner of development, is coming to the foreground. On the whole, this sense of balance is better achieved in social science than in development studies; it is comparatively more developed in relation to situations that are geographically and socially near than those which are distant (as a function of insider knowledge); and more developed in relation to the past and in history (where hindsight makes it easier to acknowledge complexity of motive, action and result) than in relation to the present or future. In forecasting and future projects, one-dimensional science and technology treatments, or the flat earth extended in time, are almost the norm, except in science fiction. There is an affinity between spatially wide and temporally long approaches, or between globalization and evolution. Both are forms of holism, spatial and temporal. With evolution coming back to the foreground, ideas such as those of Teilhard de Chardin are making a comeback (e.g. Arruda 1996). Terhal has compared Teilhard de Chardin's ideas of 'evolutionary convergence', the noosphere and the dawn of collective reflection, with Kuznets and Wallerstein's perspectives on world development.15 He finds that Teilhard underestimates social stratification and inequality in human evolution (1987: 228) and that there are elements of Eurocentrism to his work (266-7), which makes it another instance of shortcut holism. In Skolimowski's perspective too evolution is taking a reflexive turn: 'we are evolution conscious of itself (1994: 92). For Skolimowski, 'The feast of life is participation' (157). For Stuart Todd, what follows from this kind of perspective is that the clue for development is to 'align with life processes' (1997: 36). But this is too generic a recipe, like an all-purpose elixir, or like Bergson's vitalism, for what are 'life processes'? Are not development and its contradictions themselves manifestations of'life processes'? This introduces 'life processes' in a normative, discriminating sense, without providing the terms of distinction. Goonatilake (1991) introduces the notion of 'merged evolution' to characterize the situation in which through biogenetic engineering the strand of cultural evolution - which hitherto has run a separate course - merges with and impacts on biological evolution. This perspective distinguishes and combines: rather than positing a shortcut 'evolutionary convergence' it confronts the dilemmas of really existing convergence. As to globalization, critical holism calls for a perspective on world history and globalization beyond conventional disciplinary methodologies (e.g. Mazlish and Buultjens 1993). There is no doubt that the future lies with visions of cooperative globalization (as in Arruda 1996), in contrast to competitive globalization, although these cannot be neatly separated, because competition and cooperation are also two sides of the same coin. However, shortcut holism - which ignores or underrates inequality and difference - falls short as a remedy. This sense of balance means treating development as a tightrope act. The source of critical holism is the field of health and healing, in which individual and collective concerns typically come together. Feminism is another approach in which personal and social concerns are combined by rethinking the boundaries between the private and the public, the personal and the political. These combinations, along with the idea of Gestalt sociology or social science, raise a further option: viewing social science not merely as explanation or as critique, the standard assignments of social science, but as healing, as socio-therapy. As there is therapy in relation to the individual body and psyche, can there be healing of the collective body? In popular culture the idea is not uncommon, as in Sinead O'Connor's lyrics about Ireland: 'And if there ever is going to be healing, there must be remembering, and then grieving, so that then there can be forgiving' ('Famine', O'Connor 1994). In development work this is not such an uncommon idea either - after all, what else is post-conflict rehabilitation and conflict prevention? Both notions have emerged in relation to complex emergencies and ethnic conflict. Yet if the notion of development as healing sounds novel, it is presumably because it makes explicit that which has been implicit, and in doing so combines sensibilities which are usually kept neatly apart in separate boxes. These then are elements of the Tao of development: a holistic approach, a sense of balance across dimensions, a notion of collective healing. Critical holism in combining holism and difference merges these sensibilities in a balancing act. Wholeness then should not be expected from a shortcut towards an undivided whole in a divided world but should be sought in a new balance. The counsel for development studies and social science is to distinguish between multiple spheres and levels, each of which requires engagement on its own terms, and not merely to contrast but to combine knowledges. As to implications for action and policy, this involves a case-by-case, contextual assessment of whether linear or non-linear dynamics prevail and whether robust or gentle action is appropriate. It also exceeds local alternatives. Critical holistic development includes macroeconomic management, global democratization and planetary ethics. Identifying with the whole means that development can no longer be simply geared to material aims and achievements but includes non-material dimensions, as in cultural development. It means that development can no longer be anthropocentric but encompasses the planetary ecology. Stretching the meaning of development to its fullest, it may be summed up as a collective learning process of human self-management according to the most comprehensive standards conceivable and practicable. Notes 1 Note the reference to 'system' in this quotation. As Minter notes (1986: 42), several biographies try to whitewash Smuts' reputation as a humanitarian philosopher-statesman. An example is Meurs 1997 who presents him as an obstacle in the way of the architects of apartheid. 2 'The computerization of the world represents an advanced stage of Cartesianism. Within that stage, programs become autonomous. We have even been given intimations of automated concept formulation and of action instigated as a consequence of such automation' (Davis and Hersh 1986: 303). Current developments in global currency trading are an example of automated action: triggers built into trading programmes set in motion series of financial operations whose ripple effects can upset financial systems. For a more developed argument, see Yurick 1985. 3 A standard omission in representations of the Enlightenment is that it was not only an epoch of rationalism, but also of romanticism, and that these occurred in combination. For instance, what is one to say of these statements of Diderot: 'what makes me angry is that the passions are never regarded from any but the critical angle. People think they do reason an injury if they say a word in favor of its rivals. Yet it is only the passions, and the great passions, that can raise the soul to great things... The language of the heart is a thousand times more varied than that of the mind, and it is impossible to lay down the rules ofits dialectics' (quoted in Gay 1977: 188, 189). 4 The complementarity between new physics and mysticism is disputed by, among others, Wilber, who deems it a false complementarity and at most concedes that new physics accords with mysticism (1982: 166-79). While mysticism addresses all levels - physical, biological, mental, subtle, causal and ultimate - physics pertains only to a single level (159). 5 Besides alternative development literature (Chapter 6) see e.g. Henderson 1996a, Whitmyer lyys, Koszak 1976. 6 'Positivism is just a crank religion' (Chris Mann in Dunn 1986: 2) 7 Capra gives another example of this integration of multiple knowledges: 'From the very begm-ning it was clear to me that there was no reason to abandon the biomedical model. It could still play a useful role for a limited range of health problems within a large, holistic framework, as Newtonian mechanics was never abandoned but remains useful for a limited range of phenomena within the larger framework of quantum-relativistic physics' (1988: 171; cf. Abraham et al 1992) 8 According to Hazel Henderson (1996b), economics is not a science but politics ,n disguise 9 This ,s not as clear with Toulmin, who advocates not the abandonment of modernity or a return to pre-modernity, but humanizing modernity and a return to the oral, the particular, the local the timely (1990: 180f.). 10 E.g. Cowen and Shenton about Hegel's v.ews on development: 'Unlike the linear image that the idea of progress evoked, the course of development was curvilinear or spiral-like, always impeded or arrested within its own logical structure'(1996: 130). 11 As to Taoism: 'It is inconceivable to a Taoist that Tao should be actualized in this world by human efforts because the core of Taoist doctrine is to teach its followers to transcend merely human affairs and psychologically dwell in "nothingness" («) so as to be in line with the "nonaction" (wu-we,)i of the great Tao' (Wei-ming 1979: 10-11). Generally, while there have been episodes of a working baance between mysticism and official or state religion - between Buddhism and governance Qabbala and Judaism, Christian mysticism and Christendom, Sufism and Islam, etc. - such episodes' are not well known or readily access.ble, so that they could act as sustainable examples 12 Several of the significant books in social science achieve this in different ways It applies to the oeuvre of Max Weber, Gramsci and Braudel and to books such as Wertheim's Evolution and Revolution (1974), Stavnanos' Global Rift (1981), Worsley's The Three Worlds (1984) David Harvey's The Condition of Postmodernity (1989). 13 'I plead not for the suppression of reason, but an appreciation of its inherent limits' (Gandhi in Parekh 1997: 68). 14 This is the theme of a report in the Irish Times on social partnerships, particularly in disadvantaged areas. The partnerships include 'business, trade unions, farming organizations, schools health boards, state agencies ... and representatives from the local community' (Catherine Foley 'The holis tic way of solving problems', Education & Living supplement, 17 February 1998 pp 2-3) 15 For instance, according to Teilhard de Chardin, 'Although mounting demographic pressure causes quite a number of evils at one level of human interaction', in principle it leads to 'social unification and a higher level of collective consciousness' (quoted in Terhal 1987: 176).