The End of Development?

Modernity, Post-Modernity and Development

Trevor Parfitt

• Publisher: Pluto Press
• Year: 2002
• Print ISBN: 9780745316383, 9780745316383
• eBook ISBN: 9781849640916
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Science General
• Index: Biological Sciences

Over the past fifteen years, ideas in the field of development studies have been highly contested. During this time, most countries from the South have come under the iron heel of the IMF and World Bank, who have imposed structural adjustment programmes wherever they have provided loan capital to governments. However, these programmes have had little success, and development studies has suffered accordingly. Many development theorists turned to postmodernist theory to try to move on from this impasse, which in the 1990s led to a new line of critical thought that heralded 'the end of development'. They argued that development studies should be replaced by new strategies of emancipation, or 'new social movements' theory, originating in groups such as the Zapatistas of Mexico. This book summarises the contested ideas of development studies and new social movements theory while rejecting calls for the end of development. Using postmodern theory to demonstrate that forms of development can be complementary to emancipatory social movement projects, Trevor Parfitt develops an alternative model of development which incorporates the needs of peoples both South and North.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: The End of Development?
• 2 From Post- Modernity to Post- Development
• 3 Discourse of Power or Truth?
• 4 Towards a Development of Least Violence?
• 5 New Social Movements: A Subject of Development?
• 6 Aid and the Principle of Least Violence
• 7 Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index