Development Theory

Jan Nederveen Pieterse

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9781412945158, 9781412945141
• eBook ISBN: 9781446242186
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This exciting book is a tour de force, spanning a broad range of approaches to development. It does not stop at critique, as so many previous books on these issues have done, but offers a unique perspective on future possibilities and the shape of things to come. It should be essential reading on all development studies courses.
- Andrea Cornwall, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex

Praise for the previous edition:

"This marvellous book should be read by every social scientist interested in development studies".
- Keith Griffin, University of California, Riverside

This is the second edition of this successful book. Written by one of the leading authorities in the field, it:

• Situates students in the expanding field of development theory.
• Provides an unrivalled guide to the strengths and weaknesses of competing theoretical approaches.
• Explains key concepts.
• Examines the shifts in theory.
• Offers an agenda for the future.

Jan Nederveen brings together a huge range of experience and knowledge about the relationship between the economically advanced and the emerging, developing nations.

1

Trends in Development Theory

Development in question

Globalization and regionalization are overtaking the standard unit of development, the nation. International institutions and market forces are overtaking the role of the state, the conventional agent of development. The classic aim of development, modernization or catching up with advanced countries, is in question because modernization is no longer an obvious ambition. Modernity no longer seems so attractive in view of ecological problems, the consequences of technological change and many other problems. Westernization no longer seems compelling in a time of revaluing local culture and cultural diversity. In view of the idea of multiple modernities, the question is modernization towards which modernity? Several development decades have not measured up to expectations, especially in Africa and parts of Latin America and South Asia. The universalist claims of neoclassical economics and structural adjustment policies have undermined the foundation of development studies, the notion that developing countries form a special case.

Doesn’t all this mean the end of development? Everything that development used to represent appears to be in question, in crisis. There are various views of what this crisis means. One is that since development is in crisis, let’s close the shop and think of something entirely different – ‘beyond development’. This is the position associated with post-development thinking. A different response is to qualify the crisis, acknowledging the failures of the development record but also its achievements, avoiding simplistic, one-sided assessments. Thus health care and education have improved even in the poorest countries and in countries where growth has been stagnant. Another reaction is to acknowledge crisis and to argue that crisis is intrinsic to development, that development knowledge is crisis knowledge. From its nineteenth-century beginnings, development thinking was a reaction to the crises of progress, such as the social dislocations caused by industrialization. Hence questioning, rethinking and crisis are part of development and not external to it. A related view is not merely to acknowledge questioning as part of development but to consider it as its spearhead – viewing development thinking as ongoing questioning critique and probing alternative options. Development then is a field in flux, with a rapid change and turnover of alternatives. Precisely because of its crisis predicament, development is a high-energy field.

This chapter maps major trends in development thinking. The subsequent chapters examine these trends in detail, building up to an inventory of current and future directions in the closing chapter. Trends in this discussion refer to long-term and ongoing as well as plausible future directions in the development field. The focus is on development theories, that is, organized reflections on development, rather than on development tout court and in its entirety. Since the major development theories are also policy frameworks, this approach includes development strategies; but actual policies are informed by many other considerations so this discussion emphasizes development theories. Trend-spotting is not exactly an intellectually neutral activity so it needs to be contextualized. This treatment opens with general observations on the character of development thinking and the status of development theory. The argument then turns to the different meanings of ‘development’ over time, which places the discussion of contemporary trends in a historical context. The next section juxtaposes these different understandings of development to changing patterns of global hegemony. Zeroing in on the contemporary setting, I map out different stakeholders and institutions in the development. Against this backdrop we turn to development trends over time, first long-term trends in theory and methodology and then policy changes.

The status of development theory

What is the contribution of development theory to this situation? Theory is the critique, revision and summation of past knowledge in the form of general propositions and the fusion of diverse views and partial knowledges in general frameworks of explanation. What is referred to as ‘development theory’ largely belongs to the level of grand theories, broad explanatory frameworks. This is part of its limited character. There is a lot that development theory does not talk about. Many development problems are addressed by mid-range or micro theories – questions of rural development, industrialization, urbanization, trade policy, etc. Development theory as such concerns the larger explanatory frames. In addition, ‘development theory’ usually refers to the leading theories and many rival and subsidiary theories do not quite make it to the limelight.

In social science it is now widely assumed that realities are socially constructed. The way people think and talk about social realities affects agendas, policies, laws and the ways laws are interpreted. Just as perception does not merely register but shaping reality, knowledge does not simply reflect but constructs reality. Knowledge is political, shaping perceptions, agendas, policies. If this were not the case then why bother, why research, why hold conferences? Theory is a meeting place of ideology, politics and explanation. Framing, defining the field, the rank order of questions, are the business of theory.

Theory is a distillation of reflections on practice in conceptual language so as to connect with past knowledge. The relationship between theory and practice is uneven: theory tends to lag behind practice, behind innovations on the ground, and practice tends to lag behind theory (since policy makers and activists lack time for reflection). A careful look at practice can generate new theory, and theory or theoretical praxis can inspire new practice. Theories are contextual. While theories react to other theories and often emphasize differences rather than complementarities, the complexities encountered in reality are such that we usually need several analytics in combination.

Is development theory a matter of social science or of politics? Writers have different views on the degree of autonomy of development theory. Some treat development theory primarily as part of social science and thus emphasize the influence of classical economic and social thought (e.g. Preston 1996, Martinussen 1997). Others implicitly view development theory mainly as ideology – like a ship rocked in a sea of political pressures and shifting tides. They consider political leanings, in a broad sense, as more important in shaping development theory than theoretical considerations (e.g. Frank 1971). The advantage of this view is that it draws attention to the ideological role of development theory – in setting agendas, framing priorities, building coalitions, justifying policies. Its limitation is that it treats development theory as a by-product of political processes and not as an intellectual process as well. Some cynicism in relation to theory is appropriate. How often is a theory in effect a political gesture? What is the politics of theory? Whom does discourse serve? In between these views is a middle position that recognizes the intellectual as well as the political elements in development theory. It doesn’t make sense to isolate development theory from political processes and treat it as an ivory-tower intellectual exercise; but neither can we simply reduce it to ideology or propaganda. In the contextual approach to development theory both political contexts and influences from social science count (as in Corbridge 1995, Leys 1996). This is the approach – we can term it the sociology of development knowledge – that this book adopts.

For a development theory to be significant, social forces must carry it. To be carried by social forces it must match their worldview and articulate their interests; it must serve an ideological function. However, to serve their interests it must make sense and be able to explain things. By the same token, explanation is not a neutral function. There are as many ways of explaining things as there are positions from which to view realities. The explanation that satisfies a peasant is not the same as one that satisfies a landlord, a banker or an IMF official.

According to Björn Hettne, ‘Development in the modern sense implies intentional social change in accordance with societal objectives’ (2008a: 6). Since not all societal objectives are developmental (some are simply concerned with establishing authority, etc.) I would insert the criterion of improvement and define development as the organized intervention in collective affairs according to a standard of improvement. What constitutes improvement and what is an appropriate intervention obviously varies according to class, culture, historical context and relations of power. Development theory is the negotiation of these issues.

The strength and the weakness of development thinking is its policy-oriented character. This is part of its vitality and inventiveness. It is problem-driven rather than theory-driven. It is worldly, grounded, street-smart, driven by field knowledge, not just book knowledge. In part for the same reasons, development thinking ranks fairly low on the totem pole of social science. As applied social science, development thinking has a derivative status. It has more often been a follower of frameworks developed in other sciences than a trendsetter. It has been a net importer of social science theories and has been influenced by other social sciences more often than it has influenced them. Evolutionism, Marxism, Neo-Marxism, Keynesianism, structural functionalism, neoclassical economics and poststructuralism are among the social science paradigms imported by development theories at different times. A major area in which development theory influenced social science generally is dependency theory. Studies in dependency theory were widely read outside development studies and inspired, for instance, world-system theory.

Arguably, development theory is underestimated in social science. The notion that development theory counts for less because it concerns ‘merely the south’ while major developments in social theory are spearheaded by the west reflects a deep-seated prejudice. It reflects a (neo)colonial division of labour in the production of knowledge according to which theory is generated in the north and data, like raw materials, are produced in the south (Pletsch 1981, Slater 2004). In this schema the advanced societies are supposed to be the mirror and guide for less-developed societies. This cognitive colonialism is passé on several counts. This kind of unilinear thinking is no longer plausible. Besides, development knowledge is increasingly relevant also in the north. The conventional distinction between developing and developed societies is less and less relevant – the ‘south’ is in the ‘north’ and vice versa. With the decline of welfare economies there is increasing polarization within countries on account of shrinking public services. In the United States and the UK there is mention of ‘two-thirds societies’. Social exclusion nowadays is a problem that is common to north and south, east and west.

Knowledge production in the south has been influential not merely in the past but also under the shadow of western hegemony. A case in point is Gandhi and his influence on the Civil Rights Movement (Nederveen Pieterse 1989). Dependency thinking, Maoism, Guevarism and the Delhi school of development thought (Dallmayr 1996) are other examples. Japanese perspectives on management, production and development have been profoundly influential and so has the Asian developmental state (Iwasaki et al. 1992; Wade 1996).

Development is a strange field. Development practice, policy and studies are all flourishing. Universities are opening new development schools (particularly in the UK). Yet for quite some time the field has been said to be in crisis, impasse, or passé. Part of this is a crisis of ideologies, which reflects a wider paradigm crisis – of Neo-Marxism and dependency theory as well as Keynesianism and welfare politics. There have been plenty of critical positions but no coherent ideological response to the neoliberal turn. The crisis is further due to changing circumstances including development failures, the growing role of international financial institutions, and conflicts in developing countries.

According to Marx’s eleventh thesis on Feuerbach, ‘Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The time has come to change it’. Arguably, the actual power of development is the power of thesis eleven. Nowadays the ambition to ‘change the world’ meets with cynicism – because of the dismal record of several development decades, doubts about modernism and its utopian belief that society can be engineered – how about social engineering if we look at Bosnia, Rwanda, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Liberia – and media triviality (‘We are the world’)?

The status of development theory reflects the theory-lag between development studies and social science generally, a ‘colonial legacy’ in knowledge and a recurring impasse in the development field. The decolonization of knowledge is a matter of ongoing contestation (Apffel-Marglin and Marglin 1996, Dahl 2008, Nederveen Pieterse and Parekh 1995). As part of accelerated globalization, neoliberal policies impose neoclassical economics on the south, applying western standards of policy and systems of accounting to align economies and financial and credit regimes. It is appropriate to consider this episode as part of the wider historical relations between north and south. In tandem with changing geopolitical relations, ‘development’ has been changing its meaning over time.

Meanings of ‘development’ over time

Over time ‘development’ has carried very different meanings. The term ‘development’ in its present sense dates from the postwar era of modern development thinking. In hindsight, earlier practices have been viewed as antecedents of development policy, though the term ‘development’ was not necessarily used at the time. Thus Kurt Martin (1991) regards the classic political economists, from Ricardo to Marx, as development thinkers for they addressed similar problems of economic development. The turn-of-the-century latecomers to industrialization in central and eastern Europe faced basic development questions such as the appropriate relationship between agriculture and industry. In central planning the Soviets found a novel instrument to achieve industrialization. During the Cold War years of rivalry between capitalism and communism, the two competing development strategies were western development economics and central planning (in the Soviet, Chinese or Cuban varieties). In this general context, the core meaning of development was catching up with the advanced industrialized countries.

Cowen and Shenton uncovered yet another meaning of development. In nineteenth-century England, ‘development’, they argued, referred to remedies for the shortcomings and maladies of progress. This involves questions such as population (according to Malthus), job loss (for the Luddites), the social question (according to Marx and others) and urban squalor. In this argument, progress and development (which are often viewed as a seamless web) are contrasted, and development differs from and complements progress. Thus, for Hegel, progress is linear and development curvilinear (Cowen and Shenton 1996: 130). Accordingly twentieth-century development thinking in Europe and the colonies had already traversed many terrains and positions and was a reaction to nineteenth-century progress and policy failures, where industrialization left people uprooted and out of work, and social relations dislocated.

The immediate predecessor of modern development economics was colonial economics. Economics in the European colonies and dependencies had gone through several stages. In brief, these were an early stage of commerce by chartered companies, followed by plantations and mining. In a later phase, colonialism took on the form of trusteeship: the management of colonial economies not merely with a view to their exploitation for metropolitan benefit but also allegedly with a view to the interests of the native population. Development, if the term was used at all, in effect referred mainl...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Preface to the second edition
• Introduction
• 1 Trends in development theory
• 2 Dilemmas of development discourse: The crisis of developmentalism and the comparative method
• 3 The development of development theory: Towards critical globalism
• 4 Delinking or globalization?
• 5 The cultural turn in development: Questions of power
• 6 My paradigm or yours? Variations on alternative development
• 7 After post-development
• 8 Equity and growth revisited: From human development to social development
• 9 Critical holism and the Tao of development
• 10 Digital capitalism and development: The unbearable lightness of ICT4D
• 11 Futures of development
• 12 Twenty-first-century globalization and development
• References
• Index