Does Development Exist outside Representation?

Abstract

Drawing from the insights of post-structuralism, the essay questions the ontology of underdevelopment existing prior to its representation and locates the idea of development within discourse. Since language constructs reality within a signifying system, the problem of underdevelopment is a product of particular cultural experiences and is not innocent of power. By weaving objective narratives of evolution and progress, development discourse successfully masquerades its relativism and creates a universal system of scientific knowledge. The essay also engages with postcolonial theory and argues that like the Orient and its savagery, the Third World and its poverty were invented to exercise discipline and control in non-Western territories. Understood thus, development can be a synonym for a civilizing mission. The development expert here appears not as a disinterested change agent but an ideologically driven disciplinarian, and it is for this reason that the emancipatory promise of development is highly suspect.

The Discursive Politics of Adaptation to Climate Change

“…In other words, rather than portraying climate change as an existential threat to all humans everywhere, these imaginative geographies recast its impacts as particularly dangerous for the vulnerable Global South. Thus, just as development studies rely on the ontology of underdevelopment, a concept that legitimizes development intervention itself (Tripathy and Mohapatra 2011), mainstream approaches to adaptation rely on a parallel ontology of vulnerability, which warrants external assistance to those in climate peril. Reproblematized in this way, climate change ceases to be a planetary crisis and instead becomes a threat that a certain part of humanity should help another part of humanity address by virtue of the latter's financial (lack of funds), technological (lack of access to technology), and technical (lack of skills and know-how) inferiority.…”

South Korea’s Developmentalist Worldview

“…Constructing an identity is a cognitive process that delineates a boundary between self and otbers, which is most strongly affected by one's "significant others". Insofar as development is representation (Tripathy and Dharmabrata 2011), it provides a conceptual ground on which various developmental identities are constructed and negotiated.…”

“…Given the power-knowledge relationship, the rise of U.S. hegemony required new knowledge Justifying another Eurocentric global order centring on the U.S. After U.S. President Harry S. Truman's designation ofthe majority ofthe world as "underdeveloped areas" in 1949, global discursive focus was put on "development", entailing the new discursive hierarchy between the "developed" and the "underdeveloped" (Sachs, 1992;Escobar, 1995;Brohman, 1995;Andreasson, 2005;Nederveen Pieterse, 2009;Tripathy and Mohapatra, 2011). From this time on, "progress was measured in terms of economic growth [...]" (Patterson, 1997: 50) and "modernisation" modelling after the U.S. was suggested as the way to achieve economic growth or development and, eventually, the wellbeing of people (Rostow, i960;Parsons, 1971).…”

Solo Motherhood and the State: Precarity, Agency, and Post-Development Discourse in Aotearoa New Zealand

“…By this Rahnema refers to how the West, in propagating the notions of 'developed' and 'underdeveloped' has resulted in the internalisation of superiority in the Global North, meanwhile the Global South may internalise a sense of inferiority. Similarly, Tripathy and Mohapatra (2011) argue that development does not exist outside of representation, noting that development is synonymous with a civilising mission and uses certain discourses to promote and justify Western intervention. Post-development scholars point out that hegemonic practices of development undermine others' general ways of living and their own beliefs, cultures and practices.…”

“…While powerless, passive recipients of aid (Mohanty, 1991;Pala, 1977;Tripathy & Mohapatra, 2011). Similarly, there may be a temptation to think of solo mothers in the West as nonagentive beings because of the way the welfare state shapes their everyday lives and even behaviour.…”