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Aid and Development
Change
The following set of one-pagers represent a logical sequence of thought rooted
chronologically in my intellectual journey of discovery over the last few years.
| Resistance to change - delinking from modernity |
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| Becoming like America |
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| Development Theory Impasse |
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| The Change Process |
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| Lifestyle Options |
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| Conceptualising Change |
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| Four competing theories of development |
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| Economic v Human Needs Definitions of Development |
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Resistance to Change - delinking from modernity
Based on Verhelst TG (1990) No life without Roots - Culture
and Development; Zed Books
The behaviour of workers in the face of exploitation in the factory or in large
plantations can be seen as falling into three phases.
- A slacking off phase where the worker counters the rhythm and
discipline which are imposed on him with inertia and slowness.
- A phase of partially delinking from the modern economy to which the
unit of production belongs. The worker keeps one foot in this camp but has the other
firmly planted in the traditional milieu where family and tribal solidarity reign.
- Then, if the price to pay for the 'salary' is too high there will be a total
withdrawal and the worker will return to his original community.
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Becoming like America
Based on Sachs W (1992 Ed) The Development Dictionary - a
guide to knowledge as power; Zed Books
U.S. President Harry S Truman popularized the concept of underdevelopment in his
inaugural speech on the 20th of January 1949
- We must embark on a bold new program for making the benefits
of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and
growth of underdeveloped areas.
-
- The old imperialism - exploitation for foreign profit - has no
place in our plans. What we envisage is a program of development based on the concepts of
democratic fair dealing.
-
His four key assumptions can now be seen as fatally flawed:
Then |
Now |
The American way is absolutely good. |
The American way is excessively energy intensive and creates enormous
amounts of pollution. In physical environmental terms it is ultimately non sustainable. |
Human evolution is progressive and moves
ineluctably from barbarism to capitalism. |
The world is now rife with regional wars, refugees, illicit trading
practices and environmental disasters. |
The development process is about helping
traditional people to catch up and become modern. |
The rich are richer and the poor are poorer. Many traditional systems have
broken down to be replaced by anomic cultural vacuums. |
There is a single future for humanity -
the Westernization of mankind. |
Such western-style monocultures as have been created are sterile and
dangerous. Such potential for cultural evolution as remains is in spite of rather than
because of developmental efforts. |
-
- For those who make up two thirds of the world's population
today, to think of development - of any kind of development - requires first the
perception of themselves as underdeveloped, with the whole burden of connotations that
this carries. Gustavo Esteva in Sachs (1992)
-
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Development Theory Impasse
Based on Schurmann FJ (1993 Ed) Beyond the Impasse, New
Directions in Development Theory; Zed Books
From the mid-1980s a vacuum in development theories was created in terms of a crisis,
an impasse, for the following reasons:
Widening income disparity
The realization that the gap between poor and rich countries continued to widen and
that the developing countries were unlikely to be able to bridge that gap whatever
strategy they would follow.
Short term thinking aimed at the debt crisis
The realization that developing countries, in the 1980s, were preoccupied with
short-term policies aimed at keeping their heads above water in terms of debt. Policies
did not take intermediate or long-term goals into consideration, nor did it seem likely
that they would be able to do so in the future.
Environmental limitations on growth
The growing awareness that economic growth has had, and is having, a catastrophic
effect on the environment. Advocates of sustainable development argued that growth =
development is not only invalid for the Third World, but also for the wealthy
industrialized countries. The "zero growth" option came increasingly into the
picture, but found no foundation in any of the already discredited development theories.
Delegitimization of Socialism
The Delegitimization of socialism as a viable political means of solving the problem of
underdevelopment. Although Marxist and neo-Marxist development theories were never
particularly strong in presenting realizable policy alternatives, socialist-inspired
development trajectories were now totally removed from the policy agenda.
The diminished relevance of the nation state in the world economy
The conviction that the world market is an over-arching whole which cannot be
approached using development policies oriented at the national level. Individual
nation-states are assigned an increasingly smaller function. Development theories,
however, still used the nation-state as a meaningful context for political praxis.
The recognition of differentiation within the First and Third Worlds
The growing recognition of differentiation within the Third World that could no longer
be handled by global theories assuming a homogenous First and Third World.
The collapse of metatheory
The advancement of post-modernism within the social sciences, where there has been a
tendency to undermine "the great narratives" (capitalism, socialism, communism
etc) by arguing that there is no common reality outside the individual. Development
theories based on metadiscourses have no right to exist, according to post-modernists.
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The Change Process
Strategies for Change
 | change individuals |
| change structures and systems |
| change climate, culture and style |
Conditions for change
| strong external pressures for change. |
| people inside the organization who are strongly dissatisfied with the state of things. |
| a coherent alternative, embodied in a plan, model or vision. |
Factors inhibiting us from change
| fear of the unknown |
| lack of information |
| reluctance to expend effort |
| fear of incompetence & consequent embarrassment |
| threats to status & position |
| strong peer pressure |
| no perceived benefits |
| poor organizational climate |
| fear of nil effect |
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Lifestyle Options
Marshall McLuhan is famous for saying that 'the medium is the
message' by which he meant that the technology being used shapes and controls the
scale and form of human associations and actions in a fundamental way which most people do
not notice and can thus do nothing about.
This is so self evident as to seem trivial at first but, by giving thought, it becomes
a deeply provoking insight. You can for example build up a rough conceptualisation of
human cultural evolution by considering the far from comprehensive list of topics in the
following table.
| Lifestyle Domain |
Environmentally friendly |
Civilised |
| Food |
Small farmers & intercropping Gather/
grow your own
Wood/ charcoal
Traditional recipes |
Agribusiness & monocultures Local
shop/ hypermarket
Gas/ electric/ microwave
Convenience and fast food |
| Clothing |
Make natural materials Make
clothes that last
Functional |
Man made fibres Off the peg
fashions
Life style statements |
| Shelter |
Local materials Build yourself
(+ friends)
One room
Separate water and sanitation |
Prefabricated Fitted carpet,
kitchen, bathroom
Many rooms
H/c running & inside loo |
| Transport |
Feet/ canoe +/- animals
Footpaths |
Personal Bike/ Car Public bus,
boat, train, plane
Super highway/ station/ airport |
| Birth/ childrearing |
Home birth Extended family
Initiation rites |
Hospital birth Nuclear family +
childcare
Blurred maturation process |
| Education |
By family and community, locally Relevant
life skills
Cooperative |
By teachers in schools Academic
curriculum
Competitive |
| Courtship/ Marriage |
Arranged (+/- monogamous) Local
Lifelong |
Self select (monogamous) Wide
choice (even homosexual)
High separation rate |
| Work |
Wide range of skill Job
satisfaction
Self employed - or mutual support |
Narrow specialisation No pride
in product
Work for boss (or boss others) |
| Holiday/ Leisure |
Communal story telling Participatory
music
Few holy-days |
Watch television Watch
musicians
Holiday packages |
| Old age/ death |
Extended family Initiatory
rights
Celebration |
Old folks homes Arguments over
wills
Dread |
And now consider the psychological and social implications of such technologies as
| slavery, |
| the printed word, |
| the steam engine, |
| the electric light, |
| the assembly line, |
| television, |
| computers, |
| the hypermarket at the edge of town and |
| the information superhighway. |
The medium is the message.
But is it always of necessity a desirable message and, if not,
is there anything that we as individuals can do about it?
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Conceptualising Change
Geertz C (1973) The Interpretation of Cultures; Fontana
Geertz suggests that two schools of 'functionalism' have developed within Anthropology
and that, in defining themselves by mutual exclusion, they both describe patterns of
social action in a manner which does not easily cope with the fact of social change. The
key characteristics of the two schools of thought are set out below.
Sociological
or Social Anthropological approach |
Social
Psychological approach |
| Ref: Durkheim; Robertson-Smith |
Ref: Frazer; Tylor; Malinowski |
| Belief and ritual reinforce the traditional
social ties between individuals |
Religion satisfies both the cognitive and
affective demands of the individual for a stable, comprehensible and coercible world |
| The social structure of the group is
strengthened and perpetuated through the ritualistic or mythic symbolisation of the
underlying social values upon which it rests |
Religion enables an individual to maintain an
inner security in the face of natural contingency |
| Culture is wholly derivative from forms of
social organisation |
Forms of social organisation are behavioural
embodiments of cultural patterns |
| "Social structure is not an aspect of
culture but the entire culture of a given people handled in a special frame of
theory" |
Omnibus concept of culture "that complex
which …" |
SOCIAL SYSTEM |
CULTURE |
| Patterns of social interaction |
Ordered System of meaning and symbols |
| The ongoing process of interactive behaviour
whose persistent form we call social structure |
The framework of beliefs, expressive symbols,
and values in terms of which individuals define their world, express their feelings, and
make their judgement |
| The form that social action takes - the
actually existing network of social relations |
The fabric of meaning in terms of which human
beings interpret their experience and guide their action |
| Consider social action in terms of its
contribution to the functioning of some social system |
Consider social action in respect to its
meaning for those who carry it out |
P. Sorokin's descriptive
characteristics |
| Causal-functional integration |
Logico-meaningful integration |
| Eg a living organism |
Eg Bach Fugue, Theory of Relativity |
| All parts united in a single causal web |
Unity of style, of logical implication, of
meaning and value |
Geertz argues that 'culture' and 'social system' are but different abstractions from
the same phenomena and that in societies where change is a characteristic rather than an
abnormal occurrence we should expect to find more or less radical discontinuities between
the two. He further argues that it is in the discontinuities that we can find some of the
primary driving forces in change.
SELF TEST:
| If Geertz is right then you personally will be driven to make
changes when your 'ought' (your given and preferred 'culture') is out of step with your
'is' (your actual 'social system'). |
| When you feel inclined to say, "Be reasonable, do it my
way", you know you are treading on the thin ice of socio-cultural change. |
| Think of three examples and explain them in a table with one
column for your 'ought' and the other for your 'is'. |
|
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Four competing theories of development
Mayoux L & Johnson H (1994) Working for Development; OU
Development Studies Study Pack T532
| |
Neo-Liberalism |
Structuralism |
Interventionism |
Populism |
| Origins & basic
principles |
Traces theoretical ideas back to the classical
economics of Adam Smith in late 18th century and particularly the proponents of
'free enterprise' in 1950s |
The work of Raul Prebisch and others in the
Economic Commission for Latin America just after the Second World War. Many structuralist
writers have drawn on and developed a Marxist framework of analysis. They are concerned
with underlying social and economic structures, particularly class relations, rather than
individuals. One distinct strand within structuralist debates is the Dependency School |
Has a positive view of industrial capitalism,
but sees a need for regulation of the market through state intervention. Draws on
arguments for state intervention in the context of employment creation and
industrialisation, for the importance of social welfare and equity, and more recently for
global environmental protection. |
A set of ideas which put emphasis on people
themselves as agents of development. |
| Definition of Development |
The promotion of competitive market
capitalism. Emphasises economic growth, industrialisation and modernisation with one
single model for all. |
Primarily in terms of increasing productive
capacities and eliminating class and international inequalities. The final aim is
socialism or communism, variously defined, but one model for all. |
Economic and social welfare, growth with
equality. |
To be defined by people themselves |
| Main agents of
development |
Emphasis on individualism and the role of
capitalist entrepreneurs |
Class struggle and the state. |
The state |
Individuals, local organisations and networks,
NGOs |
| Implications for policy |
The main way to achieve growth is through
stimulation of competitive markets and industrialisation, with minimal role for
governments |
Capitalism is seen as having negative as well
as positive features, and there is disagreement about to what degree it should be
encouraged. Industrialisation is important. Structuralists tend to advocate import
substitution and a range of policies to protect national development. |
State regulation and investment |
Support for local initiatives among 'the
people'. |
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Economic v Human Needs Definitions of Development
Mayoux L & Johnson H (1994) Working for Development; OU
Development Studies Study Pack T532
Three Economic Definitions
- Economic well-being and economic growth as measured by GNP per capita
- Industrialisation, defined in two ways:
| An increase in production of materials goods not derived from the land, measured in
terms of an increased percentage of GDP from the industrial sector. |
| A process of technical and social change to production using advanced technology, a
complex division of labour, and linkages to other types of production through the use of
raw materials, skills, infrastructure and sources of energy. |
- Modernisation, defined as:
| Changes from simple and 'traditional' techniques towards the application of scientific
knowledge. |
| Evolution from subsistence farming towards commercial production of agricultural goods. |
| Transition from the use of human and animal power towards industrialisation proper. |
| Movement from villages to urban centres. |
Human Needs Definition
Development is defined in terms of meeting human needs and enabling individuals to
realise their full potential. This includes achieving:
| low levels of material poverty |
| low levels of unemployment |
| relative equality |
| democratisation of political life |
| 'true' national independence |
| good literacy and educational levels |
| relatively equal status for women and participation by women |
| sustainability to meet future needs |
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