Development is a process whereby peoples are dominated and their destinies shaped

according to an essentially Western way of conceiving and perceiving the world.

This is a critical analysis of development. Is it a tool for Western hegemony or is

there more to the post-modernist and post-constructionist view?

Does development shape peoples’ realities? Is it a tool for Western hegemony, a means

by which Western ideals are foisted on to the non-Western world? There are no simple

answers to these questions. That the West has dominated development discourses is

expected given the historical evolution of the world order since the post-war era.

However, the diversity of development thinking is evidence that development is not a

process of simple transmission of foreign ideals. Instead, a distinction must be made

between development theories, strategies and thinking. We argue that culture remains the

dominant source of influence on peoples’ conceptions and perceptions and selective

acculturation prevents domination by a homogenous perspective, Western or otherwise.

Development Theories, Strategies and Thinking

Development is a loaded term. Often, it is perceived in a positive light, as a desirable and

progressive process (Esteva, 1992). It has been linked to disparate ideas, including raising

standards of living, improvements in the general well-being of people, environmental

sustainability and globalisation (Willis, 2005). Potter (2002), in referring to Hettne

(1995), suggests that the term development comprises three elements: development

theories, strategies and ideologies. Development theories relate to the study of

development, how it has been implemented, the lessons learnt and implications for future

Frances Tay McHugh (fran@321-connect.com) 1/14

direction. Development strategies refer to the practices, tools and techniques used for

development intervention purposes, while development ideologies reflect “social,

economic, political, cultural, ethical, moral and even religious influences” (p. 62) which

inform all three. To encompass these three aspects, the term “development thinking” as

employed by Potter (2002), will be utilised. The purpose of making these distinctions

clear is to acknowledge that development is multidimensional and multi-spatial in nature.

We cannot consider the impact of development on people’s thinking, livelihoods

and ultimately, potential destinies, without first acknowledging that the term development

carries different connotations depending on the context for discussion. For example, it is

often suggested that development is a Western construct, a result of the development

policies pursued and imposed by the West in the aftermath of the Second World War

(Esteva, 1992; Dodds, 2002). This view is certainly accurate, if one is examining the

evolution of development as a discipline, since “most… theoretical categories and guide

to development policy have been distilled from… European and North American

advanced capitalist nations” (Frank, 1995, p. 27). On the other hand, to suggest that

development thinking is a Western invention is to assume that non-Western nations

neither had the inclination nor the capacity to develop autonomously. To do so would be

an error for as Escobar (1995b) reminds us, non-Western peoples have “rich traditions,

different values and lifestyles, and long historical achievements” (Escobar, 1995b, p. 69).

We can use the case of Meiji Japan to illustrate. Between 1868 and 1911, industrial

growth was characterised by structural changes that would be familiar to the modern

development economist. To facilitate economic growth, the Meiji government employed

a raft of market interventions, including subsidies to merchants, establishing a financial

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market framework to promote the provision of credit, and instituting a land tax reform to

redistribute land and raise taxes (Agov, 2002).

To reiterate and clarify, the reason for providing the above illustrations is to

propose that there is a differentiation between development in terms of what is logically

rationalised, formulated, planned and implemented (theories and strategies) and

development as it is understood and experienced (ideologies). The way in which people

encounter, negotiate and adapt to development interventions are dictated by the

development ideologies which inform that culture. That is, how we conceptualise and

perceive the world is a reflection of culture, the

“integrated pattern of human behaviour that includes thoughts, communications,

languages, practices, beliefs, values, customs, courtesies, rituals, manners of

interacting and roles, relationships and expected behaviours of a racial, ethnic,

religious or social group; and the ability to transmit the above to succeeding

generations.” (Goode, Sockalingam, Brown, & Jones, 2000, p. 1)

Hofstede (2001) has suggested that the way people think, feel and act cannot be

changed by the mere importation of foreign institutions. At the core of culture are values,

norms and belief systems that are unique to a particular collective’s historical

experiences. Rather than a wholesale assimilation and displacement of local culture, there

is “nothing inevitable about convergences of cultural, social, or political values” (Ball,

2005). Instead, there is evidence to support the adaptation of foreign influence in a way

that results in selective acculturation (Hall, 1976). In the following section, we will

explore the development process from the perspective of divergences in development

Frances Tay McHugh (fran@321-connect.com) 3/14

thinking. The diversity of development thinking is evidence that development is not a

process of simple transmission of conceptions and perceptions.

Development as Domination, Homogenisation or Evolution?

That the West has led in institutionalising development cannot be denied. That the West

has also had a head start in utilising development as a strategic intervention tool cannot

be refuted either. One can trace the origins of many of the themes central to post-war

development, such as modernisation and industrialisation, to the Enlightenment (Power,

2002). This period was characterised by the Industrial Revolution that swept Europe in

the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Ideas equating social progress to technical prowess

and scientific advancement have its roots in this period (Sachs, 2005). Contrasting views

of what conceptualised modern and civilised, as opposed to traditional and savage, also

arose out of the ideologies of the time (Power, 2002).

Further, the West has had a history of practising interventions. Colonial welfare

initiatives, for example, were the forebears of national planning strategies (Midgley,

2003). As far back as 1835, the British had enacted the Government of India Act;

resulting in the widespread education of Indian nationals in European literature and

science (Caldwell, 1998). However, it must be emphasised here that such initiatives in the

colonies did not necessarily spring from benevolence. Rassool (2007) reminds us that

education was often a means to create an elite and literate class of workers for the

administrative regime. Rassool has critiqued such colonial interventions as interruptions

to the natural development process, including “the reflexive forging of sociocultural,

political and economic possibilities of societal self-definition” (p. 61). Instead, she asserts

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that such measures promoted an adoption of colonial culture into the local culture

resulting in “colonial hegemonic consciousness” (p.63).

From the Enlightenment to the post-war era, what can be inferred from the

Western development thinking of the time? That the uncivilised were different from

Western societies as they did not display the type of rational logic thinking prized in the

West (Goody and Watt, 1963). Further, the uncivilised would have to be inducted with

the knowledge and expertise of rational, science-based methods; akin to “a child in need

of adult guidance” (Escobar, 1995a, p. 30). Achebe (1995) elaborated on this eloquently

when he challenged colonial criticism to post-colonial novelists. He summarised that the

views expressed were representative of Western representations of the ‘native’ as

simpletons who, in the course of reconstructing reality on their own terms, were regarded

as misguided and “modern myth-makers” (p. 59). So, when President Truman

presented his inaugural address in 1949, pledging the United States to a global program

of deliberate intervention whereby “the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial

progress” was to be made “available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped

areas,” he was essentially repackaging existing ideas (Truman, 1949). In clearly

demarcating the characteristics of a developed nation as one that was economically

progressive, prosperous, free from the afflictions of poverty and where citizens would be

able to avail of decent standards of living, he was not proclaiming a new division of the

world into two halves. He was simply re-labelling them as developed and

underdeveloped. As Escobar (1995a) put it: “representations of… (the) Third World and

(the) underdeveloped are heirs of an illustrious genealogy of Western conceptions about

those parts of the world” (p.7). However, what is unique about Truman’s address is that

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he charged the West with the moral authority and obligation to propagate wholesale

development to the rest of the World. We can argue that the echoes of such similar

sentiments still reverberate today. In his book The End of Poverty, economist Sachs

(2005) exhorts that we take up the challenge to promote the vision of the Enlightenment –

to “improve human well-being on a global scale” – because “technological progress

enables us to meet basic human needs on a global scale…” (p. 347-348).

To review the development initiatives that have been undertaken since the 1950s,

from the ambitious Marshall Plan to revive a war-torn Europe to the Poverty Reduction

Strategy Planning initiatives in use today, is to confirm that Western efforts dominate the

development landscape. Multilateral organisations such as the World Bank and the

United Nations are constant reminders of how the West has leveraged its wealth and

influence through development aid into political dominance. The development world is a

reflection of the real world. The real world in turn is representative of the global order

that has been collectively established by a handful of powerful core countries (Klak,

2002). These powerful nations have dictated the shape and form of development

strategies for the simple reason that they had the wealth, the means and the opportunity to

implement their will (or good will). In so doing, they have also been able to frame the

discourses surrounding development theories.

However, to suggest that non-Western peoples embraced the development

ideologies behind the theories, that is they docilely accepted the label of underdeveloped

or subscribed blindly to the development strategies imposed upon them, is a fallacy. At

the root of development thinking, we must recognise that power relations are at play. For

example, Said (1995), in explaining the dichotomy of Orientalism to the Western,

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cautions us to not oversimplify Western perceptions of the Orient as “representative and

expressive of some nefarious ‘Western’ imperialist plot to hold down the Oriental

world;” instead, he reminds us that discourse “is produced and exists in an uneven

exchange with various kinds of power” (p. 90).

Therefore, to simply assert that the development process has been dominated

solely by Western conceptions and perceptions of the world is to ignore the dialectics

inherent in the evolution of development thinking. To illustrate, we can briefly explore

how development theories have been transformed over the last five decades. The

development ideals of the 1950s to 1960s were predicated on the assumption that

economic growth was the panacea for the ills of the underdeveloped; it was believed that

the underdeveloped could lift themselves out of poverty by following a common path to

development modelled after the experience of the more advanced nations (Esteva, 1992;

Escobar, 1995a; Power, 2002). However, uneven growth and the continued widening of

the gap in income disparities imploded the myth of linear development (Corbridge, 1995;

Willis, 2002). From the 1960s to the 1970s, mainstream development thinking were

challenged by ideas about dependency and ethnodevelopment (Esteva, 1992).

Dependency theories attempted to explain the state of underdevelopment in Latin

America as a result of the capitalist system; that underdevelopment was due to

exploitation by the developed (Frank, 1995). Alternately, ethnodevelopment championed

development based on upon local capacity and context rather than merely borrowing

foreign ideas (Esteva, 1992). The 1980s can be characterised as backlash to hitherto

formulaic, top-down development strategies. This period heralded the ascendancy of neo-

liberal theories and is characterised by a retreat from heavy-handed government

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intervention; the free hand of the market was seen to be more effective at promoting

economic growth and redistributing resources (Arce, 2003; Midgley, 2003). The 1990s

onwards to the present can be characterised by the growing awareness of the need for

sustainable development. The effects of globalisation, the interconnectivity of relations

and resources, and the challenges of climate change have highlighted the necessity of

“meet(ing) the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future

generations to meet their own needs” (Soubbotina, 2004). Sustainable growth and post-

development theories, which shun the imposition of Eurocentric development solutions in

favour of local national and grassroots solutions have taken centre-stage and co-exist

alongside neo-liberalist theories (Wallis, 2002). In this melange of constantly evolving

theories, what can we infer about the conceptions and perceptions of Western and non-

Western peoples? That development is an epistemological and reflexive process; there

are spaces for “to represent different ways of seeing, knowing and representing the

world” (Power, 2002, p. 124). Hence, despite Escobar’s assertion that “reality… had been

colonized by the development discourse” (1995a, p. 5), he nevertheless had to

acknowledge that “rather than being eliminated by development, many ‘traditional

cultures’ survive through their transformative engagement with modernity” (1995a, p.

219). Finally, if we strip away development rhetoric and put aside the counter-arguments

about what constitutes development and what does not, we may return to the

fundamentals of what development, at its core, attempts to achieve – the betterment of

life; to live long and healthy, and while alive, to live well. This is a universal aspiration,

not a Western ideal; it is “strongly valued and desired by nearly all of us” (Sen, 1999, p.

14).

Frances Tay McHugh (fran@321-connect.com) 8/14

 At this juncture, it would be apt to reflect on the impact of globalisation on

peoples’ perceptions. This is because globalisation is the most prominent result of the

technological advances and economic liberalisation of past development efforts and is

“the most general concept to define contemporary international reality” (Valdés and

Stoller, 2002, p. 39) Globalisation is often perceived as a nefarious, homogenising force.

Rassool (2007) for example suggests that cultural hegemony is promoted through the

mass consumption of globalised mass media (in particular the American variety),

resulting in a hegemony of Western mass consumerism. A dated study by Wilensky

(1964) on mass society in America would suggest otherwise: “the media are not

omnipotent, they are absorbed into local cultures… this absorption involves a self-

selection of exposure” (p. 175). Nevertheless, the view that the effects of globalisation

erode local culture remain prevalent. For example, President Jiang Zemin, voiced his

concerns at the 2000 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting that there would be

negative political and cultural consequences to economic globalisation, that “some

countries… would force their own values, economic regime and social systems on other

countries…” (Barrett, 2001, p. 409). However, as the following artwork named “Thinker”

and accompanying text by the artist Wang Qing Song attests, the effects of development

are not adopted wholesale by individuals but filtered through personal cultural and social

lens: “On the surface, this phenomenon of going after what is western style represents an

ideal for Euro-American materialistic life. But in such an era of globalization, does this

ideal also represent worship that can create a lot of ridiculous contradictions?” (Wang,

Q.S., 2004). Therefore, rather than perceive a borderless world of convergence and

ultimate homogenisation, Yeung (1998) asserts that globalisation is a “dialectical process

Frances Tay McHugh (fran@321-connect.com) 9/14

of homogenisation and differentiation” whereby “local resistance and local expression

emerge, reinforcing the interconnectedness of the local and the global” (p. 292). His

views are similar to those of Guillen (2001), who suggests that globalisation “creates

mutual awareness as opposed to mindless conformity” (p. 7). Further, he encourages that

we view globalisation as an opportunity to “abandon modernist dogmas as to what is the

best policy for development” (p.232), suggesting that globalisation provides the

opportunity to review unique strengths and value diversity. In similar fashion, we must

acknowledge the multiple complexities of cultural, social, political and economic forces

at work when reflecting on the impact of development. Just as globalisation does not

presuppose a common destiny of homogenised economies and societies, development has

been revealed to be just as reflexive and dynamic. In summary, it would be apt to quote

Pieterse (1998, p. 370): “As long as there is development, there will be room for critical

development and for ground-up, street views of development” (p. 370). This will

certainly be comforting to those who oppose development due to simplistic assumptions

that development is merely another extension of Western dominance.

Wang, Q.S. (2004) “Thinker”

Frances Tay McHugh (fran@321-connect.com) 10/14

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