Modernising development?

Question 1

What are characteristics of the Englightenment?

Answer 1

• Not a singular movement or project but wider form of critical enquires about organisation and structure of society (Power, 2003)
• Creation of new framework of ideas about the relationships between humanity society and nature (Power, 2003)

Question 2

How are knowledge and power linked to the Enlightenment?

Answer 2

• Europeans expanded their sense of knowledge as power (Power, 2003)
• Knowledge is reduced to technology, a technology which enables illusion of power and of domination over nature (Doherty, 1993)
• Knowledge does not actual give actual power over nature but power over the consciousness of others who may be less fluent in language (Doherty, 1993)

Question 3

How is underdevelopment characterised as?

Answer 3

• Before developed there is nothing but deficiencies (Abrahamsen, 2000)
• Underdeveloped areas have no history of their own – third world countries emerge as empty vessels waiting to be filled with the development from the first world (Abrahamsen, 2000)

Question 4

What did President Truman say in his 1949 speech on development?

Answer 4

“Must embark on a bold new program for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress availablefor the improvement and growth of underdeveloped area”

Question 5

What is the modernisation approach?

Answer 5

• Alternative set of values to Communism
• Dualistic – traditional vs. modern lifestyles
• Inequalities would even out through trickle-down effect (Hirschman, 1958)

Question 6

What are the two hegemonic models of development?

Answer 6

1. Symbolized by US – intensive urban-based growth, import of consumer products and latest technology through joining global capitalist market
2. Soviet world – politically induced growth trough centralised plan, emphasis on heavy industry, infrastructural projects, independent of international markets

Westad (2005)

Question 7

What is rationalism?

Answer 7

Development of science and technology for the mastery of nature

Adams (2001)

Question 8

What are the citiques of the modernisation approach?

Answer 8

• Promotes binary –> development vs. underdevelopment
• Belief in western rationality, science and technology
• A-historical and a-geographical
• Failure to deliver –> anti-politics machine

Question 9

How does the modernisation approach relate to the environment?

Answer 9

• Reinforces colonial ideas of nature as ‘resource’ to be used
  
  • Extractivist mind-set (Klein, 2015)
• Reinforces enlightenment ideas of nature needing to be overcome for progress

Question 10

What are the characteristics of the classical-traditional approach?

Answer 10

• Strongly based on writings of Smith and Ricardo
• Development characterised by dualistic structure
• Underdevelopment as initial stage that the West has overcome
• Trickle down effect (Hirschman, 1958)
• Rostow’s Model

Potter et al. (2008)