The normative nature of ‘development’ is both the strength and academic achilles heel of development studies. Like social work before it, efforts to create a critical academic discipline around what has amounted to a historically-specific programme of social intervention popular in the latter half of the twentieth century have proved problematic. This is never more so than in the era of deconstructionism or ‘post-development’, where development theorists are supposedly left with the task of theorising beyond that which they have specifically been called into existence to steward. Whilst notions of ‘post- anthropology’ or ‘post-sociology’ may appear as melodramatic overreactions to the epistemological challenges presented by postmodernism, development studies must face the very real fact that it may no longer have either an object or a mandate to study.
This representational crisis, labelled by some as the ‘impasse’ of development (Schuurman, 1993), has important consequences for our ability to respond to the ongoing need for reliable information on which to develop policy responses to the deprivation and inequality that motivate ‘development’ efforts. Despite the urgent political need to respond to this state of affairs, efforts to do so continue to fall down around the challenges associated with developing new praxis-orientated epistemologies that are capable of simultaneously providing an alternative to the imperialist “know-all history” (Sylvester, 1999:717) of the modernist research paradigm, whilst also retaining a commitment to the value of research or ‘evidence’-based development policy responses. Efforts to utilise the epistemological critiques provided by ‘post-colonial’ theory17 have
faltered over its inability to turn its attention away from literary analysis to livelihood issues, resulting in an ongoing tendency to “offer more in the way of new-fangled language than food” (Sylvester, 1999:718). Attempts to develop ‘participatory’ or ‘alternative’ development research approaches that valorise the voices of the ‘grassroots poor’ as an epistemological corrective to the arrogance of modernist development thought also have limited usefulness due to their reliance on a populism that undermines their methodological veracity (Batterbury et al., 1997:129; Lazreg, 2002:140). As Olivier de Sardan (2005) argues, the populist tendencies of ‘putting the last first’18
methodologies, characterised by their “exaltation of the cognitive, political, moral, cultural virtues of the people”, involve a degree of romanticism that is “less in line with methodology than with ideology proper” (Olivier de Sardan, 2005:117).
Finally, the other important theoretical response to the impasse, so called, ‘post- development’ theory, as represented by the work of authors such as Escobar (1995), Sachs (1992), and Ferguson (1990), also has major epistemological limitations. Post- development theory, with its reliance on Foucauldian ideas about development as a site
17 Postcolonial theory is the label given to a genre of literary criticism concerned with deconstructing the “profusion of thought and writing about the cultural and political identities of colonised subjects” (Gandhi, 1998:5). This tradition shares much of the same poststructuralist intellectual heritage as post- development thought; particularly in the use of Foucauldian ideas about discourse. Apart from a focus on ‘colonialism’ rather than ‘development’, postcolonial theory can be distinguished from post-development theory by its greater emphasis on literary analysis (particularly fiction, situated as it has been in the humanities rather than the social sciences) over examination of development practices; and much greater engagement with the psychoanalytic tradition within poststructuralist thought (eg. the works of theorists such as Fanon (1963) and Bhabha (1994).
18 This phrase is taken from the title of two books by Robert Chambers (1984; 1997), the most well-known and popular proponent of populist methodologies within development studies.
of governmentality19, has tended to engage with postmodernist theory in ways that have
largely reinforced rather than challenged modernist dualistic representations of reality. The conceptualisation of development as a modern form of ‘biopower’, tends to overemphasise its cohesiveness, positioning it as a monolithic juggernaut that is inherently and inescapably Western and coercive (Olivier de Sardan, 2005; Rapley, 2004:350). Not only do post-development writers tend to present an overly homogenist view of the diverse practices under the development rubric (Corbridge, 1998:139; Kiely, 1999:30; Lazreg, 2002:126); but, like alternative development perspectives, they provide an under-theorised view of the agency of development participants – once again advocating a sort of populism that simply reverses the Western/Third World dualism and makes the ‘Third World’ the new repository of hope and new ways of knowing (Corbridge, 1998:144; Papart, 2002:54; Rapley, 2004:352).
Thus, while these authors advocate for the need for a new critical ‘hybrid’ space between “deconstruction and reconstruction” (Escobar, 1995:16), they also tend, in the last instance, to abandon their deconstructionist impulse in order to privilege only one form of critique as capable of producing this: that created in the Third World, at the ‘local level’ by non-state actors or ‘popular groups’ (for example see Escobar, 1995:225-6; Ferguson, 1990: 287-288). Ferguson (1990:287) lists some of these groups (which he
labels as “counter-hegemonic”) as “labor unions, opposition political parties and movements, cooperatives, peasants’ unions, churches and religious organizations.”
Both post-development and alternative development approaches suffer from a tendency to present an overly homogenous view of both Western development efforts and so- called Third World oppositional ‘popular groups’. They ignore the extent to which both these groups are united and divided along lines of age, gender, class, ethnicity, and sexuality. This idealises ‘Third World’ existence in a way that reinforces rather than
19 Foucault argued that the modern era is characterised by a move away from more obvious forms of power based on the right of the sovereign to punish and execute subjects, towards a less visible form of power based on the surveillance and regulation of individuals and populations made possible by the institutionalisation of all aspects of modern life. The term ‘governmentality’ (Foucault, 1991) is used to describe this new mode of social control, which is based on the simultaneous surveillance of individuals through new institutions like prisons, schools, and hospitals (disciplinary power), and the surveillance of populations through the development of new sciences of health and population and wealth distribution (biopower) (Foucault, 1981:139). Foucault argued that both these forms of power function to regulate behaviour through the authority that is vested in them to define what is ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’. Foucault argues that the power to define and create knowledge about the individual (he labels these knowledge systems discourses) is the primary mechanism through which the individual is ‘produced’ and thus ‘controlled’ (Foucault, 1979).
challenges the very modernist, essentialist idea of an ‘other’ to which ‘we’ are in opposition (Nanda, 2002:215; Papart, 2002:52). Amin (1989:146-7) argues that this type of analysis effectively represents a sort of “inverted eurocentrism” in which the essentialist idea that only those within a group can know its ‘truth’ is extended beyond Europe to other cultures. He asserts that this mode of critique ultimately leads to a type of relativism that works against efforts to expand our understanding of issues facing each other.
Further, Olivier de Sardan (2005:119) argues that both perspectives reinforce what he calls the ‘miserabilism/populism’ dualism popular within leftist political narrative: the tendency to swing from one form of sweeping analysis cataloguing the resources of the resilient oppressed (populism), to another discursive strategy focusing primarily on the all pervasiveness and tenacity of structures of social inequality (miserabilism). Olivier de Sardan (2005:119) contends that much leftist social science is based on a perpetual swinging back and forth between these narratives, rather than on genuine attempts to face the difficult task of finding new ways to do justice to the complexity and ultimate moral ambiguity of real life development landscapes.
Pieterse (1998) is also critical of the dualistic tendencies of both these strategies, arguing that while the deconstructive efforts of post-development writers have proved another extremely useful means of highlighting the ways in which development fails the Third World, the fall back into a populist ‘anti-modernism’ has largely prevented the paradigm from proposing a meaningful alternative to this failure. As Pieterse (1998:345) summarises, “Post-development articulates meaningful sensibilities, but does not have a future programme. The core problem posed in post-development is the question of modernity: to be ‘for’ or ‘against’ modernity, however, is too simple a position.”
Despite the disappointing efforts to date to theorise beyond the impasse, these ongoing tensions within development theory contain considerable potential. The insecurity posed by the imminent dissolution of development studies’ epistemological mandate, coupled with the policy imperative to continue to theorise within it anyway, in many ways creates the perfect experimental conditions for the actualisations of the postmodern promise of new ways of thinking/being. Such conditions do not prevail within many of the traditional social science disciplines still preoccupied with disavowing or finding a
way around the liberal contradiction that is at the heart of attempts to undermine the ‘tyranny’ of ‘liberation’. The explicitly normative character of development studies makes this disavowal impossible. So it is in this moment that we can develop a sort of amnesia that propels us back towards positivism, or we can have faith that the current impasse provides the very resources required to theorise within and beyond it.
I believe that recent debates within feminist theory over the future of trans-national political and intellectual coalitions provide some of the most interesting and important signposts for the parameters of this new territory. Feminist theory provides an alternative genealogy of engagement with poststructuralist theory and black/Third World/indigenous critiques of the imperialism of Western thought that enables us to avoid both the esotericism of postcolonial theory and the populism of alternative development and post-development perspectives, and thus retain a commitment to the creation of meaningful knowledge about development realities. The strength of the movement lies in its ability to call upon four decades of feminist collaboration with and contribution to a postmodern ethic whilst retaining a commitment to a research programme that promotes social justice.