The+Invention+of+Development-已转换

The invention of development Arturo Escobar Current History;, Nov 1999; 98, 631; Academic Research Library pg. 382 “Development ward continues to be for the most parts top-down, ethnocentrie, and technocrats approach that treats people and cultures as abstract concepts, statistical figures tobe moved cp and down in the charts of '‘progress.’ . ., It comes as no surprise tEat development became a force so destrHCtive tO thiF woEld cultures,ironicallyinthenaine ofpeoplesinterests.” The Invention of Development ARTURO EscoBzR ne o( the many changes that occurred in the eaTly post—World War Il period was the “discoscry” of mass poverty in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Relatively inconspicuous and seemingly logical, this discovery was to provide the anchor foT an important restructuring of global cul- ture and political economy. The discourse of war was displaced onto the social domain and to a new geographic terrain: the third world. Left behind was the struggle against fascism as the “war on poverty” in the third world began to occupy a prominent place. Eloquent facts were adduced to justify this new' war: “Over [1.5 billion] people, something like two-thirds of the world population,” Harold Wilson noted in The War on World Poverty, “are living in conditions of acute hunger, defined in terms of identifiable nutritional disease. This hunger is at the same time the cause and effect of poverty, squalor, and misery in which they live.” Statements like Wilson’s were uttered through- out the late 1940s and 1950s. The new emphasis was spurred by the recognition of the chronic con- ditions of poverty and social unrest existing in poor countTies and the threat they posed for more- developed countries. This led to the realization that something had to be done before the overall levels of instability in the world became intolerable. The destinies of the rich and poor parts of the world were seen to be closely linked. “Genuine world prosperity 1s indivisible,” stated a panel of academic experts in 1948. “It cannot last in one part of the world 1f the other parts live under conditions of poverty” and 11l health.” If within market societies the poor were defined as lacking what the rich had in tennis of moneyand ARTURO ESCOBAR Is n proJessor o] rintliropalogy at the Utuver- sity oJ Mossucliusetts, Amherst. He is the nuthor oJ Encounter- ing Dex+elopment, The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton, NJ Princeton Utuverstfy Prrss, 7/995), Jrom whtcli this orttcle is cxcerpted with permission. 382 material possessions, poor countries came to be sim- ilarly defined in relation to the standards of wealth of the more economically advantaged nations. This economic conception of poverty found an ideal yardstick in one statistic: annual per capita income. Almostby fiat, nearly 70 percent of the world’s peo- ples were transformed into poor subjects in 1948 when the World Bank defined as poor those coun- tries with an annual per capita income below $100. And if the problem was one of insufficient income, the solution was clearly economic growth. Thus poverty became an organizing concept and the object of a new problematization. That the essential trait of the third world wasits poverty and that the solution was economic growth and devel- opment became self-evident, necessary, and uni- versal truths. Rich countries were believed to have the finan- cial and technological capacity to secure progress the world over. Alook ar their own past instilled in them the firm conviction that this was not only pos- sible—let alone desirable—but perhaps even inevitable. Sooner orlater, the poor countries would become rich, and the underdeveloped world would be developed. A new type of economic knowledge and an enriched experience with the design and management of social systems made this goal look even more plausible. Now it was a matter of creat- ing an appropriate strategy to do it, of setting in motion the right forces to ensure progress and world happiness. Behind the humanitarian concern and the posi- tive outlook of the new strategy, new forms of power and control, more subtle and refined, were put in operation. Poor people’s ability to define and take care of their own lives was eroded in a deeper man- ner than perhaps ever before. The poor became the target of more sophisticated practices, of a varietye of programs that seemed inescapable. From the new institutions of power in the United States and Europe; from the offices of the International Bank Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

for Reconstructionand Developmentand the United Nations; from North American and European cam- puses, research centers, and foundations; and from the new planning offices in the major capitals of the underdeveloped world—this was the type of devel- opmentthatwasactively promoted and thatina few years was to extend its reach to all aspects of society Let us now see how this set of historical factors resulted in the new discourse of development. DEYELOPMENT DISCOURSE What does it mean to say that development func- tioned as a discourse—that it created a space in which only certain things could be said and even imagined? We can begin to answer that question by examining the basic premises of development as they were formulated in the 1940s and 1950s. Fun- damental was the beliefin modernization asthe only force capable of destroying archaic superstitions and relations. Industrialization and urbanization were seen as the inevitable and nccessarily progressive routes to modernization. Only through material advancement could social, cultural, and political progress be achieved. This view led to the belief that capital investment was the mostimportant ingredi- ent in economic growth and development. The advance of poor countries was thus seen from the outset as depending on ample supplies of capital to provide for infrastructure, industrialization,and the overall modernization of society. From where was this capital to come? One possible answer was domestic savings. Butbecause these countries were seen as trapped in a “vicious circle” of poverty and lack of capital, much of that capital would have to come trom abroad. Moreover, itwas absolutely nec- essary that governments and international organi- zations take an active role in promoting and orchestrating the efforts to overcome general back- wardness and economic underdevelopment. What, then, were the most important elements that went into the formulation of development the- ory? There was the process of capital formation, and the various factors associated with it: technol- ogy, population and resources, monetary and fiscal policies, industrialization and agricultural develop- ment, commerce and trade. There were also a series of faCtOTs linked to cultural considerations, such as education and the need to foster modem cultural values. Finally, there was the need to create ade- quate institutions for carrying out the complex task ahead: international organizations (such as the World Bank and the iMF, created in 1944, and most of the Us technical agencies, also a productof the the /nven/ion ol Develo/oment ¢ 383 mid-1940s); national planningagencies (which pro- liferated in Latin America, especially after the inau- guration of the Alliance for Progress in the early 1960s); and technical agencies of various kinds. Yetdevelopment was not merely the result of the combination, study, or gradual elaboration of these elements (some of these topics had existed for some time); nor the product of the introduction of new ideas (some of which were already appearing or perhaps were bound to appear); nor the effect of the new international organizations or financial insti- tutions (which had SOme pTedecessors, such as the League of Nations). It was rather the result of the establishment of a set of relations among these ele- ments, institutions, and practices and the system- atization of these relations to form a whole. To understand development as a discourse, one must look at this system of relations, relations that define the conditions under which objects, con- cepts, theories, and strategies can be incorporated into the discourse. The system of relations estab- lishes a discursive practice that sets the rules of the game: who can speak, from what points of view, with what authority, and according to what criteria of expertise; it determines the rules that must be followed for this or that problem, theory, or object to emerge and be named, analyzed, and eventually transformed into a policy or a plan. DisSECTING THE THIRD WORLD The concerns development began to deal with were numerous and varied. Some of them, such as poverty, insufficient technology and capital, rapid population growth, inadequate public services, archaic agricultural practices, stood out clearly, whereas others were introduced with more caution oreven insurreptitious ways (cultural attitudes and values and the existence of racial, religious, geo- graphic, or ethnic factors believed to be associated with backwardness). Everything was subjected to the eye of the new experts: the poor dwellings of the rural masses, the vastagricultural fields, cities, households, factories, hospitals, schools, public offices, towns and regions, and, in the last instance, the world as a whole. The vastsurface over which the discourse moved atease practically covered the entire cultural, economic, and political geography of the third world. Not all the actors distributed throughout this surface could identify objects to be studied and have their problems considered. Clear principles of authority were in operation. They concerned the role of experts, from whom certain criteria of Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

The concept of professionalization refers here mainly to the process that brings the third world into the politics of expert knowledge and Western science in general. This is accomplished through a set of techniques, strategies, and disciplinary prac- tices that organize the generation, validation, and diffusion of development knowledge, including the academic disciplines, methods of research and teaching, criteria of experts, and manifold profes- sional practices: in other words, those mechanisms through which a politics of truth is created and maintained, through which certain forms of knowl- edge are given the status of truth. This profession- alization was effected through the proliferation of development sciences and subdisciplines. It made possible the progressive incorporation of problems into the space of development, bringing them to light inways congruent with the established system of knowledge and power. The professionalization of development also made it possible to remove all problems from the political and cultural realms and to recast them in terms of the apparently more neutral realm of sci- ence. It resulted in the establishment o( develop- ment studies programs in most major universities in the developed world and conditioned the cre- ation or restructuring of third world universities to suit the needs of development. The empirical social sciences, on the rise since the late 1940s, especially in the United States and Britain, were instrumental in this regard. So were the area studies programs, whichbecame fashionable after the warinacademic and policymaking circles. Anunprecedented will to know everything about the third world flourished unhindered, growinglike a virus. Like the landing of the Allied forces in Nor- mandy, the third world witnessed amassive landing of experts, each in charge of investigating, measur- ing, and theorizing about, as was noted earlier, this or thatlittle aspect of third world societies. The poli- cies and programs that origiriated from this vast field of knowledge inevitably carried with them strong moralizing components. At stake was a politics of knowledge that allowed experts to classify problems and formulate policies, to pass judgments on entire social groupsand forecast their future—to produce, in short, a regime of truth and norms about them. Overlapping the processes of professionalization was the creation of an institutional field from which discourses are produced, recorded, stabilized, mod- ified, and put into circulation. The institutionaliza- tion of development took place atall levels, from the international organizations and national planning the invention o/ Dove/o/amenf « 385 agencies in the third world to local development agencies, community development committees, pri- vate voluntary agencies, and nongovemmental orga- nizations. Starting in the mid-1940s, with the creation of the great international organizations, this process has continued to spread, resulting in the consolidation of an effective network of power. It is through the action of this network that people and communities are bound to specific cycles of cultural and economic production and through which cer- tain behaviors and rationalities are promoted. This field of intervention relies on myriad local centers of power, in turn supported by forms of knowledge that circulate at the local level. The knowledge produced about the third world isused and promoted by these institutions through applied programs, conferences, international con- sultant services, and local extension practices. A corollary of this process is the establishment of an ever-expanding development business. Poverty, illit- eracy, and even hunger became the basis of a lucra- tive industry for planners, experts, and civil servants. This is not to deny that the work of these institutions might have bene(ited people at times. It is to emphasize that the work of development insti- tutions has not been an innocent effort on behalf of the poor. Rather, development has been successful to the extent that it has been able to integrate, man- age, and control countries and populations in increasingly detailed and encompassing ways. If it has failed to solve the basic problems of under- development, it can be said—perhaps with greater pertinence—thatithas succeeded in creating a type of underdevelopment that has been, for the most part, politically and technically manageable. THE PEItSISTENCE OF “UNDERDEVELOPMENT*“ The crucial threshold and transformation that took place in the early postwar era were the result not of a radical epistemological or political break- through, but of the reorganization of factors that allowed the third world to display a new visibility and to erupt into a new realm of language. This new space was carved out of the vast and dense surface of the third world, placing it in a field of power. Underdevelopment became the subject of political technologies that sought to erase it from the face of the earth but that ended up, instead, multiplying it to infinity. Development fostered a way of conceiving of social life as a technical problem, as a matter of rational decision and management to be entrusted to that group of people—the development profes- Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

386 « CURRENT HISTORY ¢ November 1999 sionals—whose specialized knowledge allegedly qualified them for the task. Instead of seeing change as a process rooted in the interpretation of each societys history and cultural tTadition—as a num- ber of intellectuals in various parts of the third world had attcmpted to do in the 1920s and 1930s (Gandhi being the best known of them)—these professionals sought to devise mechanisms and pro- cedures to make societies fit a preexisting model that embodied the structures and functions of modernitj' Like sorcere s’ apprentices, the devel- opment professionals awakened once again the dream of reason that, in their hands, as in earlier instances, produced a tToubling reality. At times, development grew to be so important for third world countries that it became acceptable for those rulers to subject their populations to an infinite variety of interventions, to more encom- passing forms of power and systems of control; so important that first and third world elites accepted the price of massive impoverishment, of selling third world resources to the most convenient bid- ders. of degrading their physical and hunian ecolo- gies, of killing and torturing, of condemning their indigenous population to near extinction; soimpor- tant that many in the third world began to think of themselves as inferior, underdeveloped, and igno- rant and to doubt the value of their own culture, deciding instead to pledge allegiance to the banners of reason and progress; so important, finally, that the achievement of development clouded the awareness of the impossibility of fulfilling the promise that development seemed to be making. fifter four decades of this discourse, most forms of understanding and representing the third world are still dictated by the same basic tenets. The forms of power that have appeared act not so much by repression but by normalization; not by ignorance but by controlled knowledge; not by humanitarian concern but by the bureaucratization of social action. As the conditions that gave rise to develop- ment became more pressing, it could only increase its hold, refine its methods, and extend its reach. That the materiality of these conditions is not con- jured up by an “objective” body of knowledge butis charted outbytherational discourses of economists, politicians. and de>'elopment experts of all types should already be clear. What has been achieved is a specific configuration of factors and forces in which the neu'language of development finds sup- ]30Tt..USadiscourse, development isthusavery real historical formation, albeit articulated around an artificial construct (underdevelopment) and upona certain mateTiality (the conditions baptized as underdevelopment), which mustbe conceptualized in different ways if the power of the development discourse is to be challenged or displaced. To be sure, there is a situation of economic exploitation thatmustbe recognized and dealt wsth. Power is too cynical at the level of exploitation and should be resisted on its own terms. There is also a certain materiality of life conditions that is eKtremely preoccupying and that requires great effort and attention. But those seeking to under- stand the third world through development have long lost sight of this materiality by building upon it a reality that has haunted us for decades. Under- standing the historye of the investment of the third world through Western forms of knowledge and power is a way to shift the ground somewhat so that we can start to view that materiality with dif- ferent eyes and in different categories. The coherence of effects that the development discourse achieved is the key to its success as a hegemonic form ofrepresentation: the construction of the poor and underdeveloped as universal, pre- constituted subjects. based on the privilege of the representers: the exercise of power over the third world made possible by this discursive homo- genization (which entails the erasure of the com- plexity and diversity of third world peoples, so that a squatter in Mexico City, a Nepalese peasant, and a Tuareg nomad become equivalent to each other as poor and underdeveloped); and the colonization and domination of the natural and human ecologies and economies of the third world. Development assures a teleology to the extent that it ' poses that the “natives” will sooner or later be reformed. At the samc time, however, it reproduces endlessly the separation between refoTmers and those to be reformed by keeping alive the premise of the third world as different and inferior, as having a limited humanity in relation to the accomplished Europeans. Dexeelopment relies on this perpetual recognition and disavowal of difference, a feature inherent to discrimination. The signifiers of “poverty,” “illiteracy,” “hunger,” and so forth have already achieved a fixitv as sig- nifieds of “underdevelopment” that seems impos- sible to sunder. M Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.