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Published in:
2016 | OriginalPaper | Chapter
Post-development Theory and the Local Developmental State
Author : Eris D. Schoburgh
Published in: Developmental Local Governance
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan UK
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Post-development theory might be seen as an antithesis of mainstream liberal and democratic blueprints for development that have resulted in several contradictions. Escobar (1995, 2012) contends that the dream of material prosperity and economic progress for two-thirds of the world has progressively turned into a nightmare. This is the essence of his seminal work
Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World
, which he projects as a ‘history of the loss of illusion’ and in which he defines the social context that has given rise to post-developmentalism. In his words:
Instead of the kingdom of abundance promised by theorists and politicians in the 1950s, the discourse and strategy of development produced its opposite: massive underdevelopment, and impoverishment, untold exploitation and oppression. The debt crisis, the Sahelian famine, increasing poverty, malnutrition and violence are only the most pathetic signs of the failure of forty years of development. (Escobar, 1995, 2012: xiv)