Development Theory vs. Development Project: Origins of Underdevelopment

Development Theory vs. the Development Project

In essence, theories of development are concerned with social change. They are multidimensional — one can therefore think of learning and human growth, rather than focusing narrowly on economic phenomena in isolation. The development project, by contrast, focuses on the improvement and bettering of the quality and standard of living among human beings in a more directed, institutional sense. Urbanization, according to McMichael (7), is seen as one of the defining consequences of development. One of the development project's most outstanding aspects was the perception of development as destiny (McMichael 7).

Modernization, Poverty, and Powerful-Country Intervention

A new era of development was ushered in by "the extension of political sovereignty to millions of non-Europeans (more than half of humanity)" (McMichael 15). It was during this era that idealism soared, and governments from both Third World and First World countries became united toward not only the promotion of economic growth, but also the enhancement of social wellbeing and the promotion of political citizenship (McMichael 15). Development was, in essence, reinvented through decolonization, with ideals of nation-building — originally guided by the revolutionary ideologies of the United States and France — embodied through national currencies, languages, and systems of education, among other institutions (McMichael 47).

The Third World, as Chapter 2 (30) points out, was presented as a child who badly needed the guidance of an adult. Following the decolonization of Africa and Asia, powerful countries such as the United States were able to plant the ideas of modernization and poverty eradication in newly independent nations as they gained greater sway over the affairs of those states. The U.S., for instance, "led an international project, inspired by a vision of development as a national enterprise to be repeated across the world of sovereign states" (McMichael 43).

Silencing Marginalized Populations Through Development Practices

Thanks to the commodification of social relations, "villagers lost their means of livelihood and were forced to work for wages" (McMichael 15). This was, in essence, social engineering carried out largely by European political elites, with the end result being "the displacement of rural populations by land enclosures for cash cropping, a process that generated 'undesirables,' such as menacing paupers, restless proletarians, and unhealthy factory towns" (McMichael 3).

It is important to note that failure to incorporate various perspectives, as well as an understanding of local conditions, into the planning of development projects can strip women, indigenous peoples, and other marginalized groups of their fundamental rights. History offers instructive examples. Patriarchal gender divisions were disrupted by men's entry into cash cropping by the end of the nineteenth century. At the onset of self-financing by colonial administrators, "women's customary land-use rights were often displaced by new systems of private property" (McMichael 35). Such practices also weakened the bargaining power of those affected by undermining them economically — as was the case with British colonialism's removal of land in Kikuyu zones, leaving women with no authority or wealth and thereby lowering their status and bargaining power (McMichael 35).