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A term coined in the 1990s to denote both the failure of conventional post-1945 development, and the alternatives to it. The first international meeting organized under the term was held in Geneva in 1991 and involved a number of key figures in the post- or alternatives to development movement (Rist, Rahnema and Esteva, 1992). Post-development expresses the idea of development as failed modernity, as a set of practices, discourses and strategies institutionalized in the multilateral development institutions which emerged after the Second World War and which have overseen the growing polarization between North and South. Development is a mirage and a hoax predicated upon development discourses which construct poverty and its solutions in particular ways (non-political, technocratic) (Escobar, 1995). As Rahnema puts it, \'under the banner of development and progress, a tiny minority of local profiteers and their foreign patrons … waged war against the age-old traditions of communal solidarity\' (1997, p. xi). If development consists of a set of hegemonic western practices, the alternatives reside in the resistance to global capitalism provided by a panoply of social movements, people\'s organization and NGOs rooted in subaltern knowledge, local forms of practice and alternative forms of livelihood (see Shiva, 1991; Sachs, 1992; Rahnema, 1997; cf. globalization). (MW)
References Escobar, A. 1995: Encountering development. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Rahnema, M., ed., 1997: The post-development reader. London: Zed Books. Rist, G., Rahnema, M. and Esteva, G. 1992: Le Nord perdu; Repères pour l\'après-développement. Lausanne: Editions d\'en bas. Sachs, W., ed., 1992: Global ecology. London: Zed Books. Shiva, V. 1991: The violence of the green revolution. London: Zed Books. |
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