Book Review - Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World by Arturo Escobar

Jakarta, Indonesia | Photo by Tom Fisk

Post-development thinker, Arturo Escobar, encounters development with a primer on “tales” of three worlds, growth, capital, food, hunger, peasants, women and environment. The book starts with an anthropological inquiry on modernity flagging the importance of construction of underdeveloped and advanced representations -- which make possible an intervention by the development apparatus. It reflects on the ideal of economic progress -- as an artifact of modernist hegemonic envisionment which decries ancient philosophies, old social institutions and bonds of caste, creed & race, and entails adjustments making some worldviews dispensable. The role of capital, science and technology in reinventing new cultural norms and values is elaborately discussed. As a post-structuralist critique of economics and polity, this book engages with the discourse of development, power and alternatives on a new frontier, and draws on ideas of Michel Foucault’s power/knowledge, Edward Said’s Orientalism and many more scholarly works to question development thinking as ideological cultural import and to provoke “new narratives, new ways of thinking and doing.”

The book is a repertoire of powerful concepts stirring notions of development. The author’s encouragement to decimate development and to think of alternatives to development is bold -- as it breaks the tradition of stopping at the critique of development. For the purpose of this review, I will discuss three impressions which encapsulate the central arguments of the book.

First, that of problematization -- a representation of social reality from a distant context, episteme and historicity -- which is supplemented by “a perceptual field structured by grids of observation, modes of inquiry and registration of problems, and forms of intervention.” Such representation invariably warrant objectification and reductionism -- enframing a complex system in such fashion enables making sense -- paving a way for ethnocentric and paternalistic enterprises. The birth of a laboratory state is on similar lines -- a project which conceives society based on scientific method, legitimizes the use of social engineering on the marginalized, makes people subject to experimentation and violence, and condemns subcultures to triage. (Visvanathan, 1997) Case of poverty is illustrative in this regard. Though a universal conception of poverty is fraught with challenges, the post-war Marshall plan embarked on a reconstruction and development agenda -- ushering in grand standards of modernism. These standards had scant regard for community, frugality, and sufficiency -- long-held ideals of numerous traditional vernacular societies. As a result, it was only Euramerican culture which could be said and imagined. This phenomenon is not unique to postcolonial dispensations. Together with scientific rationalism, colonialists' adventures were inspired by the same line of thought. “As part of the civilizing mission, science played two contradictory roles in colonial discourse, at once making clear to the ‘natives’ the kind of knowledge that they lacked (which omission justified colonialism itself), and holding out the hope that such knowledge could be theirs.” (Seth, 2009) The imprint on development discourse these illusions had -- which were seen as products of enlightened thinking -- had irrevocable consequences for power and control for years to come. 

Second, that of expertise -- an embodiment of “professionalization of development knowledge and the institutionalization of development practices.” This approach tilts the balance towards those systems of knowledge which upholds the spirit of capitalism and technocratic visions of life. The infantilization of the Third World is a case-in-point. Read in line with Orientalism, it perpetuated colonialist moorings of salvation and reform with the aid of science and technology temptations while treating people and cultures as abstract monolithic entities. The politics of expertise is inseparable from its core tenets - as it redefines regimes of truth and norms detached from cultural specificity and local positioning -- leading to contrasts and contradictions. In the same vein, economics of expertise is another instrument of this pursuit. Central to all theories of economic development is the need to simplify the complicated realities of the world. This involves an agenda of discipline and normalization, and a propaganda towards commodity fetishism, to create the perfect Homo Economicus capable of greasing the wheels of capitalism. The bureaucratic setup serves as an accomplice in this regard by standardizing ways of knowing and action -- vital components of policy discourse. The fundamental problematic conceptualization of  expertise nests in its inherent assumptions like -- purpose of knowledge is control and prediction, research methods could simulate reality and lay knowledge is worthless. (Wynne, 1992) Assumptions devoid of reflexivity like these affect political credibility of authorities and institutions leading to alienation of masses.

Third, that of hybrid cultures -- an alternative to development which respects coexistence of modernities and traditions along with critical understanding of contestations and sharings arising out of their interactions -- “(re)creation that may or may not be (re)inscribed into hegemonic constellations.” Such hybridity allows safe space for proliferation of local cultures, feminist values, historical identity and alternate knowledge ecologies. And, cedes ground for discontinuity and cultural possibilities from regimes of truth and representation normalized by those in power. This has profound implications for policy practice as it serves as a clarion call to question assumptions and analytical approaches of bureaucratic institutions and knowledge producers (i.e. researchers) which are products of a particular culture. Methodological underpinnings of hybridity includes deconstructing development and local ethnography at its heart -- which allows the possibility of exploring development standards as “spaces of diversity.” (Loconto & Demortain, 2017) The book falls short on provocations through examples of this influential post-development thought -- thereby maintaining an incompleteness -- but this is compensated with the authorship of subsequent releases on pluriverse -- which adequately captures alternate visions vividly. Pluriverse implies a design philosophy that is collaborative, context dependent, ecologically sustainable and just -- towards social change. (Escobar, 2018) The essays written in this regard throws light on palpable transformative initiatives undertaken across the globe which militate against domineering processes of international development, monoculturing modernity, exploitative capitalism, state oppression and masculinist values. (Kothari et al., 2019)

Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World is a must read for those who want to probe development discourses for a refined postulation of -- what development is, who does it, for whom and how. It will resonate the most with poststructuralist minds -- as it harnesses similar devices and motives -- for a reconceptualization of paradigmatic structural meanings and metaphors.


References:

Visvanathan, S. (1997). A Carnival for Science: Essays on Science, Technology and Development (1st ed.). Oxford University Press.

Seth, S. (2009). Putting knowledge in its place: science, colonialism, and the postcolonial. Postcolonial Studies, 12(4), 373–388. https://doi.org/10.1080/13688790903350633

Wynne, B. (1992). Misunderstood misunderstanding: social identities and public uptake of science. Public Understanding of Science, 1(3), 281–304. https://doi.org/10.1088/0963-6625/1/3/004

Loconto, A. M., & Demortain, D. (2017). Standardization as Spaces of Diversity. Engaging Science, Technology, and Society, 3, 382. https://doi.org/10.17351/ests2017.155

Escobar, A. (2018). Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds (New Ecologies for the Twenty-First Century) (Illustrated ed.). Duke University Press Books.

Kothari, A., Salleh, A., Escobar, A., Demaria, F., & Acosta, A. (2019). Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary. Tulika Books.

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