CALDERON, Kim Dyan A.

17 Oct 2011
MA SDS 2 SDS 271 Tue 6:00-9:00 PM

From post-development to post-self?
This paper journeys from the readings of Escobar to the remnants of previous readings. The writer
expects to conjure up a somewhat coherent abstraction of the critiques of development and how it
applies to her work as a young economic development specialist. Owing to much indecisions and
insufficient ethical background, the intention of arguing for greater participation of people into the
development processes that have excluded them has never materialized. The paper discusses the role of
critique in widening development perspectives, which leads the writer to surmise that post-
development is not meant to put an end to development activities (i.e., humanitarian aid) especially in
regions that are in dire need of them. The critiques of development are for those who are in power and
in a position to make a difference. Towards the end, the writer resorts to self-absorbed introspection,
leading her to propose that the self too can be subjected to a series of critiques that constitutes a
transformation of ones own perspectives.

From Post-development to post-self?
I begin to write this paper in the uncomfortable heat of the afternoon. I am in my old ancestral
village, where I always spend every weekend. The distant sound of palay threshers, which tells
me that local farmers are busying themselves with their harvest, is playing in the background. It
is rather disturbing. Sans the release of official data, and, rumor has it, the yields are good this
year. Perhaps its the hybrid palay seeds.

Over the past three or four years, I have read more of critiques to development than any
orthodox economics texts. Perhaps I really am not very adept with the numbersa prerequisite
to knowing by heart the nitty-gritty of the discipline. I have to admit I have romantic
tendencies; theres no room for my sentiments in a career that knows only calculus and rational
decisions. It is from this viewpoint that I would like to render my insights on post-development.
In On the Genealogy of Morality, Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, There is only a perspectival seeing,
only a perspectival knowing; and the more affects we allow to speak about a matter, the more
eyes, different eyes, we know how to bring to bear on one and the same matter, that much
more complete will our concept of this matter, our objectivity be. To me the role of critique
is essentially to tell people that things are not always what they seem.
Critiques of development find their roots in social anthropology; Arturo Escobar is an
anthropologist himself. As regards the role of critique, I would like to relate what Gardner and
Lewis (1996:158) have said, resonating Mairs (1984: 13) point: the main roles are: 1) to beg
the agents of development to keep their eyes open; and 2) to represent the interests and the
discontent of those people passed over by the new orders created by economic progress. Does
critique, by playing these roles, heighten maldevelopment or underdevelopment? It depends. It
depends from which lens one chooses to look through. If one is convinced that the way forward
is through the modernist route or the revolutionary road, which are both wrought with
exploitations and sacrifices, then indeed, post development is an impediment. But if one is
concerned with the journey, the passengers, the view from the dashboard, the vehicle thats
supposed to bring you to the destination, and the crossroads, perhaps the critiques of
development shall serve as the compass to bring us there. The latter will be a slow process, but
as Manuel Castells puts it, we are going slowly, because we are going far (2011). This will be
different from the quick fixes the conventional development practitioners continue to prescribe
and majority of the world continues to follow.
Critique has to encourage the rethinking of development. I have to say in this part, critical
thinkers have a lot of work to do. And with over half a century of the discourses history, this is
easier said than done. I recognize the discourse and its conscious and unconscious perpetrators
resistance to new knowledge, much less to critique that are supposed to make them more
objective. And when people from within take their time off from the workaholic office
environments to soul search, they are, more often than not, disillusioned. There are others too,
like Joseph Stiglitz, whose dream it is to make their work work for those whose lives
development promises to make better. To quote from his book Making Globalization Work,
I felt I had a unique perspective to bring to the debate, having seen policies being formulated
from inside the White House, and from inside the World Bank, where we worked alongside
developing countries to help develop strategies to enhance growth and reduce poverty. Equally
important, as an economic theorist, I spent almost forty years working to understand the
strengths, and limitations, of the market economy.

My research had not only cast doubt on the validity of general claims about market efficiency but
also on some of the fundamental beliefs underlying globalization, such as the notion that free
trade is necessarily welfare enhancing.

How much of these insights are actually plowed back into practice within development
institutions remains a point of further inquiry. My guess is that, these are merely coopted and
neutralized by those with power and influence (Gardner & Lewis 1996: 163). Those poor
concepts simply slip into empty rhetoric to serve the interest of the status quo (ibid). While
we can argue that development has changed over the past five decades, the changes have been
cosmetic by far.
If there are ethical underpinnings in the works of Escobar, it lies in the rejection of the
development discoursethat systemic space which reserves a room for technology and
science, economic resources, and statistics, but none for people and their voices, cultures and
interests. I will say the arguments against development may be hinged on pluralist, liberal
ethics, which holds that values are many and conflicting, and no one life can include them all,
or make the interpersonally correct choice among them (Gaus and Courtland 2011)not the
technocrats, not the politicians.
Critics may be too busy deconstructing their subject (i.e., development), and by doing so, they
are inevitably arguing for diversity, for difference. And if the development discourse is to be
challenged, Escobar proposes that underdevelopment must be conceptualized in different
ways. Understanding the history of the investment of the Third World by Western forms of
knowledge and power is a way to shift the ground somewhat so that we can start to look at
that materiality with different eyes and with different eyes and in different categories
(1995:92). I guess this is the closest thing to a proposal that I can get from Escobar. Then,
Gardner and Lewis may be right to point out of the need to continue begging the development
practitioners to keep their eyes open. But even this, perhaps, is too much to ask.
Post development, for all the criticisms that it espoused, never really suggested that
humanitarian aid in regions that thrive on it be stopped. Hardly did I understand critiques of
development to mean that aid organizations retreat from the South, especially in Sub-Saharan
Africa. Escobar or Shiva did not suggest leaving the starving Somalians to the vultures. In
conditions of hunger or extreme poverty, where making sense of ones own strickenness and
dreams of a better life is remotely conceivable, humanitarian aid workers have the moral
responsibility to speak on their behalf. In here, I would like to set a distinction between the
technocrats and the workers on the ground, who have close encounters with people in the
course of their work. I guess what is being asked is that the task of looking after the welfare of
the poor population need not be based on narrow assumptions.
I guess the critiques are meant, foremostly, for those who craft development plans and projects
behind desks, in the comfort of their air-conditioned offices. Critiques are meant for those who
spend their lifetimes in the universities, helping to shape the minds of the next generation, so
that the mistakes prevailing at present will become history in the near future. Critiques are
meant for those who, like me, struggle against cynicism every day, armed only by what we read
and see and perceive, never really knowing whether we get it right or not.
Tomorrow a new set of critiques will be written to posit another level of contestation: post-
upon post- upon post- they never end.
Perhaps the production of critique is a career in itself, in the same way that a few development
experts and technocrats have built a career upon the poverty and hunger of more than a billion
people. To me critiques present a new way of seeing, of perceiving social phenomena, making
me wonder, as a development agent, how these alternative knowledge can make my work
more meaningful to the lives of people. But do the scholars who have written all these even
care about the dilemma that their critiques have brought to my work? Is this their intention? Or
did they just want to get published. I hope not, because that would be unfair.
At the beginning of this semester I wrote that perhaps a dose of development ethics can help
me find my bearing. Today is our last day, and I felt like my perspective has become all the
more muddled up, forever feeling incompetent, forever in search of meaning. As I problematize
my position, technocrats are still doing their jobs, poverty continues to lurk our streets, fields,
and coasts, and people remain excluded in the discourse that so concerns them.
Alternatives are slowly showing up for the future though. Discontents of people are growing, as
evidenced by the many unorganized movements of people who have been silenced by the
discourse for the longest time. They are revolting against corporate greed, among others. Lately
I have read about the call for ethical revolution in Madrid. This is interesting. They are many,
and now they want to be counted; they want to occupy a wider public space. Joseph Stiglitz
said that when there are alternatives and choices, democratic political processes should be at
the center of the decision makingnot technocrats. I wonder how development is going to
reinvent itself in response to this.
As always, peoples lives and livelihoods are on the line. That I question whether or not I am
authorized to treat them in terms of numbers and graphs, and the products of their toil in
terms of aggregate volumes of yield, and ultimately earn a living out of this is my ethical
preoccupation. Although I am often led to over-thinking, having encountered post-
development is still a gift that only serves to widen my perspective. Perhaps, the prefix post can
also serve to monitor ourselves as our perspectives change. How about post-self?

By now the sound of the threshers are out. The farmers have left the fields; only the sound of
cicadas fills the humid air.




References:
Escobar, A 1995, The making and unmaking of the third world through development, in The post-
development reader, edited by Majid Rahnema with Victoria Bawtree, Zed Books.
Escobar, A 2000, Beyond the search for a paradigm? post-development and beyond, The Society of
International Development, Sage Publication, London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi.
Gardner, K and Lewis, D 1996, Anthropology, development and the post-modern challenge, Pluto Press,
London, UK.
Gaus, Gerald and Courtland, Shane D., "Liberalism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring
2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2011/entries/liberalism/>.
Stiglitz, J 2006, Making globalization work, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, USA.