Development for whom? Beyond the developed/underdeveloped dichotomy
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Development for whom? Beyond the developed/ underdeveloped dichotomy Felipe Antunes de Oliveira1
© Springer Nature Limited 2019
Abstract The developed/underdeveloped dichotomy is the starting point of mainstream theories of development. Based on a theoretical framework inherited from modernisation theories, they represent development as the process through which productive structures in the Global South are transformed following the footsteps of the Global North. Dependency theories productively challenged this linear conception of development, but failed to provide a consistent alternative because of their incapacity to move beyond the developed/underdeveloped dichotomy. In this article, I claim that Trotsky’s concept of uneven and combined development finally indicates a way to think of development beyond the developed/underdeveloped dichotomy. Through analogies with the work of the Dutch artist M. C. Escher, I contrast the concept of uneven and combined development with competing views of development to show both that it makes better sense of particular development trajectories and that it offers a better theoretical base for political action. By stressing the necessarily perspectived character of development, the concept of uneven and combined development makes it possible to ask a crucial question often overlooked: development for whom? Keywords Dependency theory · Development studies · Escher · Trotsky · Uneven and combined development
Development for whom? Development is a matter of perspective. Material changes in productive structures are far from socially neutral. They emerge from social relations—in their intra- and inter-societal forms—and they reshuffle class and international relations as a consequence. The black-and-white opposition between development and underdevelopment, therefore, often conceals more than it reveals. Instead of assessing particular countries’ successes or failures according to a predefined standard of development, the critical question to be asked is: development for whom? * Felipe Antunes de Oliveira F.antunes‑de‑[email protected] 1
University of Sussex, Brighton, UK Vol.:(0123456789)
F. Antunes de Oliveira
This question is overlooked by mainstream economic theories of development. Largely based on a linear view of development inherited from modernisation theory, they end up reinforcing a Eurocentric world-historic view. Development is perceived as the undisputed goal of each and every country. Even when some form of international competition is recognised, the ultimate presupposition is that ‘underdeveloped’ nations can catch-up with ‘developed’ nations by adopting the right set of policies. The fact that the overwhelming majority of nations have so far failed to do so is dismissed as their own fault—a discourse sometimes seasoned with thinly disguised doses of racism and cultural colonialism. Genealogies of the concept of development have convincingly revealed its problematic origins in the modern idea of progress (Nisbet 1969; Wallerstein 1984; Escobar 1995;
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