Introduction to Development Theory

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Introduction to Development Theory

• AI2201 - Lecture 1,
• Massimo De Angelis

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Two questions

• Q1 What is development theory?
• Q2 What is development?
• The two questions are related.
• The definition of the object of the
  theory/discourse depends on the theory/discourse

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Q1. Development theory

• Q1.1 Development theory as a form of social
  theorizing.
• Q1.2 Development theory and conceptions of
  social change
• Q1.3 Development theory and the question of
  agency (who are the actors)

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Q1.1 The theorists commitments

• ST is founded on 4 commitments
• Ontological (and phenomenological)
• Claims on what the world is and how it manifests
  itself
• Epistemological
• Claims on what knowledge is and how it is
  produced.
• Methodological
• Claims on what are the methods to be used to
  produce knowledge
• Practical
• Claims on what are the practical implications of
  the theory (e.g. policy implications, business
  implications, political implications . . .)

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Q1.1 Epistemologys classic dichotomy

• Empiricism gt Knowledge as essentially the
  product of experience
• social science must be like a natural science
• Concerned to describe how things are in fact
• Rationalism gt Knowledge as essentially the
  product of thought.
• social science is a variety of social philosophy
• Interested in understanding patterns of culture.
• Dialectic between facts and thought
• you construct facts depending on rules of
  explusion/inclusions (values)
• you think of patterns of culture on the basis of
  facts

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Q1.1 Social theorizing the bottom line

• All practices of social theorizing (ST) are forms
  of narratives, i.e. story telling (st).
• All forms of st are
• self-referential (i.e. their narrative
  construction refers, explicitly or, more often,
  implicitly, to given premises)
• Predicated on inter-subjective agreements and
  conceptual grids gt The given premises are shared
  among a community of scholars/actors
• Values (rules of inclusion-exclusion or goods
  and bads) are embedded in inter-subjective
  agreements

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Q1.2 Development theory and different
conceptions of social change

• Two basic metaphors
• continuity (evolution) and rupture (revolution)
• evolution
• Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer
• Metaphors such as
• Survival of the fittest,
• inreasing complexity (from traditioal to modern
  social forms,
• Unitary direction of change
• revolution
• Karl Marx and Ivan Illich Lenin
• Interplay of class interests through history
  provides motor of changes
• History is history of class struggle
• to be truly reformist I.e. evolutionary one
  has to be a revolutionary (Toni Negri)

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Q 1.3 Ethic of change progress

• The notion of progress
• For the liberal-democratic
• Analysis of society within a general evolutionary
  framework
• Evoked model of man as the consumer.
• Humankind acts on the basis of selfish wants
• Historical change is implausible and
  unintelligible
• For the radical-democratic
• man as the doer
• Humankind act in light of changing social goals
• Historical change is plausible and intelligible

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Q. 2. What counts as progress or development?

• Liberal market discourse
• Progress economic growth
• Send the experts to implement free market
  policies
• Represents the view of the hard core of
  development experts (mostly neoclassical
  economists working in IFIs or UN)
• Social market discourse
• Progress is equated with planned/ordered control
• Common sense view of development among other-
  than-economists experts
• Often work in association with first group
• Radical democratic discourse
• Progress must be defined from below
• Range of critiques of official development
  discourses
• link to social struggle and bottom up
  alternatives.