'Development = Good Change' (Robert Chambers) Discuss.

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Lamin Khadar May 2004                                                         Social Antropolgy Essay (2) 1Bh

‘Development = Good Change’ (Robert Chambers) Discuss.

It is never wise to become trapped discussing semantics when embarking on an essay question such as this one. Nonetheless, in this particular case, I feel that some further clarification in this respect is entirely necessary. The word development can have several implications. For the sake of this essay however, I will understand it to denote welcomed progress in the political, economic or social situation in an area of the world caused by growth, change or elaboration. From this definition, the word development implies something good. But mere implication of something good is not enough for the word to be equal with the phrase good change. To use mathematical metaphors, all the equations on one side of the equal sign must add up and be equal to all the equations on the other side. In this case however, a few sums don’t add up, making the equation unbalanced, and hence one side is not equal the other. I intend to demonstrate that this does not imply that it will never be equal to the other, but simply that it does not now, and will not until these faulty calculations have been attended to and rectified. In this essay I intend to examine these ‘faulty calculations’, or in other words, what I see as the three foremost manners in which what is ostensibly called development can in reality cause vast amounts of damage.

Exported Development and Ignorance in Relation to Historical and Social Differences

The most serious of these faulty calculations is what I call ‘exported development’. This is where global organization controlled and run by developed countries, determine how developing countries need to develop and then set about developing them in their own images. Any attempt to construct a list of the most essential properties of human existence which can then in turn be used as a guide to development is bound to enshrine certain understandings of being human and devalue others (Nussbaum 1998). In most cases the understandings being enshrined will be those of the majority. Hence, cultural and historical differences in the understanding of human life by the minority will be neglected. In order to demonstrate this I would like to consider how the World Trade Organization (WTO), in the words of Noam Chomsky (Chomsky 1999), ‘exports American free-market values’ under the guise of development, and in doing so causes harm rather than welcomed change.

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In 1996 the WTO came to an agreement on telecommunications. The agreement empowered the WTO to go inside the boarders of the 70 countries who signed it and privatise the telecommunications industries so that the countries in question could achieve economic development (Silverman 1997). In reality what happened was that large U.S. telecommunications corporations moved into countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America creating global oligopolies, causing locals to loose their jobs and granting only marginal if any advantages at all for the local populations. The proposed chief advantage this agreement was to give to the populations of the ...

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