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Arturo Escobar is the Kenan Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. His most recent book is Territories of Difference.

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"An intelligent and thorough overview of the rise of the concept of 'development' . . . . [This book] represents the best of interdisciplinary work in cultural studies and speaks to central debates across the permeable borders of anthropology, economics, history, sociology, and development studies."--Orin Starn, Duke University

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Encountering Development

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contents

Preface..................................................................................................viiChapter 1 Introduction: Development and the Anthropology of Modernity...................................3Chapter 2 The Problematization of Poverty: The Tale of Three Worlds and Development.....................21Chapter 3 Economics and the Space of Development: Tales of Growth and Capital...........................55Chapter 4 The Dispersion of Power: Tales of Food and Hunger.............................................102Chapter 5 Power and Visibility: Tales of Peasants, Women, and the Environment...........................154Notes....................................................................................................227References...............................................................................................249Index....................................................................................................275

Chapter One

There is a sense in which rapid economic progress is impossible without painful adjustments. Ancient philosophies have to be scrapped; old social institutions have to disintegrate; bonds of caste, creed and race have to burst; and large numbers of persons who cannot keep up with progress have to have their expectations of a comfortable life frustrated. Very few communities are willing to pay the full price of economic progress. —United Nations, Department of Social and Economic Affairs, Measures for the Economic Development of Underdeveloped Countries, 1951

In his inaugural address as president of the United States on January 20, 1949, Harry Truman announced his concept of a "fair deal" for the entire world. An essential component of this concept was his appeal to the United States and the world to solve the problems of the "underdeveloped areas" of the globe.

More than half the people of the world are living in conditions approaching misery. Their food is inadequate, they are victims of disease. Their economic life is primitive and stagnant. Their poverty is a handicap and a threat both to them and to more prosperous areas. For the first time in history humanity possesses the knowledge and the skill to relieve the suffering of these people. ... I believe that we should make available to peace-loving peoples the benefits of our store of technical knowledge in order to help them realize their aspirations for a better life.... What we envisage is a program of development based on the concepts of democractic fair dealing.... Greater production is the key to prosperity and peace. And the key to greater production is a wider and more vigorous application of modern scientific and technical knowledge. (Truman [1949] 1964)

The Truman doctrine initiated a new era in the understanding and management of world affairs, particularly those concerning the less economically accomplished countries of the world. The intent was quite ambitious: to bring about the conditions necessary to replicating the world over the features that characterized the "advanced" societies of the time—high levels of industrialization and urbanization, technicalization of agriculture, rapid growth of material production and living standards, and the widespread adoption of modern education and cultural values. In Truman's vision, capital, science, and technology were the main ingredients that would make this massive revolution possible. Only in this way could the American dream of peace and abundance be extended to all the peoples of the planet.

This dream was not solely the creation of the United States but the result of the specific historical conjuncture at the end of the Second World War. Within a few years, the dream was universally embraced by those in power. The dream was not seen as an easy process, however; predictably perhaps, the obstacles perceived ahead contributed to consolidating the mission. One of the most influential documents of the period, prepared by a group of experts convened by the United Nations with the objective of designing concrete policies and measures "for the economic development of underdeveloped countries," put it thus:

There is a sense in which rapid economic progress is impossible without painful adjustments. Ancient philosophies have to be scrapped; old social institutions have to disintegrate; bonds of cast, creed and race have to burst; and large numbers of persons who cannot keep up with progress have to have their expectations of a comfortable life frustrated. Very few communities are willing to pay the full price of economic progress. (United Nations, Department of Social and Economic Affairs [1951], 15)

The report suggested no less than a total restructuring of "underdeveloped" societies. The statement quoted earlier might seem to us today amazingly ethnocentric and arrogant, at best naive; yet what has to be explained is precisely the fact that it was uttered and that it made perfect sense. The statement exemplified a growing will to transform drastically two-thirds of the world in the pursuit of the goal of material prosperity and economic progress. By the early 1950s, such a will had become hegemonic at the level of the circles of power.

This book tells the story of this dream and how it progressively turned into a nightmare. For instead of the kingdom of abundance promised by theorists and politicians in the 1950s, the discourse and strategy of development produced its opposite: massive underdevelopment and impoverishment, untold exploitation and oppression. The debt crisis, the Sahelian famine, increasing poverty, malnutrition, and violence are only the most pathetic signs of the failure of forty years of development. In this way, this book can be read as the history of the loss of an illusion, in which many genuinely believed. Above all, however, it is about how the "ThirdWorld" has been produced by the discourses and practices of development since their inception in the early post–World War II period.

ORIENTALISM, AFRICANISM, AND DEVELOPMENTALISM

Until the late 1970s, the central stake in discussions on Asia, Africa, and Latin America was the nature of development. As we will see, from the economic development theories of the 1950s to the "basic human needs approach" of the 1970s—which emphasized not only economic growth per se as in earlier decades but also the distribution of the benefits of growth—the main preoccupation of theorists and politicians was the kinds of development that needed to be pursued to solve the social and economic problems of these parts of the world. Even those who opposed the prevailing capitalist strategies were obliged to couch their critique in terms of the need for development, through concepts such as "another development," "participatory development," "socialist development," and the like. In short, one could criticize a given approach and propose modifications or improvements accordingly, but the fact of development itself, and the need for it, could not be...