Development and Patronage: Selected articles from Development in Practice (Development in Practice Readers Series) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0855983760 ISBN 13: 9780855983765

Verlag: Oxfam, 1997

Inhaltsangabe

'Aid thus becomes a means by which unequal relationships of power are maintained and patronage is fostered.' This reader examines these issues, which are currently being debated in development circles, through a selection of articles by contributors from North and South.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Melakou Tegegn was born in Ethiopia, has an MA in development studies and a PhD in sociology. He has worked for international NGOs such as El Taller, Panos Ethiopia and the Nile Basin Discourse. He is currently involved in the human rights issues of indigenous peoples at the UN and African Unions levels.

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Development and Patronage

Selected Articles from Development in Practice

By Melakou Tegegn, Deborah Eade

Oxfam Publishing

Copyright © 1997 Oxfam (UK and Ireland)
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-85598-376-5

Contents

Preface Deborah Eade, 4, 
Development and patronage Melakou Tegegn, 1, 
African libraries and the consumption and production of knowledge Paul Tiyambe Zeleza, 14, 
People's empowerment from the people's perspective Karunawathie Menike, 25, 
Building partnerships between Northern and Southern NGOs Alan Fowler, 31, 
The evaporation of gender policies in the patriarchal cooking pot Sara Hlupekile Longwe, 41, 
Framing participation: development projects, professionals, and organisations David Craig and Doug Porter, 50, 
Sustainable development at the sharp end: field-worker agency in a participatory project Cecile Jackson, 58, 
North-South relations and the question of aid Mustafa Barghouthi, 68, 
Collaboration with the South: agents of aid or solidarity? Firoze Manji, 72, 
Partners and beneficiaries: questioning donors Richard Moseley-Williams, 75, 
NGOs and social change: agents or facilitators? Jenny Pearce, 82, 
On being evaluated: tensions and hopes Movimento de Organizacao Comunitaria, 88, 
Sustainability is not about money!: the case of the Belize Chamber of Commerce and Industry DeryckR Brown, 91, 
The wrong path: the World Bank's Country Assistance Strategy for Mexico Carlos Heredia and Mary Purcell, 96, 
Annotated bibliography, 100, 
Addresses of publishers and other organisations, 110, 

CHAPTER 1

Development and patronage

Melakou Tegegn

The predominance and consequences of globalisation 'from above' compel us to raise fundamental questions, the answers to which (with the further implication that these are 'universally' applicable) have long been taken for granted: questions that could not and cannot be answered through the prism of old paradigms, questions which do not even interest the powerful, for they are 'less curious than the powerless ... because they think they have all the answers. And they do. But not to the questions that the powerless are asking' (Kumar, 1996:2). Yet the paradigm and practice of the powerful still prevail: the chariot of modernisation and industrialisation is galloping ahead at an alarming speed, the market has broken through the walls of the previously impenetrable fortresses of nature and of indigenous peoples: the Amazon, the Mekong, and now the Nile. The world has surrendered to the universal mode, to the dominant paradigm and discourse on development. And it is precisely the validity of this discourse that we will explore here: its ethics, and whether or not it answers the many questions that humanity is raising.

The dominant discourse

The dominant paradigm on development is based on the science and technology whose power and influence was made possible through military might, colonisation of the South, domination and occupation, violence against women, and destruction of nature and the environment. Very few people question whether this science is ethical and natural, which is why the dominant discourse on development and its various related facets also goes unquestioned. The very framework of our intellectual development, which has been informed and shaped by the same dominant discourse, does not permit that. The South has also yielded to this discourse, this world-view or cosmology. As Kumar aptly put it (ibid., p.3):

The 'South' has, for too long, accepted a world view that has hegemonised its cultures, decided its development model, defined its aesthetic categories, outlined its military face, determined its science and technology, its nuclear options. A cosmology constructed of what has come to be known as 'universal' values; a cosmology whose philosophical, ideological and political roots were embedded in the specific historical context of the culture of the West.

Without necessarily implying that these are the antithesis of the dominant paradigm, the corollary is that the existence of various knowledge systems — sciences if you like — must be recognised, along with the acceptance that Northern science is just one such knowledge system, and not the science, the paradigm, and the discourse.

The subject in the process of social development must be people, for the essence of development must be to improve people's standard of living. A change for the better first of all implies the consent of the people. What constitutes a better standard of living must be defined by the people themselves. However, people have until now often been dragged into a definition and measurement of the process of social development, using the yardstick of Northern values. Consequently, people's own social and traditional organisations have been seen as archaic, traditional values as backward, and their knowledge systems as 'unscientific'. People were expected and even taught to abandon their traditional organisational systems, their values, and so on. In short, changing their identities was the precondition for the kind of 'development' prescribed by the North. Thus, people's authentic institutions or associations — the family, councils of elders, religious institutions, credit associations, their values and customs — were (and still are) supposed to be replaced by alien 'modern' forms.

Development revisited

What, then, is development? What does it mean? Who defines it? What are the criteria used to define development or under-development? And what are the yardsticks (and whose are they?) used to determine whether or not a given society is 'developed' or 'under-developed'? These are crucial questions that urgently need to be raised at this historical conjuncture, in a world whose very existence is threatened by the alarming way in which its ecology and environment are being destroyed.

Another factor is the collapse of the 'development' models that were attempted in the South, compounded by the post-Cold War social amnesia in the North. Since 1949, when the term 'under-development' entered the official discourse, development has always been one-sidedly understood to mean economic or material growth. The UN and other international bodies, as well as political establishments and academic institutions, took this skewed definition for granted. Some went further still, pointing to the 'indicators of development', and taking GNP as the principal, if not the only, such indicator. In a nutshell, development = modernisation = industrialisation.

The Northern notion of development has characteristics that derive from its own historical evolution — starting with the industrial revolution and colonial expansion — and so has cultural and ethical foundations that are peculiar to the North. This evolution and the resulting cultural and ethical foundations are either absent from, or quite different in, the South. Prior to colonialism, Southern peoples had various political, social, and economic organisations, each based on their own cultural and ethical foundations. They differ significantly from those of the North. In the colonial era, however, Southern identities were forced to change in order to satisfy the economic and political motives of the colonial powers. In a compelling deconstruction of the Northern discourse on development, Gustavo Esteva notes:

When the metaphor returned to the vernacular, it acquired a violent colonising power, soon...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Oxfam
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1997
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0855983760
• ISBN 13: 9780855983765
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 114
• Herausgeber: Tegegn Melakou
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: preigu GmbH & Co. KG; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; Niedersachsen; 49078; Deutschland