English Publications

Alternate Discourses on Development: Monograph Series

By ci ⋅ October 20, 2008 ⋅ ⋅ Post a comment

“Development has become the grand strategy through which the transformation of the not-yet-too-rational Latin-American/Third World subjectivity is to be achieved. In this way, longstanding cultural practices and meanings – as well as the social relations in which they are embedded – are altered. The consequences of this are enormous, to the extent that the very basis of community aspirations and desires is modified. Thus the effect of the introduction of development has to be seen not only in terms of its social and economic impact, but also, and perhaps more importantly, in relation to the cultural meanings and practices they upset or modify.”

Arturo Escobar, 1988 in Power and Visibility: Development and the Intervention of and Management of the Third World.

Post-Tsunami relief in eastern Sri Lanka. Photo: R. L. Stirrat

The dominant development practice, the discourse that legitimizes and rationalizes it, the knowledge, models and agents for development mostly emanate from the global north. This is a formulation that Sri Lankan politicians, civil servants, unimaginative academics, many vocal civil society activists and members of the public have also gullibly gulped down over the past century or so. The issue here is not the fact that many countries in South Asia, including Sri Lanka, need development aid and sometimes some good advice. The problem is that, in many situations, decision-makers do not make any serious, deliberated choice with regard to what kind of development is needed in a particular country. Instead, the process is mostly one of meekly awaiting and eventually welcoming the imposition of development approaches and paradigms from elsewhere. This is certainly the case in Sri Lanka. To be sure, Sri Lankans hear all the right buzzwords – participatory decision-making and bottom-up approach aid architecture and so on. But behind this attractive façade, the ‘beneficiaries’ of such ‘enlightened’ development projects are in real terms perceived as without a sense of agency.  In Sri Lanka, and in many other parts of South Asia, people are entrapped in the hegemonic development discourse and dominant development paradigms without even realizing it. At the same time, the diktats of this discourse are often uncritically accepted as what ‘the people’ truly want. In any event, a serious critique of development will not come from the main development agencies or the contemporary development specialists. It is in this context, and to address this absence that the monograph series was developed in 2007.

The series editors are: Sasanka Perera (University of Colombo and Colombo Institute, I.V. Edirisinghe (University of Colombo) and Tudor Silva (University of Peradeniya).  The following issues have been published so far:     

Mercenaries, Missionaries and Misfits: Representations of Development Personnel by R.L. Stirrat (ISBN 955-1493-07-9)

Parochial Cosmopolitanism and the Power of Nostalgia: Some Manifestations of Development Practice by R.L. Stirrat and D. Rajak (ISBN 955-1493-08-7)