Lecture 10: Approaches to Development: Power, Scale and Agency

Lecture Outline:

1. Images of Development

2. Development geographies

3. Measurements of development

4. Power

5. Scale

6. Agencies in Development

7. Conclusions & preparation for next week

1. Images of Development

• Urbanisation

• Financial services

• Export Agriculture

• Education

• Access to clean drinking water

• Health facilities

• Infrastructures

• “Traditional” cultural practices

• Car Ownership

• Freedom of political protest

Development’s dimensions:

• Economic

• Standard of Living

• Political & Justice

• Social/Cultural

• Environmental

2. Development Geographies

• Brandt Line (Brandt report 1980): Idea of Global North and Global South, usually in relation to colonial processes. Commissioned by the UN to help map out inequality or patterns of inequality.

3. Measurements of Development

- Gross Domestic Product (GDP): Measures the value of all goods and services produced within a particular country

- Gross National Product (GNP): Value of all goods and services claimed by residents of a particular country regardless of where the production took place.

- Gross National Income (GNI):

Calculation of the Human Development Index (0-100)

4. Power in Development:

Questions presented in determining power in development:

1. Who gets to decide what development actually is?

2. Who gets to decide what should be done about development? - how? where? and when?

3. Who is involved in organising wider contexts within which development takes place - from the global economic system, to the political structure of a country or region etc.

‘[I]deas of the modern are most commonly defined through tier opposition to the old and the traditional’ Therefore this leads to the idea of modern being synonymous with newness and modernity and a new epoch of history where the formation characteristics of this period will be valued. Such as Economic, social, political and cultural factors -Dombroski 2024 p.1015

Postcolonial Perspectives:

• Development based on Western/Northern norms

• Stereotypes

• Sweeping generalisations

5. Scales of Development:

1. At what scale do we look at development?

2. Do certain definitions of development make more sense at certain scales?

3. At what scale should development interventions occur?

6. Agents in Development:

• Individuals

• Households

• Communities

• Governments

• Non-governmental organisations

• Multilateral organisations

• Private sector:

  • TNCs and big corporations in general will have more revenue than certain coutries such as Kenya and Mali

Development is ideological not neutral.