After post-development

Abstract

Along with ‘anti-development’ and ‘beyond development’, post-development is a radical reaction to the dilemmas of development. Post-development focuses on the underlying premises and motives of development; what sets it apart from other critical approaches is that it rejects development. The question is whether this is a tenable and fruitful position. Taken up first in this article are major overt positions of post-development—the problematisation of poverty, the portrayal of development as Westernisation, and the critique of modernism and science. The argument then turns to discourse analysis of development; it is argued that, in post-development, discourse analysis from a methodology turns into an ideology. Next the difference between alternative development and ‘alternatives to development’ is examined. The reasons why this difference is made out to be so large are, in my interpretation, anti-managerialism and dichotomic thinking. The article closes with a discussion of the politics of post-development and a critical assessment.