Development from Within: Diversity, Freedom, and Agency Driven Path for Sri Lanka

Abstract

As spelled out in the introduction and the opening article of this volume, both supporters and direct opponents of development share a similar notion. They conceive it at national scale, within an international context, with little or no room for play. Yet as evident in the above articles, development at people‘s level is diverse. Constructed in relation to particular contexts and constraints, people have individual goals and objectives, and each journey is different. It is important to ask: How can politicians, policy makers, development specialists, and planners acknowledge, accommodate, and/or support diverse journeys without homogenizing and/or suppressing this field of difference? Homogenization of communities, although never fully achievable, is imposed from outside (i.e., the state, the market, the professionals, and large-scale processes such as colonialism and globalization). Located within the European capitalist thought, the hegemonic development paradigm privileges the economy, one that is largely understood through mathematics. (Buarque 1993) According to this worldview, wealth and national economic growth is a prerequisite to a - good life for citizens.