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.
Highlights
As spelled out in the introduction and the opening article of this volume, both supporters and direct opponents of development share a similar notion
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
Politicians, policy makers, development practitioners, and planners have a way of focusing on economic growth, pet projects, and personal interests
Summary
People‘s freedom to go wherever they want safely and in a timely manner, without harassment, is an important indicator of development. The conductors are not content until they fill the bus, but busses have infinite amount of space for them They keep squeezing new passengers in, making those on board press their bodies against the others.‘ The conductor constantly yells: “Issarahata yanna, issarahata yanna, issarahata yanna, lang wenna, lang wenna, lang wenna” (literally: go forward// and get close//). Especially in the mad rush to get off (before the bus stops), passengers forget change. As long as public transportation is seen as inferior to private transportation, its riders are perceived as low-quality human beings who are not entitled to have the bus stop for them to get on and off, to ask for change, to travel without getting touched and groped, and with no blasting music, there is no development. Mainstream infrastructure projects and transportation studies of which the context is the West and the middle-classes miss these local issues
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