Article Review

Jane Smith HIST 447-O1 Article Review, Feb. 15, 2020 

The voices calling for an end to development are becoming more numerous and audible. Arturo Escobar (1991: 679)

Development as Discourse: Is Development Destroying the Third World?

Escobar, Arturo. 1991 "Anthropology and the Development Encounter: The Making and Marketing of Development Anthropology." American Ethnologist 18 (4): 658-682.

    Few modern ideas in economics or international studies have engendered as much controversy as that of "development." There are myriad ways in which development has been conceived -- from early modernization theory to basic needs approaches to contemporary neoliberalism. Arturo Escobar, an anthropologist at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, is not satisfied merely to take potshots at one or another of these formulations nor to offer an alternative model; rather it is the very concept -- or in his term, "discourse" -- of development that needs to be attacked. Drawing his inspiration from French philosopher Michael Foucault, Escobar argues that development policies are mechanisms for spreading Western hegemony. "Development has relied exclusively on one knowledge system, namely, the modern Western one. The dominance of this knowledge system has dictated the marginalization and disqualification of non-Western knowledge systems"[footnoteRef:1] (p. 673).     Typically, development has been conceived as a state-level phenomena, based on policies instituted at the level of the state. However, development anthropology, which is often equated with applied anthropology, usually focuses on the community level. According to Escobar, whatever anthropologists' good intentions might be, they cannot help but impose the discourse of the West, with its capitalist and technological solutions. Even conceptionalizing the Third World in terms of "problems" and "issues" to be "solved" by external authorities imposes upon indigenous cultures. [1: Arturo Escobar, Anthropology and the Development Encounter: The Making and Marketing of Development Anthropology." American Ethnologist 18 (4): 673.]

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