Geographies of development an introduction to development studies, 4th edition

Global divisions: The North and South 53.7 Oxfams campaign against IMF policies including SAPs 105 Post-colonial growth theory 11 Global unevenness: Gross National Income per 3.8 An over

ROUTLE

Geographies of

Development

Now in its fourth edition, Geographies o f Development: An Introduction to Development Studies remains a core,

balanced and comprehensive introductory textbook for students of development studies, development geography and related fields This clear and concise text encourages critical engagement by integrating theory alongside practice and related key topics throughout It demonstrates informatively that ideas concerning development have been many and varied and highly contested - varying from time to time and from place to place

Clearly written and accessible for students who have no prior knowledge of development, the book provides the basics in terms of a geographical approach to development: what the situation is, where, when and why Over 200 maps, charts, tables, textboxes and pictures break up the text and offer alternative ways of showing the information The text is further enhanced by a range of pedagogical features: chapter outlines, case studies, key thinkers, critical reflections, key points and summaries, discussion topics and further reading

Geographies of Development continues to be an invaluable introductory text not only for geography students, but

also anyone in area studies, international studies and development studies

Robert Potter was Professor of Human Geography at the University of Reading, UK

Tony Binns is Professor of Geography at the University of Otago, New Zealand

Jennifer A Elliott is Visiting Researcher in Geography at the University of Brighton, UK

Etienne Nel is a Professor of Geography at the University of Otago, New Zealand

David W Smith was Professor of Economic Geography at the University of Liverpool, UK

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First edition published by Pearson Education Limited 1999

Third edition published by Routledge 2008

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Names: Potter, Robert B., author.

Title: Geographies o f developm ent: an introduction to development studies / Robert Potter, [and four others].

Description: Fourth edition | Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, N Y :

Routledge, 2018 | Includes bibliographical references and index Identifiers: LCCN 2017023637| ISBN 9781138794290

(hardback : alk paper) | ISBN 9781138794306 (p b k : alk paper) | ISBN 9781315759319 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Economic development | Economic geography | Human geography.

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This book is dedicated to

Rob Potter

An inspirational colleague and a great friend

(1950- 2014)

3 Theories and strategies of development 87

4 Globalisation, development and underdevelopment 141

P a r t II D e v e lo p m e n t in p r a c tic e : c o m p o n e n ts o f d e v e lo p m e n t 1 9 5

5 People in the development process 197

6 Resources and the environment 251

P O g f i l ©

1.1 AmartyaSen 20

1.2 Mahatma Gandhi 24

1.3 Rural hawker and child in Guyana 25

1.4 People making a living, Old Delhi 39

1.5 Nepal rebuild 45

2.1 Brighton Royal Pavilion 59

2.2 Tents for the colonies 60

2.3 Portuguese Church: Macao 65

2.4 Cape Dutch house 66

3.6 Andre Gunder Frank 118

3.7 ‘Organisation for Rural Development’ poster,

3.10 Resonances of postmodernity: tourists and

members of a traditional ‘Tuk’ band in

Barbados 135

3.11 Images of development ideology in Cuba:

‘Revolution Yes!’ 137

4.1 A380 Airbus‘double-decker’ aircraft 149

4.2 Import substitution industrialisation in Burkina

Faso: the Brakina brewery 158

4.3 Shanghai Free Trade Zone 160

4.4 A world city - Cape Town 178

4.5 McDonald’s, Shanghai 184

4.6 James Tobin 189

5.1 Thomas Malthus 1995.2 ‘One-child’ poster, Guangzhou, south-eastern China 204

5.3 Children in The Gambia 2145.4 Supporting older people in Hong Kong 2185.5 Women farmers harvesting rice in The Gambia 220

5.6 Nursery school in Nepal 2235.7 Roadside HIV/AIDS poster in South Africa 2415.8 Children using a computer in Tunisia 2436.1 Accessing water in the absence of piped supplies

(a) Kathmandu, Nepal 272(b) Shaanxi Province, China 272(c) Sirajgani district, Northern Bangladesh 2726.2 Coal fired power station, China 279

6.3 Wind energy development, China 2806.4 Diamond mining, South Africa 2816.5 Gully erosion, Zimbabwe 2916.6 Dune planting to address desertification, Northern Nigeria 292

6.7 Mechanical approaches to flood protection, Bangladesh 300

6.8 Biological approaches to coastal protection: planting mangroves on Ambon Island, Indonesia 300

6.9 Smog enveloping Mexico City 3046.10 Biodiversity in New South Wales 3087.1 Repatriation of Cambodians from refugee camps in Thailand under UN protection 3217.2 World Bank headquarters in Washington 3297.3 Institutional partnerships for conservation 3387.4 Corporations committing to environmental responsibility 350

7.5 Promoting good governance in Botswana 3547.6 Contesting airport expansion, UK 3598.1 Tourist hotel, The Gambia 3808.2 Refugee camp, Bangladesh 384

8.3 Cyclists in Kunming, China 391

8.4 Crowded street, Freetown 392

8.5 Mobile phone hub, Botswana 393

8.6 Container port, Kowloon, Hong Kong 404

8.7 Regional TNC HQ in Nairobi 412

8.8 Rose-growing for export, south of Nairobi,

Kenya 415

9.1 Ulan Bator, Mongolia 436

9.2 Mathare Valley Slum, Nairobi 449

9.3 Traditional Hausa village 462

9.4 Boy with donkey conveying waste, Kano 464

9.5 Terry McGee 465

9.6 Tricycle taxi, Sri Lanka 481

9.7 Furniture production, St Lucia 482

9.8 Hawkers in Georgetown 482

9.9 Street barber, western China 483

9.10 Street traders, Johannesburg 484

9.11 Urban agriculture, Zambia 486

9.12 Kuala Lumpur housing 487

9.13 Low-income settlements, Cape Town 488

9.14 Self-help housing in Caracas 489

9.15 Low-cost housing Eastern Cape,

South Africa 490

10.1 Diversifying rural livelihoods(a) ‘Non-farm’ self-employment in mountain tourism, Imlil, Morocco 502

(b) ‘Off-farm’ wage employment, brick making, India 503

(c) ‘Off-farm’ wage employment, forest clearance for oil palm production,Indonesia 503

10.2 Ecosystem services in rural livelihoods(a) Fishing, Kisumu, Kenya 510(b) Date harvesting, Tunisia 510(c) Timber production, Guyana 510(d) Rain-fed crop production,Zimbabwe 511

10.3 Cattle being taken to Ballyera market,Niger 516

10.4 Drying cow-dung for use as fuel,India 521

10.5 Solar energy, Botswana 52210.6 Collecting firewood, Eastern Cape, South Africa 523

10.7 Women’s handicraft project, Kathmandu,Nepal 524

Global divisions: The North and South 5

3.7 Oxfams campaign against IMF policies including SAPs 105

Post-colonial growth theory 11

Global unevenness: Gross National Income per

3.8 An overview of Friedmanns core-periphery model 108

capita, 2010 12

Variation in market size: Gross National

3.9 Vances mercantile model: a simplified version 110

Global differences in Human Development

Index (HDI) scores, 2014 16

3.11 The foundations of the earliest towns in Brazil, 1500-1750 113

Changing Human Development Index scores,

1990-2014 17

3.12 The plantopolis model and its extension to the modern era 114

Development as economic growth and

development as enhancing freedoms 27

3.13 An overview of Marxist development theory 116

Falling Poverty Rates over time 31

Global differences in the reduction of extreme

3.14 Dependent relations according to the New

Internationalist 120

Buchanan’s Third World in the 1950s 40 3.16 The Iceberg Model 132

Principal processes of colonialism 55 3.17 Modernism destroying the urban fabric 134Long and short waves of colonialism 56

Phases of colonialism and imperialism 62

3.18 A graphical depiction of some common ideas about modernity and postmodernity 136Regional colonialism 63

The scramble for Africa 68

Scientific revolutions: picturing Kuhns model

of their structure 90

Development theory: a framework for this

4.1 Contrasting views of globalisation as:

(a) the homogenisation of the whole world -

or at least its cities 144(b) the conflagration of the South by the North 144

The modernisation surface for Malaya,

1895-1969 94

Tanzania in the 1970s: settlements and the

modernisation surface 95

The spread of modernisation: hypothetical

4.3 Time-space convergence and divergence:(a) the conventional projection of the Pacific 150

(b) time-space map of the Pacific based on travel times by scheduled airline in 1975 150

(a) down through the settlement system from

the largest places to the smallest places 97

4.5 Mobile phone and internet uptake, 1995-2015 153

(b) over the national territory 97

Rostow’s five-stage model of development 100

4.6 (a) Global mobile phone access by region 155(b) Global internet access by region 155

4.7 The digital divide 155

4.8 The world’s submarine cable system 156

4.9 The principal maquiladora centres on the

United States-Mexico border 160

4.10 The distribution of the main Special Economic

Zones in China 161

4.11 Reductions in transport and communications

costs over time 162

4.12 Global hourly wage rate differentials between

4.15 The world’s leading manufacturing nations

(% of world total Manufacturing Value

Added) 167

4.16 Network of world trade by region 168

4.17 FDI inflows by region 169

4.18 Map of inward and outward FDI 170

4.19 Global service production, 2014 171

4.20 The major service providing nations 172

4.21 The world’s largest TNCs, 2010 174

4.22 Toyota’s global production network, 2015 177

4.23 The contemporary system of world cities 180

4.24 Globalisation and Third World societies: Rip

Kirby airs the stereotypical argument 182

4.25 Trends in global convergence and

divergence 186

5.1 World population density, 2014 202

5.2 Demographic transition model 208

5.3 (a) Shrinking family sizes 212

(b) European countries where population is

falling 213

(c) The 6 most populous countries 213

5.4 Population pyramids for:

(a) Ghana 216

(b) UK 216

5.5 Multiple roles of women 221

5.6 (a) Levels of obesity in selected countries 232

(b) Overweight and obesity in women by

region 232

5.7 Impact of AIDS on life expectancy in five

African countries 236

5.8 (a) Population pyramid Botswana 237

(b) Population pyramid Morocco 238

6.1 Carbon transfers in world trade, "1990-2010 255

6.2 Virtual water balances and direction of gross virtual waters flows related to trade in agricultural and industrial products,1960-2005 256

6.3 (a) The nine Planetary Boundaries of the Earth 262

(b) A safe and just space for humanity 2636.4 The linkages between ecosystem services and human wellbeing 264

6.5 Global water withdrawals 2676.6 The global distribution of transboundary river and lake systems 269

6.7 Persistent gaps in water and sanitation coverage

by region, 2015(a) Population without access to improved water 271

(b) Population without access to improved sanitation 271

6.8 Global physical and economic water scarcity 275

6.9 Energy intensity versus time 2776.10 China’s imports of ores, metals and precious stones 278

6.11 Change in energy intensity worldwide and selected countries 279

6.12 Global mineral extraction in the twentieth century 281

6.13 Areas under cultivation for selected crops in tropical countries, 1960-2010 289

6.14 Debate continues over the direction of global climate change 293

6.15 Global anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions 294

(a) Annual carbon dioxide emissions 294(b) Cumulative carbon dioxide emissions 2946.16 The direct and indirect health impacts of climate change 296

6.17 The inundation of Bangladesh under proposed sea level change 299

6.18 Cumulative C 0 2 emissions, 1850-2011 3016.19 PM10 levels for selected cities by region, 2008-12 306

7.1 The UN system 3187.2 The top ten contributors to the UN budget 319

7.3 The World Bank Group 330

7.4 World Bank lending in 2015 by

(a) geographical region 331

(b) theme 331

7.5 Targeted finances for the environment and

natural resource management 2001-2011

(a) Lending commitments 337

7.7 The WTO rules against India 351

8.1 Map of Ethiopia in the 1980s 387

8.2 Estimated percentage annual growth in exports,

1965-1989 403

8.3 Province level administrative divisions

China 406

8.4 Major cities of Guangdong 407

8.5 (a) ODA to developing countries 425

(b) ODA by donor country 426

9.1 Urbanisation and economic development,

9.6 Chinas urban and rural populations 442

9.7 The world’s cities by size classes: 1990,2014 and

2030 444

9.8 Urban growth rates according to city classes,

2014 445

9.9 Megaslums by 2025 448

9.10 Causes of slum formation 449

9.11 Gini-coefficient for selected cities in the

9.15 Examples of urbanisation curves for the North and South 460

9.16 Current influences on the character of city systems 461

9.17 Main horticultural production sites, Kano 4639.18 A simplified depiction of desakota

regions within a national space-economy 4669.19 The distribution of different types of desakota regions in Asia 467

9.20 Key cities in the global economy 4699.21 The principal cities and manufacturing zone of Nigeria 475

9.22 The main components of sustainable urbanisation 477

9.23 The scale of informal sector employment in selected cities in the South 479

9.24 The informal-formal sector continuum 4819.25 Different types of low-income housing in cities

of the Global South 48810.1 The average rural livelihood in sub-Saharan Africa 506

10.2 The sustainable livelihoods framework 51310.3 The impacts of malnutrition through the life cycle 519

10.4 Population in rural areas and employment in agriculture 520

10.5 Persistent urban-rural gaps in access to water and sanitation 521

10.6 Average farm sizes worldwide, 1960-2000 52810.7 Average distribution of farms and farmland areas by land size class in Latin America and the Caribbean 529

10.8 The global area of biotech crops, 1996-2014 (million hectares) 539

1.1 Alternative interpretations of development 8

1.2 Human Development Index 17

1.3 International comparison based on HDI

ranking, 2014 18

1.4 Global differences: economic and employment

indicators 18

1.5 Global differences: population indicators 18

1.6 Eurocentricity: some principal points of

criticism 21

1.7 The MDG scorecard, 2000-2015 32

1.8 Income ratios between the richest and poorest

countries, 1820-2013 35

3.1 Stohr’s criteria for the enactment of

‘development from below’ 127

3.2 Diverse economies 132

3.3 Some polar differences between modernism

and postmodernism that have relevance to

development 135

4.1 Busiest airports by flight movement, 2014 152

4.2 Busiest airports by passenger numbers,

2014 152

4.3 Digital use and growth rates, 2015 154

4.4 Telephone and internet subscriptions by

type 154

4.5 Internet users (by %) by region, 2015 154

4.6 Types of Special Economic Zones 159

4.7 Changes in the global distribution of industrial

production in selected regions, 1948-2010 165

4.8 Changing geography of manufacturing

employment 1980-2010 in key manufacturing

regions (in millions of people) 167

4.9 The world’s 20 largest non-financial TNCs and

the top 8 TNCs in the South, 2014: ranked

according to assets 175

4.10 The world’s largest financial TNCs, 2011 176

4.11 A comparison of the world’ largest TNCs and

six middle-ranking economies, 2010 176

5.1 World population growth, 1900-2100 203

5.2 Population statistics for selected low-, middle- and high-income countries, 2012 207

5.3 Proportion of the population under 18 years old

in selected countries, 2009 2145.4 Commitment to health: access, services and resources 226

5.5 Regional HIV/AIDS statistics and features, December 2012 234

5.6 Incidence of HIV in selected countries and regions, 2010 and 2013 235

5.7 HIV/AIDS, prevalence and mortality in selected countries 235

5.8 Primary school enrolment and literacy for selected countries, 2012 242

6.1 The ethical challenges of global environmental change 253

6.2 The shared principles of the concept of sustainability 253

6.3 The global status of key ecosystems services 2656.4 Major diseases attributable to environmental factors 273

6.5 The importance of mineral production in the economies of the Global South 282

6.6 Trends in forest area, 1990 to 2015, by sub- region 285

6.7 Key facts on desertification 2916.8 Observed changes in the climate system 2946.9 The predicted impacts of global warming 2956.10 Key terms in responding to climate change 2996.11 Community based adaptations in coastal and low lying regions 302

6.12 Flexibility mechanisms of the Kyoto protocol 303

6.13 The significance of species variability 3077.1 Debating the future of the United Nations 3177.2 The value o f ‘Delivering as One’ 324

7.3 Selected multi-lateral environmental agreements (MEAs) 327

7.4 The aims of the High Level Political Forum on

Sustainable Development 328

7.5 Changes in voting power within the World

Bank (shareholding in percentage) 333

7.6 New challenges and partnerships for sustainable

development 334

7.7 The Green, Clean and Resilient vision of the

World Bank Environment strategy 335

7.8 The four-fold environmental agenda of the

World Bank, 1994 336

7.9 The World Bank proposed Environmental

and Social Framework: the constituent

standards 340

7.10 The principal instruments of structural

adjustment programmes 341

7.11 Explaining environmentally blind SAPs 342

7.12 Core principles of the PRSP approach 343

7.13 Competing ideologies on trade and the

7.16 NGOs come in all stripes 360

7.17 The role of NGOs in promoting democratic

development 363

8.1 International tourism receipts and tourist

arrivals in selected countries (with large or

fast-growing tourist industries) 378

8.2 Leading world exporters and importers,

2013 404

8.3 Countries that have qualified for, or are eligible,

or potentially eligible, and may wish to receive

HIPC Initiative assistance (March 2015) 423

9.1 Urban population as a percentage of regional

10.2 Sources of rural livelihood 50510.3 Dominant concepts in rural development 50710.4 How scientists’ and farmers’ priorities may diverge 509

10.5 Strengths and weaknesses of the livelihood approach in development 514

10.6 Most prevalent livelihood activities in the Somali region, Ethiopia (ranked by numbers of households engaging) 517

10.7 Poverty rates in urban and rural areas by world region (1990-2008) Share of the population below $1.25/day 520

10.8 Access to electricity in rural and urban areas (percentage of population served) in selected countries 522

10.9 The sixteen decisions of the Grameen Bank 527

10.10 Summary of the debate about the role of agriculture in development 535

10.11 Rural development: technology and its impacts

on women 53810.12 Interacting drivers of the global land grab 54110.13 Types of forest ecosystem services 54210.14 The multiple economic uses of wood in Zimbabwe 543

10.15 Characteristics of outsider and insider forestry compared 544

10.16 Perception of women’s participation in village- level decision making (share of women agreeing and disagreeing within focus groups averaged across villages and sites) 547

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From its first publication in 1999, the intention of Geographies of Development was to provide an up-to-date and

innovative approach to teaching and learning in the broad interdisciplinary fields of development geography and development studies From the outset, we were keen to get away from the sector-by-sector approach that had been

so typical of earlier texts, together often with a distinctly regional orientation As with the earlier editions, this fourth edition uses a threefold structure, broadly dealing respectively with: (i) conceptualising development, (ii) development in practice and (iii) spaces of development

We have, of course, been delighted that the three previous editions have all been welcomed in both critical and commercial terms, and that the general tenor of the comments we have received has been very positive, whether in the form of written reviews or general comments and reactions received from those who are using the book It

seems therefore that, as intended, Geographies of Development has generally been well received as an innovative and

comprehensive text for undergraduates, as well as for some taught postgraduates, who are studying development in

a variety of fields, not just geography

As well as those reviews appearing in journals, running up to the fourth edition, the publishers commissioned a number of detailed reviews of the third edition We should like to thank those involved in this process for their constructive and generally highly positive responses, as these greatly helped us in shaping this fourth edition In

embarking on this fourth edition of Geographies of Development, once again we did not feel that the structure of the

book needed to be changed in any significant fashion Inevitably, it was clear that the text should be improved by means of general and specific updates and revisions, and this is what we have done In fact, quite substantial revi­sions have been made to the material in light of the significantly changed global context since the previous edition And this time round, the publishers were enthusiastic about upgrading the overall presentation of the book

In the third edition the publishers were keen that as authors we should make every effort to provide more entry points into the text We responded to this by increasing the number of sections and subsections throughout the book, and we have maintained this strategy in the fourth edition

In order to further aid the reader in accessing the text, short statements concerning the aims and content are provided right at the start of each chapter and these are then fleshed out by means of more detailed bullet-point summaries In addition, a listing of key points is provided at the end of each chapter

Further, in this fourth edition, a new ‘hierarchy’ of boxed materials has been introduced to support the text

Thus, the substantive boxed Case studies presented in the earlier editions are still to be found, and we have included

Key idea and Key thinker boxes where these are likely to inform and further assist the reader This Edition also

includes Critical reflections, which seek to engage the reader with key issues and debating points It is our intention

that groups in a classroom or tutorial setting can use these just as easily as the individual reader

The biggest change in putting together this fourth edition has been in the composition of the writing team Since the first edition was launched in 1999, we have unfortunately lost two good friends and co-authors David Smith sadly died in December 1999, and then in April 2014 we lost Rob Potter David made an important intellectual input

to the first edition, whilst Rob was the ‘driving force’ behind the whole project through the first, second and third editions In light of their valuable contributions, we had no hesitation in retaining David’s and Rob’s names on the cover of the fourth edition The successful completion of the fourth edition is due in no small measure to Etienne Nel, who kindly agreed to join Jennifer and Tony at a crucial stage in the project

As with the earlier editions, we look forward to receiving the reactions of students, lecturers and general readers who use this fourth edition, in the form of reviews, the passing of comments as mentioned previously and, of course, as is more likely these days, via e-mail messages sent to us in our respective institutions All of these will

help us to shape the next edition of Geographies of Development.

Finally we are extremely grateful to Andrew Mould at Routledge, who from the outset showed genuine and sus­tained enthusiasm for the Fourth Edition to be produced in a timely fashion No publisher could have shown more interest in the project or provided more support: thank you Andrew from us all A little further into the process, Egle Zigaite helped substantially in all manner of ways and we extend our warm thanks to her for this support Chris Garden deserves special mention for the drawing or redrawing the majority of the Figures His cartographic skill is clearly reflected in the excellent standard of the diagrams

Tony Binns, Jenny Elliott and Etienne Nel

August 2016

In tro d u ctio n

The fourth edition of Geographies of Development aims to build on the contribution made by the previous three

editions in providing a comprehensive introductory textbook for students, primarily those taking courses in the field of development geography and the interdisciplinary area of development studies The feedback on all previous editions has shown that, although the text is mainly directed at the second-year undergraduate market, given the global importance of the subject matter, the book is just as appropriate for first-year students taking broader courses, along with those reading for more specialist options in the final year of their degree programmes Indeed,

we are directly aware that the book is also recommended as a key text on a number of taught Masters programmes

At the outset, the distinctive aim of Geographies of Development was to move away from what had at that time become

the traditional structure of geography and development textbooks, which all too frequently started with definitions of the Third World and colonialism, and then proceeded to consider, step by step, topics such as population and demography, agriculture and rural landscapes, mining, manufacturing, transport, urbanisation, development planning and so on Having provided detailed accounts on such topics, many texts unfortunately terminated at that juncture, but those that endeavoured to provide a broader picture generally went on to present a selection of country- or region-based case studies

In Geographies o f Development, we have endeavoured to break this mould of development-oriented textbooks in

a manner that reflects the rapidly changing concerns about development itself In this sense, its raison d’etre is to

provide a text for learning and teaching about development in the early twenty-first century As such, the structure

of this fourth edition remains broadly the same as the first three editions, with a division into three relatively equal parts, dealing respectively with conceptualising development (Part I), development in practice (Part II) and the spaces of development (Part III) This structure is shown diagrammatically in the figure

Part I (Chapters 1,2,3 and 4) provides a detailed overview of the concepts, ideas and ideologies that have under­pinned writings about the nature of development, as well as pragmatic attempts to promote development in the global arena It also addresses how ‘development’ has been conceptualised and measured, and gives detailed consid­eration to important topics such as the histories, meanings and strategies of development, the emergence of the Third World (the term commonly used before ‘Global South’ became the more accepted descriptor of the devel- oping world), the nature of imperialism and colonialism and its various stages of mercantile, industrial and late colonialism, together with key concepts such as the new international division of labour and the new international

Figure 0.1 Book structure

economic order Part I also provides thorough reviews of relevant and related topics such as modernity, enlighten­ment thinking, the relevance of postmodernity, anti-developmentalism, global shifts and time-space convergence Updated sections emphasise important topics such as anti-development, global poverty and inequalities, the neo-liberalisation of development, gender-related issues, the digital divide, global shifts, the legacies of colonialism, post-colonialism, decolonisation, participatory and ‘bottom-up development strategies, and progress from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

As with the other parts of the book, these early chapters exemplify the title and the overarching theme of the volume Part I makes it clear that ideas concerning development have been many and varied, and have been highly contested through time Thus, definitions of, and approaches to, development have varied from place to place, from time to time, from country to country, region to region, and group to group within the general populace It is essen­

tially this plural nature of development that Geographies of Development seeks both to examine and exemplify

Furthermore, this part of the book demonstrates that current global processes are not leading to the homogenisa­tion of the worlds regions Far from it, the evidence shows all too clearly that contemporary global processes are leading to increasing differences between places and regions and rising social inequality within and between coun­tries, and thus to the generation of progressively more unequal patterns of development and change, and associated social, economic and environmental conflict This is evidenced in a range of dimensions including the continuing

‘digital divide, the selective benefits of the MDGs, the differential effects of the Global Financial Crisis, the varying effects of climate change impacts, and the playing out of political tensions, particularly in the Middle East Hence, the emphasis is on multiple geographies of development

Part II (Chapters 5,6 and 7) covers what may be regarded as the basic components of the development equation - people, environments, resources, institutions and communities - together with the increasingly complex and multifaceted interconnections that exist between them New sections have been included on the effects of the HIV/

AIDS pandemic, gender, the position of children in conflict situations and the effects of ageing populations on development processes In considering resources and environment, this edition gives further attention to issues of resource scarcity and global environmental changes, including climate change, but also to concerns that Planetary Boundaries may have been crossed and the services’ provided by ecosystems for human well-being irreversibly degraded Greater attention is given to the equity and justice challenges of moving to lower carbon and more sus­tainable development paths in future The inclusion of a chapter specifically dealing with institutions in the

development process serves to exemplify the utility of the overall approach adopted in Geographies of Development

The organisations considered extend from the agents of global governance - the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organisation - via the country level, involving the role of the state, but also transnational business, through to civil society, community participation and the empowerment of the individual, embracing non-governmental and community-based organisations This account serves to stress the plurality of decision makers and the complexity of alliances between and amongst them that are shaping contem­porary geographies of development, just as the detailed expositions on population, resources, environment and development exemplify the diversity of opinion that exists on how wealth and well-being should be created and distributed, including in ways that respect the environmental limits of the Earth and the future rights of people and non-human species

Part III (Chapters 8, 9 and 10) focuses on what development means in relation to particular places and people This is achieved by consideration of the flows and movements that occur between geographically separate locales, and in terms of the distinctive issues raised by development and change in both urban and rural spaces Once again, notwithstanding the difference in focus, the theme is the diversity and complexities of the movements and flows of people, finance and technologies, along with the diverse realities of transport and communications and spatially diverse outcomes Pressing topics of current significance, such as patterns of international development assistance, energy security, pro-poor tourism, world trade and responses to the Global Financial Crisis, the recent internation­alisation of land markets, the persistent challenges of poverty and womens empowerment, receive detailed attention

in this part of Geographies of Development The nature and scale of urbanisation in countries of the Global South,

evolving urban systems and the incidence of unequal development, the need for urban and regional planning, the salience of basic needs and human rights, and the quest for sustainable cities in relation to the ‘brown agenda’, are prominent topics reviewed in relation to urban spaces and development imperatives Consideration of the impor­tance of urban-rural relations is an additional feature Rural spaces are analysed with particular reference to diverse rural livelihood systems (particularly the importance of flexibility in coping with and adapting to social, economic and environmental change) and the examination of the multiple meanings and outcomes of approaches to rural development, such as land reform, the green’ and ‘gene’ revolutions in agriculture, and the challenges of managing forests to deliver both global environmental benefits and local livelihood objectives Forming the last major part

of the book, these chapters draw heavily on earlier accounts presented in Parts I and II, and they make frequent reference to the realities of globalisation, urban bias, rights to resources, industrialisation and sustainable development,

as well as other topics

The thematic structure and orientation of Geographies o f Development means that important contemporary

development issues are considered such as civil society, NGOs, anti-development, neo-liberalism, governance, resilience, globalisation, gender mainstreaming, structural adjustment, poverty reduction programmes, climate change, sustainable development, human rights, empowerment and participatory democracy These issues are not dealt with in standalone chapters, but rather are treated as appropriate at various points in the text, and sometimes from a variety of different perspectives This approach reflects the complexity of these issues in the context of multiple geographies of development A case in point is the relationship between tourism and devel­opment, which brings both benefits and costs to host countries This is first identified in Part I in considering processes of globalisation International tourism then reappears when Chapter 8 in Part III considers global movements and flows, and in Chapter 10 as a factor in the widespread purchases of land in the Global South, so-called ‘land grabbing’

Geographies of Development focuses on the processes that are leading to change, whether for better or worse.'

In this sense, the book follows Brookfield’s (1975) simple and straightforward definition of development as change, whether positive or negative Thus, although the primary remit of the book is the Global South, the focus of the book is very much on development as change, regardless of where or how it is occurring As in

previous editions, every effort has been made in the fourth edition of Geographies of Development to elucidate

clear and cogent examples of the issues under discussion, in the form of diagrams, maps, tables, photographs, boxed materials and critical reflections Many new illustrations are included in this edition, and updated boxed case studies and examples are presented throughout the chapters These seek either to extend definitions of basic concepts, or to provide detailed illustrations of the generic topics under consideration, or to promote

critical reflection and discussion In Part I of Geographies of Development, the nature and definition of terms

such as ‘Third World’, ‘developing countries’, ‘less-developed countries’ and the ‘Global South’ are the subject of detailed discussion In this fourth edition, whilst we recognise that none of these terms are perfect, we have decided to use the ‘Global South’ throughout the book Some might suggest that in the contemporary context the term ‘poor countries’ is a more indicative and more useful one, reflecting the need to implement progressive and effective poverty reduction strategies

As authors we have embarked on this fourth edition with the firm belief that teaching, learning and researching about places and communities other than the ones in which we live, and of which we have direct experience, are demanding, but vitally important tasks (Unwin and Potter, 1992) The amount of media attention given to develop­ment issues in poor countries seems to have declined steadily in recent years John Vidal (2002) cited the results of

a survey carried out by the Third World and Environment Broadcasting Trust (3WE), funded by Oxfam, Christian Aid, Comic Relief and other charities The survey provided a detailed analysis of programming on British television during 2001, revealing that only four programmes dealing with the politics of developing countries were shown during that year Further, in 2001 three of the five major channels broadcast no programmes at all in this category Not only was it found that the serious international documentary is virtually dead, but when the developing world was depicted on television it was usually in the context of travel programmes, or in providing exotic’ backgrounds for holiday challenges’, reality television and ‘docusoaps’ featuring celebrities (Vidal, 2002)

We believe that the post-war development of geography as a discipline has, for most of its history pivoted too strongly around a UK/Europe/North America ‘core’ focus, leading to a relative neglect of the ‘study of distant places’, and also the existence of little empathy among the broad academic community for the relatively few col­leagues who have directed their research activities towards an investigation of patterns and processes in the Global South Such issues have been the subject of a lively debate in the pages of academic geography journals

such as Area (R.B Potter, 2001a, 2002a; A Smith, 2002) These notions are now being challenged by the rise of

new powers in the Global South, globalisation of the economy and the nature and effects of global crises

We would advocate a reshaped vision of geography, in which both theories and empirical studies travel in all directions, recognising the porosity of boundaries in this era of increasing transnationality and globalisation Furthermore, it seems important that geography and geographers should show greater responsibility to distant

‘others’ at a time when increasing interdependence is occurring alongside progressively greater inequality between

the worlds ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ (D.W Smith, 1994) It is the ultimate aim of Geographies of Development to

assist students and teachers alike in structuring their observations and discussions of the multiple meanings of development in this increasingly complex and interdependent contemporary world

Further reading

Vidal, J (2002) Britons grow dull on trivia as TV ignores developing world Guardian Weekly, 18 July Accessed 28 July

2016 https://www.theguardian.com/GWeekly/Letter_From/0w757276,00.html.

C o n c e p tu a lis in g

d e v e lo p m e n t: c h a n g in g

m e a n in g s o f d e v e lo p m e n t

Q u e s tio n in g d e v e lo p m e n t

Having outlined the overall aims and the

structure of Geographies of Development in

the Introduction, the present chapter provides

a background context for understanding the

evolving nature, changing conceptualisation

and meaning of development and the degree to

which contextual change has shaped its focus

This account provides an overarching context

for the chapters that make up the rest of this

book on development studies This initial

chapter is about the ways in which actors in

the development process think about

development: how they seek to define it,

determine its components and conceptualise

its purpose It is also about understanding

fundamental critiques of development, or

so-called ‘post-development’ and ‘anti­

development’ Factors influencing current

conceptualisations of development are

explored, as is the globalisation of the

development agenda through the Millennium

Development Goals and, more recently, the

Sustainable Development Goals In the second

half of the chapter, the spatial expression of

development in the form of the Third World,

Developing World, Global South and Poor

Countries is considered in the light of current

patterns and processes of development More

specifically the chapter:

Overviews how development has been, and can be defined and conceptualised for academic and policy-related

purposes;

Explores how development has been measured, from quantitative counts of relative wealth per person such as Gross Domestic Product/Gross National Product/ Gross National Income (GDP/GNP), to the Human Development Index (HDD and the qualitative conception of development as

‘freedom’ and human rights;

Overviews how development has been defined over time and how its application has evolved as a result of theoretical advances and applied considerations;

Seeks to make readers aware of recent critiques of development, such as those presented by anti-development and post­ development;

Stresses that while general indicators show that the developing world has witnessed substantial socio-economic improvements

as a whole since the 1970s, during that same period the world has become progressively more unequal;

Introduces the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) as an agreed set of global

(continued)

( c o n tin u e d )

development targets adopted in 2000, and

reviews the degree to which they had

obtained their objectives by 2015;

> Overviews the focus of the Sustainable

Development Goals introduced in 2015;

> Reviews and assesses the genesis and

nature of spatial categorisations of

development such as the ‘Third World’,

‘Developing Countries’, the ‘Global South’

and ‘Poor Countries’;

> Finishes by linking geography and

development through a concern with what

we may refer to as ‘distant others’ - people

who live far away from us.

Introduction: from

‘underdevelopment’ and

‘development’ to ‘post­

development’

The application and pursuit of the concept of ‘develop­

ment’ has been one of the defining features of the modern

world While the concept of development is used in vari­

ous fields to detail processes of change - such as in the

disciplines of psychology and education - in geography,

economics and the work of international organisations it

relates to efforts to bring about changes which impact on

the well-being of countries and their inhabitants The

type of changes required, their focus and the strategies

needed to achieve them are the subject of debate and

underlie the evolving and often contested nature of devel­

opment which we overview in this chapter

This chapter first looks at the ways in which the term

‘development’ has been defined and characterised This

proceeds from the simple consideration of the general use

of the word ‘development’ in everyday life Following on

from this, the major focus of the chapter is on a detailed

overview of the multifarious approaches that have been

adopted, over time, to implement changing conceptuali­

sations of what development is This section considers the

changing interpretations of how development has been

understood, measured and applied since the Second

World War The role played by broader political and eco­

nomic processes also helps to shape the discussion

A closely related argument is that such develop­

ment initiatives have not worked effectively in the

past, and indeed (by definition) the view that the types

of development attempted could never ultimately be successful, is considered This line of argument is referred to as ‘anti-development’, ‘post-development’,

or ‘beyond development’, and is associated with what has been referred to as the ‘impasse in development studies’ (Schuurman, 2008; Power, 2003) In addition,

we need to acknowledge that ‘development’ is not an apolitical or neutral process It has been influenced by key global concerns and economic shifts since the Second World War, including, amongst others, the Cold War, the rise of neo-liberalism as thetfom lnant economic discourse in the world, the 2008 Global Financial Crisis and, more recently, incipient signs of post-neo-liberalism

As part of this discussion, efforts to improve condi­tions in developing countries are considered, specifically

in respect of what were known as the International Development Targets or, more commonly now, the Sustainable Development Goals (which superseded the Millennium Development Goals in 2016)

The current state of the gap existing between the poorer and richer nations of the world is also examined

in this chapter, with emphasis being placed on whether conditions are improving or worsening, that is ‘converg­ing’ (getting more similar) or ‘diverging’ (getting more varied), at the international scale

In the latter part of the chapter, spatial aspects of development and development initiatives are consid­ered in detail Such an approach involves interrogating the utility of terms such as the ‘Third World’, ‘Developing World’, ‘Global South’, ‘Poor Countries’ and the like Globally speaking, to which spaces do these sorts of terms apply? Are they helpful labels? Which terms have the widest currency at the present time?

The chapter finishes with a brief discussion of the changing relationships between geography and develop­ment It is the express aim of this chapter to set out a number of major themes that will have pertinence at many points in the rest of the book

T h e m e a n in g s o f th e w o r d

‘d e v e lo p m e n t’

The Concise Oxford Dictionary o f Current English

defines the word ‘development’ as ‘[gjradual unfolding,

F ig u r e 1.1 Global divisions: T h e North and South, 2010

Source: Adapted from Willy Brandt, North-South: A Program for Survival, figure ‘Models on the 1980s: North and South; core, periphery and semi-periphery’, © 1980 The Independent Bureau on International Development Issues, by permission of the MIT Press and also from North-South: A Programme for Survival, Pan, (Brandt, W 1980) Copyright © W Brandt, 1980, by permission of Pan Macmillan.

fuller working out; growth; evolution ; well-grown

state, stage of advancement; product; more elaborate

form ; Development area, one suffering from or lia­

ble to severe unemployment’

As this dictionary definition suggests all too clearly,

‘development’ is a word that is almost ubiquitous

within the English language People talk about the

‘development of the child’ and the ‘development of the

self’ Many firms have ‘research and development’

divisions, in which the creation and evolution of new

products, from sports trainers and car exhausts to

laptop computers and mobile phones, is the specific

focus of attention

Turning to the level of the state, ‘physical develop­

ment (land use) plans’ are produced; so too are

‘national economic development plans’, dealing with

the economy as a whole These sorts of plans are

expressly designed to guide the process of develop­

ment and change in the sense of unfolding and

working out how things should be in the future In

this sense, development has a close connection with

planning Planning itself may be defined as foresee­

ing and guiding change (Hall, 1982; Potter, 1985;

Pugh and Potter, 2003)

In the arena of development policy, development

processes are influenced by development planning, and

most plans are in turn shaped by the prevailing devel­

opment theories that ultimately reflect the way in

which development is perceived; in other words, by

what we may refer to as the ideology of development

Prevailing ideologies, such as belief in state determined

leadership - called Keynesiasm (after the economic

theorist Keynes whose ideas were implemented after

the Great Depression in the 1930s), and neo-liberalism

(which is defined later, but broadly refers to support for

and reliance on market forces as opposed to state

control), have shaped how development is understood

and the associated strategies and mechanisms deemed

necessary to achieve it

However, the development process is affected

by many factors other than ideologies (Tordoff,

1992), although ideologies often condition state and

institutional reactions to these The precise nature of

development theories, development strategies and

development ideologies forms the subject of the review

of development theories and strategies that is provided

in Chapter 3

Applied development in terms of efforts to bring about changes in physical and human conditions (e.g building roads and improving education provisions, etc.) is undertaken in all countries, however, in terms

of the focus of this book, our primary focus is on the application of the term ‘development’ at the global scale At this level, development is conceived of as an approach to respond to and address one of the main divisions of the world, between the so-called ‘devel­oped nations’ commonly referred to as th ^G fo b al North’ (i.e North America, Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, sometimes referred to as the

‘West’) and ‘developing nations’ often referred to as the ‘Global South’, which is manifest in a range of economic, social and political scores (see Figure 1.1.)

In this sense development is frequently understood

to involve stages of advancement and evolution, as in the dictionary definition provided at the beginning

of this section At the simplest level, countries of the North are seen as assisting the countries of the South

by means of development aid, in an effort to reduce unemployment and other indicators of ‘underdevel­opment’ In recognising this argument, and whilst not denying the value of improvements in health, education, transport, etc., we must however be con­scious of the fact that such an approach has traditionally privileged conceptions o f ‘development’ held by the North and assumed that their interven­tions are appropriate and even desirable in the rest of the world Such a view marginalises the scope for internal development, or for South-South develop­ment, where countries in the South, such as China and Brazil, are playing increasingly important roles

in assisting other countries to ‘develop’ In addition,

we also need to question whether the experience of the North is the ideal model to follow

In practical terms though, what exactly is meant by

development? (See Critical reflection on development)

Further, do individuals, firms, states and global insti­tutions understand the word ‘development’ to mean much the same thing, or are our perceptions shaped by our own background, culture, beliefs and economic understanding?

T h e n a tu re o f d e v e lo p m e n t

In considering the ethics of development, Gasper (2004),

citing Thomas (2001), recognises a number of different

usages of the word ‘development’ in the development

studies literature These are worth noting here as they

effectively expand upon the simple dictionary definition

of ‘development’ given at the outset of this section:

1 Development as fundamental or structural change -

for example, an increase in income;

2 Development as intervention and action, aimed at

improvement, regardless of whether betterment is,

in fact, actually achieved;

3 Development as improvement, with good as the

outcome;

4 Development as the platform for improvement -

encompassing changes that will facilitate

development in the future

These sub-definitions start to make us think

that development may not always lead to an overall

improvement, but only a partial one For example, income

per head may go up, but inequality might increase rapidly

at the same time And if when incomes increase more

people can afford cars, and more large cars, then road

congestion, increased journey times, parking problems

and pollution are likely to follow soon after

Critical reflection

It is quite often observed that those with higher incomes may not always be the most contented when asked to evaluate their level of satisfaction with different aspects of their lives Why might this be the case - cannot money help to buy happiness? Looking

at points 1-4 above, what other factors might be involved, and what other things may people be looking for in their lives? And can the same sorts of

arguments be scaled up and applied at the level of nations? Are the richest countries likely to be those within which the population is, on average, the most satisfied? Are you aware of data that support or refute any such broad association between income levels and social satisfactions?

Significantly, Sen (2000) (see below) argues that development is much more than just material or physical change, and we also need to acknowledge that

a range of other factors need to be addressed if

‘development’ is to be achieved Can you list some additional considerations? Sen’s thinking builds on earlier discussion by Seers (1972) (also discussed below), who argued that development is not just about improving incomes and wealth, but also involves qualitative improvements in social aspects such as health and education

It is important to recognise that, over time, under­

standing what ‘development’ is has changed Initially, it

was conceived of purely in terms of material advances

(higher incomes and salaries), the benefits of which, it

was argued, would ‘trickle down’ to the gain of all in

society Later, when this form of development clearly

led to selective benefits, Seers (1972) argued that social

factors - such as health and education - were also part

of development and needed specific support Sen

(2000) took the argument to a new level when he

argued that ‘freedom’ and empowerment were equally

important to attain

Despite the increasingly sophisticated under­

standing of what development is, its application has

often been fraught with difficulties Table 1.1 lists some ‘good’ and ‘bad’ outcomes that are frequently associated with the process of development On the plus side is the idea that development brings eco­nomic growth and national progress, and should involve other positive outcomes such as the provi­sion of basic daily needs (food, clothing, housing, basic education and health care), better forms of governance and a move towards patterns of growth that are more sustainable in the long term

In respect of the negative consequences of develop­ment, the occurrence and often the persistence of inequalities between rich and poor regions, countries and groups of people is often referred to, along with the

Tabl e 1.1 - - 1 1

Development brings economic growth

Development brings overall national progress

Development brings modernisation along Western

lines

Development improves the provision of basic needs

Development can help create sustainable growth

Development brings improved governance

Development is a dependent and a subordinating process which privileges a 'western’/'Northern’ perspective

Development is a process creating and widening spatial inequalities Development undermines local cultures and values

Development perpetuates poverty and poor working and living conditions

Development is often environmentally unsustainable Development infringes human rights and undermines democracy

Source: adapted from Rigg (1997)

perpetuation of relative poverty Another line of criticism

suggests that so-called development is associated with the

dependency of poor countries on richer nations, and the

maintenance of forms of economic, social, political and

cultural subordination

For the most part in this chapter, and indeed in the

book as a whole, the concept and practice of develop­

ment are discussed in relation to the experiences of

what is frequently referred to as the Global South, or

what traditionally have been known as the ‘developing

countries’ or ‘poor countries’ But it should be borne in

mind that development relates to all parts of the world

at every level, from the individual to the global Thus,

development relates just as much to poor areas in cities,

and relatively poor regions in rich nations (see Potter,

2000, 2001b) Growing inequality and deprivation in

the nations of the North also make development in

those countries a matter of concern In fact, the 2015

Sustainable Development Goals, which are discussed

below, recognise that development needs to be pursued

in all countries, not just in the South Growing

socio-economic inequalities within the countries of the

North emphasise the need to consider the wider appli­

cation of development

Despite this, the understanding and application of

development has become most often linked with the

so-called South, often still referred to as the ‘Third

World’, which itself is a value-laden term, the emergence

of which was closely associated with the evolution of the

concept of development in the political context of the

second half of the twentieth century The second part of

this chapter will examine the emergence, use and per­

sistence of what some now regard as an outmoded

terminology, and will associate this with thinking about development itself

In conclusion, the working definition of develop­ment assumed by this text at the outset is that initially provided by Brookfield (1975), namely that develop­ment is change, either for the better or for the worse Specifically in this text it is assumed that progressive and effective development represents change that is intended to lead to the betterment of people and places around the globe and to enhance the common good (Potter et al., 2012)

Thinking about development

modern era of development to a speech made by

President Truman in 1949, in which he employed the term ‘underdeveloped areas’ to describe what was soon

to be known as the Third World (and later the Global

South) Truman also set out what he saw as the duty of the West (later called the North) to bring ‘development’

to such relatively underdeveloped countries In doing

this, the USA was challenging the old European Empires

about their continued pursuit of colonialism as much as

advocating a strategy which privileged western achieve­

ments, technology, values and concepts of ideal

progress’ as something all nations should pursue

If colonialism is defined as the direct political con­

trol and administration of an overseas territory by a

foreign state, then effectively Truman was establish­

ing a new colonial, or neo-colonial role for the USA

within the newly independent countries that were

emerging from the process of decolonisation He was

encouraging the so-called ‘underdeveloped nations’

to recognise their condition and to turn to the USA

for long-term assistance

This introduced the concept o f‘modernism’ or ‘mod­

ernisation’ into the development lexicon, which may be

defined as the belief that development is all about trans­

forming ‘traditional’ countries into modern, westernised

nations i.e that ‘successful development’ implies the

pursuit and attainment of technology, values and sys­

tems characteristic of the ‘modern’ western countries

Viewed in this light, it is undoubtedly true that the gen­

esis of much modern(ist) development theory and

practice lay in the period between 1945 and 1955

For many Western governments, particularly former

colonial powers, such views represented a continuation

of the late colonial mission to develop colonial peoples

within the concept of trusteeship (Cowen and Shenton,

1995; Chapter 2)

Trusteeship can be defined as the holding of property

on behalf of another person or group, with the belief

that the latter will be better able to look after it them­

selves at some time in the future There was little

recognition that many traditional societies might in fact

have been content with the ways of life they already led

Indeed, development strategists often tried to persuade

them otherwise Thus Rigg (1997:33) cites the American

advisers to the Thai government of the 1950s as trying

to prevent the monks from preaching the virtues of con­

tentedness, which was seen as retarding modernisation

Many other writers, however, recognise that the

origins of modern development lay in an earlier period

Specifically, it was closely linked with the rise of ratio­

nalism and humanism in the eighteenth and nineteenth

centuries, respectively During this period, the

simple definition of development as change’ became

transformed into what was seen as a more directed and logical form of evolution

Collectively, the period when these changes took place is known as the ‘Enlightenment’ The Enlightenment generally refers to a period of European intellectual his­tory that continued through most of the eighteenth century (Power, 2002)

In broad terms, Enlightenment thinking stressed the belief that science and rational thinking could progress human groups from ‘barbarism’ to civilisation It was the period during which it came to be increasingly believed that by applying rational, scientific thought to the world, change would become more ordered, more predictable and more valuable

The new approach challenged the power of the clergy and largely represented the rise of a secular (that is a non-religious) intelligentsia Hall and Gieben (1992) list

a number of threads which made up Enlightenment thinking: the primacy of reason/rationalism; the belief in empiricism (gaining knowledge through observation); the concept of universal science and reason; the idea of orderly progress; the championing of new freedoms; the ethic of secularism; and the notion that all human beings are essentially the same (cited in Power, 2008)

Those people and cultures who could not adapt to such views came to be thought of as ‘traditional’ and

‘backward’ As an example of this, the Australian Aborigines were denied any rights to the land they occu­pied by the invading British in 1788 because they did not organise and farm it in a systematic, rational way, that is

in what was construed as a ‘Western’ manner

It was in this fashion, and at this juncture, that the whole idea of development became directly associated with Western values and ideologies Thus, Power (2002: 67) notes that the emergence of an idea of “the West” was also important to the Enlightenment it was a very European affair which put Europe and European intellectuals at the very pinnacle of human achieve­ment’ Thus, development was seen as being directly linked to Western religion, science, rationality and principles of justice This theme is explored in Chapters

3 and 4

In the nineteenth century, Darwinism began to asso­ciate development with evolution; that is, a change towards something more appropriate for future survival (Esteva, 1992) When combined with the rationality of Enlightenment thinking, the result became a narrower,

but what many saw as the ‘correct’ way of development,

one based on Western social theory and science

During the Industrial Revolution, this thinking

became heavily economic in nature But by the late nine­

teenth century a clear distinction seems to have emerged

between the notion of progress’, which was held to be

typified by the unregulated chaos of pure capitalist indus­

trialisation, and ‘development’, which was representative

of Christian order, modernisation and responsibility

(Cowen and Shenton, 1996; Preston, 1996)

It is this latter notion of development that, as Chapter 2

discusses, began to permeate the colonial mission from

the 1920s onwards, firmly equating development in

these lands with an ordered progress towards a set of

standards laid down by the West; or as Esteva views it,

‘robbing people of different cultures of the opportunity

to define the terms of their social life’ (Esteva, 1992: 9)

Little recognition was given to the fact that ‘tradi­

tional’ societies had always been responsive to new and

more productive types of development Indeed, had they

not done so they would not have survived, as ample evi­

dence about the value of traditional farming strategies

adapted to harsh environments has shown in India and

Kenya Furthermore, the continued economic exploita­

tion of the colonies made it virtually impossible for such

development towards Western standards and values to

be achieved, as societies and economies were structured

not to be independent entities, but rather as suppliers of

produce for the colonial powers In this sense, enforced

‘underdevelopment’ (i.e the failure to attain a state of

economic and social independence) was the result of

colonial exploitation, an argument that is considered in

several of the following chapters of this text, but espe­

cially in Chapter 3, in relation to what is known as

‘dependency theory’ and was written about by Rodney

(1982) in his book: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.

D e v e lo p m e n t a s e c o n o m ic

g r o w th a n d th e lim ita tio n s o f

th is a p p ro a c h : 1 9 5 0 s - 1 9 7 0 s

Chapter 3 discusses in detail the theories and strategies

by means of which development was, for much of its

conceptual history, portrayed as a materialist process of

change, i.e the pursuit of economic growth It was only

widely appreciated from the 1970s that development

involved dimensions other than just growing the econ­omy This present section overviews authoritative intervention’, based on defined beliefs in the role that economic growth would play, based on the perceived understanding of what had transformed or developed the USA It was only from the 1970s, that the limitations

of this approach were appreciated and responded to.President Truman, in his speech of 1949, noted how the underdeveloped world’s poverty is ‘a handicap and threatbothtothemandmoreprosperousareas greater production is the key to prosperity and peace And the key to greater production is a wider and more-vigorous application of modern scientific and technical knowl­edge’ (Porter, 1995: 78)

Enlightenment values were thus combined with nineteenth-century humanism to justify the new trust­eeship of the neo-colonial mission, a mission that was

to be accomplished by ‘authoritative intervention’, pri­marily through the provision of advice and aid programmes (Preston, 1996) Such thinking underlay the approach which the Western nations adopted to the rest of the world in the colonial and the post­colonial eras, which accorded pre-eminence to the ideol­ogy, values and technology of the West Salient aspects of this approach are summarised in Figure 1.2 Clearly, this

‘modern notion of development’ (Corbridge, 1995: 1) had long and well-established antecedents Figure 1.2 sees the origins of growth theory and authoritative intervention in the three strands of Keynesianism (i.e the pre-1970s belief in the role that the state should play

in national development), the rise of the political agenda

of the USA (i.e to assert its international role, advance capitalism and oppose Russia and China), along with nationalist developmentalism (i.e the aspiring goals of newly independent countries)

These forces were then articulated via economic growth models, planning systems and aid mechanisms, giving rise to the ultimate goal of replicating the histor­ical experience of the North in the South It is, therefore, perhaps not too surprising that, in its earliest manifesta­tion in the 1950s, development became synonymous with economic growth Growth theory and models of growth, based largely on the experience of the USA, were developed and pursued, with the support of inter­national aid and imported planning systems, backed up

by the support of global institutions, such as the World Bank, in an effort to achieve growth’

F i g u r e 1 2 Post-colonial g ro w th th e o ry

It is also important to point out that this American

led approach was also pursued at the time of the Cold

War, when the USA and its allies were anxious to

ensure that nations in the rest of the world pursed

‘Western ideals and did not align themselves with

socialism and communism which Russia and China

were advocating as alternatives The net result was that

development support and aid were often conflated

with the formation of military alliances to bolster the

different power groups

One of the principal writers supporting this approach,

Arthur Lewis, was uncompromising in his interpreta­

tion of the modernising mission: ‘it should be noted that

our subject matter is growth, and not distribution (Esteva, 1992: 12) In other words, increasing incomes and material wealth were seen as being of far more importance than making sure that such income was fairly or equitably spread within society

During the second half of the twentieth century, therefore, debates about development were dominated

by economists This is not to say that other aspects of development have not contributed, often crucially, to the debate This is particularly true of sociologists and geographers in respect of the social and spatial uneven­ness of development, but the dominant influence in both theory and practice has been economics

Source: adapted from http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/GNI-per-capita-Atlas-and-PPP-table

Class levels: http://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/category/tags/news

Figure 1.4 Variation in m a rke t size: Gross N ational Income, 2 0 1 0

The prominence and influence of development eco­

nomics in the 1950s and 1960s have had clear

repercussions on other terminologies related to devel­

opment, most notably the way in which underdeveloped

countries were identified and described, a point which

is elaborated in the second half of this chapter

The earliest, and for many, still the most convenient

way of quantifying underdevelopment and development

has been through the level of Gross National Product

(GNP) per capita pertaining to a nation or territory i.e

the total wealth (from goods and services) produced in a

country from internal and external sources in a year, usu­

ally measured in US Dollars Gross Domestic Product

(GDP), is also used, and is similar to GNP, but focuses on

internally generated wealth in a country Similarly, Gross

National Income (GNI) is an aggregate of GDP plus

incomes earned by foreign residents (Todaro and Smith,

2011) When divided by the total national population, per

person or per capita scores of GNP, GDP and GNI facili­

tate comparison between countries As Michael Watts

(1996) has noted, these figures are still a principal way in

which the poverty of the South and the failure of develop­

ment are blandly laid out in the statistical sections of

World Bank and United Nations development reports

Figure 1.3 uses recent data to depict standardised wealth-

based indicators of development, showing variations in

GNI per capita across the world It also shows the income

bands which the World Bank employs to divide the world

into four distinctive regions and these in turn determine

international aid assistance The clear dominance of the North, in GNI terms, is evident from this map Figure 1.4 depicts the same information, but through the use of a cartogram which scales the size of countries, not accord­ing to their true physical size, but rather in terms of the information being depicted, in this case, relative differen­tials in the size of the GNI This Figure shows the dominance of key European countries, Japan and the USA in terms of total GNI (rather than per capita data) and the poor performance of much of the South in rela­tive terms While economically based measures of development are instructive, and reflect very real wealth and income gaps between countries, they cannot tell us about inequalities within countries, nor can they tell us about other measures such as educational and health levels and relative levels of freedom These constraints in understanding the true nature of development, encour­aged theorists, from the 1970s, to consider whether there were more inclusive ways of defining development

national wealth between different groups within the

population and of other developmental considerations

such as health and education

Nevertheless, as Seers (1972: 34) pointed out, to

argue that GNP per capita is a totally inappropriate

measure of a nation’s development is to weaken the sig­

nificance of the growing GNP per capita gap between

rich and poor nations, a gap which is dealt with exten­

sively later in this chapter

In other words, the serious criticisms that one can

make of development statistics do not deny them some

use in the analysis of the development process, particu­

larly its unevenness Seers himself, with his egalitarian

leaning, suggested the use of three criteria to measure

comparative development: poverty, unemployment and

inequality He accepted that the statistical difficulties

involved in doing so were considerable, but argued that

they produced data that were no less reliable than GNP

per capita, and were a far better reflection of the distri­

bution of the benefits of growth Although Seers

considered them to be economic criteria, they clearly

include social dimensions; indeed, Seers suggested

social surrogates for their measurement

The 1970s and 1980s were conspicuous for the

appearance of a whole series of social indicators of

development, such as those relating to health, education

and nutrition, which were produced either as tables

attached to major annual reviews, for example, the

annual World Development Report (produced by the

World Bank), or less frequently as maps that accompa­

nied attempts to identify the developing world per se

Eventually these social indicators were broadened

still further to incorporate measures of gender inequal­

ity, environmental quality and political and human

rights As with all statistical measures, these data are

open to a variety of criticisms, some technical, some

interpretational For example, how does one measure

human rights when cultural interpretations are not con­

sistent (Drakakis-Smith, 1997)?

Moreover, by the late 1980s a plethora of economic,

social and other indicators were being produced on an

annual basis These were not always consistent with one

another and could be manipulated to show that some

‘development’ had occurred almost anywhere

The consequence was, not surprisingly, that as indi­

cators multiplied so there emerged a renewed enthusiasm

for the single composite measure Such measures did

not always produce results that matched the GNP-based categories of development that have graced the pages of

the World Bank Development Report for so long.

In Richard Estes’ (1984) Index of Social Progress, the USA was ranked well below countries such as Cuba, Colombia and Romania As usual, one can always prove

a point with statistics Other measures were even more complex in an effort to be all-embracing

Tata and Schultz (1988) constructed a human welfare index from ten variables using factor analysis The final scores, however, were more or less arbitrarily divided into three sets, producing a table and map little different from those of the three worlds (First, Second and Third World) in vogue at that time

However, almost inevitably, single measures, usually

in conjunction with multiple tables of individual indica­tors, remain popular as easily digestible summaries of world development trends One of the most widely used

is the Human Development Index introduced and devel­

oped by the United Nations In the words of the 2001 Human Development Report, the ‘HDI measures the overall achievements in a country in three basic dimen­sions of human development - longevity, knowledge and a decent standard of living’ (UNDP, 2001:14) Thus, the HDI is measured by life expectancy, educational attainment (adult literacy and combined primary, sec­ondary and tertiary enrolment), plus adjusted income per capita in purchasing power parity (PPP) US dollars.The manner in which the basic index is calculated is shown in Figure 1.5 The three basic dimensions are translated into a series of indicators, and these are summed to give a single Human Development Index This summary measure has come to be used in a wide variety of contexts For example, the Government of Barbados has used the HDI in a number of promo­tional contexts, basically to show that Barbados is ‘the most highly developed of developing nations’; indeed, one Barbadian administration went so far as to announce that its express aim was to make Barbados a

‘First World’ nation within the foreseeable future (Potter, 2000)

It needs to be stressed that HDI is a summary statistic, and not a comprehensive measure of development As such, over the years since its introduction, various meth­odological refinements have been tried by the United Nations Such refinements include Human Poverty Indexes 1 and 2, the Gender-related Development Index

Dimensions: A long and healthy life Knowledge A decent standard of Living

Education • Index

Income Index

Human Development IndexFigure 1.5 H o w the Hum an D evelopm ent Index (HDD is calculated

and the Gender Empowerment Measure These are all

variations on the basic Human Development Index In

each instance, additional variables are brought in to

reflect the revised index For example, for the Human

Poverty Index 2, a measure of social exclusion is included

in the calculation, measured by the long-term unem­

ployment rate For the gender-related index variables

such as female life expectancy, literacy and estimated

earnings are factored into the calculation of the HDI

More recently, the HDI has been redefined to reflect the

reality of significant measures of inequality within soci­

eties i.e not all people share the benefits of development

equally, hence the inequality adjusted HDI measures

average human development after inequality is taken

into account (UNDP, 2015)

In respect of the HDI of those nations classified as

being characterised by high human development, the

majority are countries in the North or ‘developed coun­

tries’, such as the USA, Canada, Sweden, Japan,

Switzerland, United Kingdom and New Zealand But a

number of those recording high scores are nations from

the Global South, such as Hong Kong, Singapore, the

Republic of Korea, Barbados, Chile, the Bahamas and

the United Arab Emirates Medium-level human devel­

opment nations include Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela,

Romania, Peru, Sri Lanka, Jamaica, China, Egypt and

Namibia Low HDI scores are returned by Pakistan,

Haiti, Tanzania, Senegal, Guinea, Rwanda, Niger, Sierra

Leone and Burundi Figure 1.6 is a map showing how

countries around the world compare in terms of HDI

scores It is significant that scores achieved in the coun­

tries of the North, generally stand in contrast to the

scores achieved in the South Figure 1.7 is a graph which

indicates, at a global level, the degree to which there

have been apparent advances in development if gauged

in terms of changes in the three key variables measured

by the HDI index While the fall in number of people in the lower bands, and the rise in the higher bands is very significant and a clear indicator of development prog­ress, we need to be aware of the reality that these scores

do not reflect income and gender inequality, which is considered below

This difference between the North and the South is further reflected in Tables 1.2 and 1.3 These Tables are

extracted from the United Nations Development Report

(2015) and use the United Nations regional classifica­tions for the countries of the world Table 1.2 shows the differing scores for the different world regions and the global average It also shows the Inequality Adjusted Index and the Gender Inequality Index While it is sig­nificant that HDI levels have improved in all regions of the world, often significantly, whilst the poor perfor­mance of the South and Sub Saharan Africa in particular, relative to the North, is especially apparent, particularly when the inequality and gender indices are factored in

In this Table the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) partially parallels the North While HDI may not be a perfect measure of develop­ment attainment, the scores partially reflect the outcomes of 60 to 70 years of development progress While Latin America and the Caribbean score better than much of the rest of the South, and have achieved clear ‘development’ advances, particularly when com­pared with South Asia and Sub Saharan Africa, this region’s inequality and gender scores remain cause for concern Table 1.3 compares the HDI ranking of the three top scoring and the three lowest scoring countries

in the world with the world average The Table also includes the three composite indices from which the HDI score is calculated The three top scoring countries are all in the North and the three at the bottom are all in Africa Life expectancy differs by 20 or more years