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The Future of Development: A Radical Manifesto
On January 20, 1949 US President Harry S. Truman officially opened the era of development. On that day, over one half of the people of the world were defined as "underdeveloped" and they have stayed that way ever since. This book explains the origins of development and underdevelopment and shows how poorly we understand these two terms. It offers a new vision for development, demystifying the statistics that international organizations use to measure development and introducing the alternative concept of buen vivir: the state of living well. The authors argue that it is possible for everyone on the planet to live well, but only if we learn to live as communities rather than as individuals and to nurture our respective commons. Scholars and students of global development studies are well-aware that development is a difficult concept. This thought-provoking book offers them advice for the future of development studies and hope for the future of humankind.
192 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2013
3 people are currently reading
118 people want to read
About the author
Gustavo Esteva
38 books21 followersActivist, "deprofessionalized intellectual" and founder of the Universidad de la Tierra in the Mexican city of Oaxaca. He is one of the best known advocates of Post-Development.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 15, 2017
As a planner and someone who thinks our capitalist system is destroying the world, I found common thinking and articulate ideas in the work of these authors. I also truly appreciated the non-Western perspectives and "how you can act" segment at the end of the book. Powerful read.
April 19, 2023
Enjoyable read, good argument about the definition of development. Provided a useful perspective on the effects of the various global lifestyles on each other. However, there was a confusing flow, with various ideas being presented in confusing and over-worded ways.
March 26, 2019
Honestly I believe this is one of the best books Ive ever read regarding international affairs. It asks all the questions we really need to be asking in development discourse and poverty discussion, all whilst encouraging critical thinking about these issues deeper than the messages portrayed by “western development” dogma. It really looks and analyzes the root causes of a lot of development issues and really just envisions something different. It also gets down to the nitty gritty about analyzing statistics and economic activity—- things that far too often impact our views and social attitudes without us responding with critical thought. Very interesting concepts and really a deeper book than most non fiction on these topics get. Also I loved the way it challenges the reader to rethink labels and our assumptions built in with labeling countries a certain way politically and economically, especially the ways in which those labels allow for a further perpetuation of power structures that enable and disable regions and communities as a process. Very good read. Love a good book that challenges my ways of thinking.
April 27, 2021
Nice and short (155 pages) overview of ideas of what elements a 'post-Post development' world could comprise. Heavy (although insufficiently evidenced) critique of development as an 'experiment that in the experience of the world majority has miserably failed', looking from the origins of 'development' in the famous US President Harry Truman 1949 speech through to the present.
Describes the existing streams of development thought/practise as the 3 Sachs': Goldman Sachs (the hegemonic path of development primarily serving capital interests), Jeffrey Sachs (or Bill Gates philanthropic capitalism) path of development as extreme poverty elimination, aiming to meet 'basic needs', and the Wolfgang Sachs path (which has little political influence and remains confined to development studies academia) and is a critique of the whole development enterprise itself as doing more harm than good. The book aligns strongest to this last approach.
The 'basic needs' approach to development introduced in the 1990s and Millennium Development Goals is critiqued by saying that 'a catastrophic destitution, dispossessing people of their way of life, is a precondition for every modern 'need' (and thus the root cause of modernized poverty).'
The book is full of a similarly bold statements, but too often with insufficient supporting evidence and examples. This book is preaching to the converted ('the Wolfgang Sachs'), and I doubt will win over the Bill Gates crowd without a really in depth analysis when making statements like:
'Real poverty arises mainly where Northern consumption demands collide with Southern subsistence lifestyles'
'Many argue that the time has come to rethink the idea of Northern 'giving' and replace it with 'restriction'. As Jean Ziegler has put it: "It is not a matter of giving more to the people in the South, but of taking less from them"
I would forgive the authors due to the shortness of the book, but unfortunately there is also a lot of tedious repetition, churning out the same concepts in different word formulations, instead of providing more case studies/evidence.
Also there are no in-line references which could have really added weight to these strong statements, just a reading list at the end of each chapter.
In terms of the authors' vision, they come back several times to 'radical pluralism': where (as I understand it) a diversity of visions of the good life can flourish in harmony, where the good life is not conceptualised in Western terms of an unattainable and possibly undesirable American Dream. The authors see this vision as incompatible with the nation-state (particularly noting the limitations to 'juridical pluralism' that indigenous groups have tried to achieve under progressive states).They make a brief Foucauldian critique of Leninist nation-state (but very brief). Their vision is for de-centralised governance systems.
Degrowth is also a big part of their vision, and fortunately the degrowth activist/academic movement/discipline has massively developed since this was published, and hence there are good newer publications (see for example the work of Jason Hickel who covers a lot of the arguments made in this book but with more depth).
Reclaiming 'commons' is also a big part of their vision to restoring power from the bottom up, again there are better more recent texts on this subject (see David Bollier and Silke Helfrich).
The chapter on statistics gives (taster) critiques of different measures of development such as GDP per capita (and Purchasing Power Parity PPP), life expectancy, 'freedom', 'democracy', 'corruption'. The measurement of poverty stuff in this chapter is much more thoroughly analysed by Jason Hickel in recent debates (see his website).
Overall the ideas presented are really important, and a good introduction to them for someone already in a similar line of thinking. Personally, I didn’t learn very much that was new because as I already familiar with degrowth, buen vivir (and the vision of pluralism) and commons. As I have mentioned, better more recent and more accessible books exist and cover similar content (and are published after the 2016 Sustainable Development Goals has given development a new burst of life).
Describes the existing streams of development thought/practise as the 3 Sachs': Goldman Sachs (the hegemonic path of development primarily serving capital interests), Jeffrey Sachs (or Bill Gates philanthropic capitalism) path of development as extreme poverty elimination, aiming to meet 'basic needs', and the Wolfgang Sachs path (which has little political influence and remains confined to development studies academia) and is a critique of the whole development enterprise itself as doing more harm than good. The book aligns strongest to this last approach.
The 'basic needs' approach to development introduced in the 1990s and Millennium Development Goals is critiqued by saying that 'a catastrophic destitution, dispossessing people of their way of life, is a precondition for every modern 'need' (and thus the root cause of modernized poverty).'
The book is full of a similarly bold statements, but too often with insufficient supporting evidence and examples. This book is preaching to the converted ('the Wolfgang Sachs'), and I doubt will win over the Bill Gates crowd without a really in depth analysis when making statements like:
'Real poverty arises mainly where Northern consumption demands collide with Southern subsistence lifestyles'
'Many argue that the time has come to rethink the idea of Northern 'giving' and replace it with 'restriction'. As Jean Ziegler has put it: "It is not a matter of giving more to the people in the South, but of taking less from them"
I would forgive the authors due to the shortness of the book, but unfortunately there is also a lot of tedious repetition, churning out the same concepts in different word formulations, instead of providing more case studies/evidence.
Also there are no in-line references which could have really added weight to these strong statements, just a reading list at the end of each chapter.
In terms of the authors' vision, they come back several times to 'radical pluralism': where (as I understand it) a diversity of visions of the good life can flourish in harmony, where the good life is not conceptualised in Western terms of an unattainable and possibly undesirable American Dream. The authors see this vision as incompatible with the nation-state (particularly noting the limitations to 'juridical pluralism' that indigenous groups have tried to achieve under progressive states).They make a brief Foucauldian critique of Leninist nation-state (but very brief). Their vision is for de-centralised governance systems.
Degrowth is also a big part of their vision, and fortunately the degrowth activist/academic movement/discipline has massively developed since this was published, and hence there are good newer publications (see for example the work of Jason Hickel who covers a lot of the arguments made in this book but with more depth).
Reclaiming 'commons' is also a big part of their vision to restoring power from the bottom up, again there are better more recent texts on this subject (see David Bollier and Silke Helfrich).
The chapter on statistics gives (taster) critiques of different measures of development such as GDP per capita (and Purchasing Power Parity PPP), life expectancy, 'freedom', 'democracy', 'corruption'. The measurement of poverty stuff in this chapter is much more thoroughly analysed by Jason Hickel in recent debates (see his website).
Overall the ideas presented are really important, and a good introduction to them for someone already in a similar line of thinking. Personally, I didn’t learn very much that was new because as I already familiar with degrowth, buen vivir (and the vision of pluralism) and commons. As I have mentioned, better more recent and more accessible books exist and cover similar content (and are published after the 2016 Sustainable Development Goals has given development a new burst of life).
April 25, 2023
It was a very insightful book with many good points and quotes, but to be honest the sixth chapter kind of lost me as someone who has had personal experiences in third-world countries and their subsequent slums. That one chapter just made the authors seem out of touch.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews