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The Discourse of Development: has it reached maturity?

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  • Dhammika Herath

Abstract

Like most other concepts in the social sciences, ‘development’ does not entail a commonly agreed upon meaning, context or programme of action. It is defined in different ways depending on the time, space, context, professional and organisational interests of the one who does the business of defining. The meaning of development has also undergone a remarkable transformation over the course of history from the Enlightenment concept of ‘Progress’ to encompass a great variety of human needs. This paper analyses how the contemporary discourse of development has reached a mature state and how it enables us to understand development in context- and culture-sensitive ways. It is now possible to determine what development means in different settings, and how to bring in material and non-material prosperity to people living in different contexts and cultures. After a theoretical discussion an empirical study in Sri Lanka is presented which attempts to arrive at a more refined context- and culture-sensitive definition of development. The paper argues that, in order to understand development at micro-settings, it is better to construct our own indexes of development rather than using global measures. It shows how the current state of the discourse of development can lend insights into construction of a development index.

Suggested Citation

  • Dhammika Herath, 2009. "The Discourse of Development: has it reached maturity?," Third World Quarterly, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(8), pages 1449-1464.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:ctwqxx:v:30:y:2009:i:8:p:1449-1464
    DOI: 10.1080/01436590903279216
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    Cited by:

    1. Owen Gohori & Peet van der Merwe, 2020. "Towards a Tourism and Community-Development Framework: An African Perspective," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(13), pages 1-35, June.
    2. Mikaela Luttrell-Rowland & Sophia Rhee & Whitney Okujagu, 2023. "Dominant Development Indexes’ Construction of Gender and Challenges for Recognizing Everyday Activism for Peace and Security," Progress in Development Studies, , vol. 23(2), pages 152-168, April.

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