The issues of development and of the existence of the so-called countries in the world are very important. Today’s globalized world is very concerned about the levels of living that people have in all countries and there is a tendency from the side of the highly-developed countries to help those states that are considered to be underdeveloped. In this respect, the notions of the “Third World” and “globalization” occur. But to understand them more properly it is important to consider the definition of development as it is and see the basic features that are typically attributed to the concept of development in the modern world.
This paper is aimed at defining the development as a concept and at considering all its advantages and drawbacks. In this essay it will be shown that development has numerous definitions, is understood differently by various scientists, and has different consequences to various layers of society; this essay will consider the most significant notions connected with development: colonization and its role in the modern development, fighting poverty as one of the main objectives of development, environmental and social influence of development (Willis, 1 – 31).
Defining development is a rather challenging matter. There exist numerous definitions and explanations of this concept but there still exists no uniform opinion about it. Certain scholars tend to consider development to be a purely economic category connected with the average figures of budget and figures of the GNP per capita of the population of a certain country. But this approach seems to be too narrow in its essence and can not be applied to the theories that claim environmental, social, or historical development (Remenyi, 190 – 220). Another approach states that development is equal to the concept of modernity and modernization as a process.
This definition seems to be a loser to the truth as far as it presupposes the constant progress of the social life of people including such spheres as politics, technology, and, of course, economics. But this very approach seems to be incomplete without one more aspect – people’s welfare. There is another approach that measures the rate of development by the levels of people’s welfare and, if added to the previous definitions, it can help formulate the appropriate explanation of development as of the process of social and economic modernization aimed at improving budget and GNP per capita figures and welfare of ordinary people (Thomas, 3 – 22).
Consequently, one of the main aims of the development is fighting poverty in those countries that are considered to be underdeveloped or developing. This idea seems to be somewhat communist because it presupposes principles proclaimed by Marx in his Manifesto but is completely hostile to the capitalist ideology that mainly propagates development all over the world. Some scholars tend to think that in this respect the idea of development is a fiction aimed at making the rich countries richer taking advantage of poor countries becoming poorer.
Consequently, the idea of colonization comes to the spotlight of the research as far as there is an opinion that the world’s richest countries did not dive up the practice of colonizing foreign territories, but nowadays it is done under the mask of development and desire to help the countries of the so-called Third World, i. e. countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America (Escobar, 428 – 443). This hypothesis appeared among the scholars after the end of World War II when the territories of the world, as well as financial and natural resources, were re-grouped. Beginning from that period, former colonial empires started their developmental expansion to the Third World with the proclaimed aim to bring progress to those countries and develop higher standards of living there.
Major parts of those countries’ populations were obsessed by the newly-constructed idea of development and lost their identities in favor of Western “developed” civilization, but there were people that realized the real nature of all development programs offered by the International Monetary Fund, NATO, UN, etc. The examples of Nepali, Indian and African people are numerous and illustrate the picture brightly (Shrestha, 103 – 114).
Furthermore, besides the national influences of development, there are also environmental and social effects of it upon the life of people in the developing countries. Various programs of water and natural resources development affected greatly the ecology in the countries of the third world and caused lots of floods, fires, and epidemics. African countries that were left without the proper water supply due to the water development programs yet in the 1960s – 1970s had to face epidemics of schistosomiasis and other diseases (McCully, 65 – 74).
The same situation was in respect of the gender distinctions in the developing countries that become more evident and discriminatory after the development there began. Displacement of people from their lands, which took place for example in India, left women in worse conditions than men, because women were supported by the fertility of their lands and confident about their future thus. Men in their turn could take up other jobs and feed themselves (Parasuraman, 211 – 228).
To conclude, the concept of development has proved to possess many definitions and understandings of its essence. In this essay, it has been shown that development is invented as the process of improving the quality of people’s life nut it is not so in reality. Development has been identified in this essay as the new step of colonization which is aimed at increasing the gap between poor and rich and at bringing additional profit to the richest countries of the world. We have also shown in this essay that development in the modern world is rather a negative than a positive process as far as it affects social, political, and natural aspects of human life and worsens them all.
References
Escobar, Arturo “Power and Visibility: Development and the Invention and Management of the Third World”. Cultural Anthropology, Vol.3 No.4, pp: 428-443.
McCully, P Silenced Rivers. The Ecology and Politics of Large Dams. London & New Jersey: Zed Books. Pp. 65-74.
Parasuraman, S 1999 “The Consequences of Displacement for Women” The Development Dilemma. New York: St Martin’s Press in association with the Institute of Social Studies. Pp. 211 – 228.
Remenyi, Joe 2004 “Poverty and Development. The Struggle to Empower the Poor” in Damien Kingsbury et al (eds) Key Issues in Development, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, pp. 190-220.
Shrestha, Nanda 2002 “Becoming a Development Category” in Susanne Schech and Jane Haggis (eds) Development. A Cultural Studies Reader, Oxford: Blackwell, Pp. 103-114.
Thomas, Alan 2000 “Poverty and the “end of development” in Tim Allen and Alan Thomas (eds) Poverty and Development in the 21st Century, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 3-22.
Willis, Kate Introduction: What do we mean by development? (Chapter 1). In, Theories and Practices of Development (pp. 1-31) London: Routledge.