Paste your essay in here…All societies undergo social development. This process has continued uninterruptedly since the beginning of civilization. People have often sought to find out the reasons behind this development. It was not until the beginning of the century that the great technical advances began to develop, and with it sociologists began to more and more often try to explain the phenomenon of social development. Since then, a number of theories have attempted to explain the essence of this phenomenon. These theories were different as the communities are different.
But before we go into the theory of development let's consider what is the meaning of that term. Interesting is the definition of this notion of 1912, belonging to the classics of socio-economic thought by J. Schumpeter, who points out that every specific development process is based on the final result of the previous development. But to see the essence of things, we will abstain from it and treat development so as if its starting point was a state without development. So this definition of 1912 already points to the fact that development is something more than growth or change. Development, is a very broad concept, includes transformations in the sphere of economics, politics, culture and social organization. Development is a process of progressive qualitative change and encompasses all the mechanisms that have initiated, accelerated, or influenced these changes.
One of the first attempts at defining social development was The idea of progress created in the 18th century by Jean Antoine Nicolas de Condorcet and Anne Robert Jacques Turgot. The novelty of this theory was that it constituted a denial of the traditional view existing in European culture from the beginning of the Middle Ages. According to this view, ancient scholars and philosophers have reached the heights of thought, and therefore modern humans will never be able to dominate intellectually. So the idea of progress was the first thought, however, that modern scholars could surpass in their ancient discoveries. This thought was taken with resistance. The emergence of a theory of progress meant questioning many of the views and values with which the Europeans have lived for hundreds of years. Not only the authority of the ancients (as well as medieval scholars who absolutely recognized the authority of the ancients) but also the Christian tradition the values of human achievement, human reason and the value of mortal life. It also meant accepting the assumption of the constancy of the laws of nature (without which one can not talk about the cumulative development of knowledge) and assuming that social institutions are not given once, but that they are subject to change. The theory of progress was not widespread in the eighteenth century, however, it has had a profound effect on the later development of social sciences and philosophy.
The Philosophy began to re-focus on theories of social development after World War II when there have been rapid changes in the international area. In 1949 Harry Truman, The President of the United States of America, in his inaugural address, known as the Four Point Speech, used the words ,,underdevelopment areas” which divided the world into areas that we now call the Third World countries. This term is often referred to past colonial empires in Africa,Latin America and Asia which at the time tried to function as independent states.
The answer to historical experiences related to the independence of the Third World Countries was the theory of modernization. The purpose of the modernization theory was to indicate actions that should take backward society to become modern. It has been criticized by the dependency theory according to which modern and rich societies hold back the poorer countries. These countries can not easily become highly developed without breaking relationships with rich countries. The theory of modernization is also criticized by the theory of world systems, according to which the modern world is one capitalist system-a world in which the center is permanently addicted and utilizes the periphery. The answer to the aforementioned theories was established in the 1980s post-development theory.
Aram Zaim in his book titled Exploring the post-development writes ,, The post-development school claims that it is time to think about alternatives to development instead of alternative ways of reaching development in the Third World. Instead of relentlessly pursuing economic growth, industrialization and modernization, post-development argues that the promise of development has been misleading and provokes us to look beyond the era of development in the decades after the Second World War. Local alternatives to the Western ways of looking at politics, economics and science are not only possible, but existent.”. The above quote perfectly illustrates the main post-development critique of traditional development theories which, according to scholars, have further deepened the gap between the rich North and the poor South ,by imposing on the Third World countries, models of development, mismatched to their capabilities and targeted to the fastest possible economic growth. Post-development proposes solutions focusing on the development of country-specific methods of action, not just measuring the effects and defining growth limits. Because of this, it can make a significant contribution to the implementation of alternative development theories, which I will try to explain and support by empirical examples later in the text.
After the end of the Second World War, there were huge differences between the level of development of the individual countries. The modernization theory established in the 1950s assumed that these discrepancies could be removed through the transformation of "traditional" states into modern ones. It was believed that the inflow of technology, the development of education or positive attitudes towards change could be successful in the economic and social development of poor regions. However, it has shown that modernization mentioned above, not only does not fulfill its role, but also leads to mutual dependence of all countries and consequently to the emergence of a single world system. The idea was later called the theory of dependence, which today is considered obsolete, and in its place was taken by the theory of the world-system that divides the world into its center, peripheral states and semi-passive states.
Irrespective of the vision of the world presented by the thinkers of traditional schools of development, people like Arturo Escobar, Gustavo Esteva, Majid Rahnema, Wolfgang Sachs, James Ferguson, Serge Latouche and Gilbert Rist argued with them that in every case the development was unjust and led to the failure. Famous American political scientist Samuel Huntington in his book The Clash of Civilization states that the universal laws of the Western world are merely a myth that remains the dusk of the power of the West over other cultures and sooner or later will reach the conflicts between civilizations. These conclusions may seem hasty and far-reaching but the history shows that there are many examples that confirm these opinions. At this point you can not fail to mention the policies of the wealthy North (USA, European Union) to African countries or states of South America, as a result of which some countries are deliberately driven into a debt trap, become dumps of old and dangerous technologies and are treated as a raw material base. Iraq , Chechnya (oil) or South Africa (diamonds) are examples of countries whose resources or geographic location is a curse. By absolute exploitation – they can not be left "alone", and rich countries instead of "democracy" support dictatorships, military regimes or use the situation of civil wars.
Respond to the arguments of supporters and opponents of post-development school may be the alternative development theories. They do not reject the term ,,development” as something bad in general but instead they propose new solutions to ensure optimal growth conditions for each country.
At this point it is worth mentioning the special attention that post-development thinkers put to the protection of the environment, which may be helpful in developing appropriate strategies.
In the 1960s, changes in social consciousness and attitudes have intensified as the effects of environmental pollution in industrialized countries became increasingly apparent. Growing concern about this situation and the widespread exploitation of natural resources, uncontrolled, regional demographic and urbanization processes, and potential disruptions of future global economic development have created the need for a global strategy to address these threats. To this end, a wide range of international conservation and natural resource conservation agreements were initiated, as well as numerous studies on human influence on the functioning of these systems. The results of this work, carried out in many scientific disciplines, have had a significant impact on the shape of the contemporary concept of sustainable development.
An example of the application of alternative development theories based on the principles of sustainable development (arising from post-developmental theories) is the application of top-down and bottom up approaches in rural areas in Central and Eastern Europe. The differences in use of these methods are conditional on geographical location and natural-physiographic and, above all,the path of political and socio-economic development expierenced by a given area.
To better discuss the benefits that may arise from working with post-development theorists and advocates of alternative development methods, I would like to focus on the top down and bottom up approaches in rural development in Germany and Austria. In these two countries, the top-down approach cooperates with the bottom-up approach. At the turn of the 1970s and 1980s a method of development, called "village renewal", which took the form of regional programs, was adopted. Their main goal is to take advantage of the unique development concepts of rural communities and to build a new identity for the village. The necessary projects create a regeneration program for a given locality. In this way, it is believed that modernization is the wrong way, if it results in the turning villages into towns. These ideological assumptions have been realized by the process of revitalization, which fully reflects the scope of undertakings used in the renewal of the village while preserving the distinctiveness, integrity and identity of each areas. Launching(uruchamianie?) this type of development process prepares the ground for regional and state-level support mechanisms, that in the long run are meant to contribute to even more effective growth.
The above example demonstrates that the post-development school supporters' thesis may become a valuable inspiration for making positive changes to the development of some areas in the future. They are helpful in determining the limits of the use of specific alternative theories and help focus on the well-being of the people and the environment.
In the future, more projects should be created that would further match the needs of people and the environment. However, the idea of sustainable development and programs like "village renewal" are a step that should be appreciated.