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Development. Copyright © 2000 The Society for International Development. SAGE Publications
(London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi), 1011-6370 (200012) 43:4; 40–46; 015251.

Thematic section

Post-Development Theory: Romanticism

and Pontius Pilate politics

ANDY STOREY ABSTRACT Andy Storey looks at post-development theory’s

challenge to dominant development paradigms. He offers a critique
of the post-development critique and suggests that some of the
insights of post-development theory can be of considerable value to
those concerned with struggles for social change.

KEYWORDS globalization; participation; post-modernism; poverty;

power relations

Post-development theory
Attempts to go beyond the so-called impasse in development theory have led, in
some quarters, to a shift towards empirical and area-based studies and away
from explicitly theoretical work (Leys, 1996: 27–9). For others, the trend has
not been so much a drift away from grand theory but rather a rejection of its
very desirability – a questioning of the concept of development itself. This latter
line of thinking can be broadly classified as the ‘post-development’ approach,
which draws from wider currents of post-modern philosophy and also from
post-colonial theory (Sylvester, 1999).
The largest intellectual influence on post-development theory is the work of
Michel Foucault. Following Foucault, post-development theory sees develop-
ment as a discourse: ‘this theory argues that development constitutes a specific
way of thinking about the world, a particular form of knowledge. Development
is, in the Foucauldian sense, a particular discourse which does not reflect but
actually constructs reality. In doing so, it closes off alternative ways of thinking
and so constitutes a form of power’ (Kiely, 1999: 31, emphasis in original). A
key question then becomes: what effects does this form of power generate?
Within the post-development approach, development discourse legitimizes
and reinforces western dominance over the ‘Third World’, in part through its
very definition or categorization of the ‘Third World’ as being in need of
09 Storey (to/d) 31/10/00 11:26 am Page 41
western-style development. (Hobart, 1993;
Escobar, 1995). The ‘Third World’ is subject not
only to the economic but also to ‘the definitional
power of the West. . . . Development . . . [is] a stan-
dard by which the West measures the non-West’
(Sardar, 1999: 44, 49). For example, the absence of
western forms of technology is treated as a cri-
terion not of difference but of underdevelopment
(Sardar, 1999: 47). ‘Development discourse, from
this perspective, is about disciplining difference,
establishing what the norm is and what deviance is’
(Munck, 1999: 68).1
The essence of the argument being made by the
post-development approach may be illustrated by
means of a specific example. Ferguson (1990), in
his analysis of the World Bank’s depiction of the
economy of Lesotho, found a recurrent Bank
emphasis on certain putative features of the
Lesotho economy, such as that Lesotho is, allegedly,
an ‘aboriginal’ economy, largely unexposed to com-
mercial markets and the money economy (i.e. that
it is a classically ‘underdeveloped’ (or ‘deviant’)
economy.2 Ferguson shows how each of the alleged
characteristics was wildly at variance with the his-
torical record: for example, Lesotho had been part
of a cash economy for centuries. Ferguson goes on
to argue that the Bank’s stylized portrayal of the
Lesotho economy was inaccurate but not irra-
tional, its purpose dictated by the need on the part
of the Bank to find a role for itself in the ‘develop-
ment’ (‘disciplining’) of that economy – through
the financing of rural cattle markets, the building
of rural roads, and other such ‘development’ pro-
jects. As Ferguson documents, almost all these pro-
jects failed dismally to achieve their stated
objectives, but criticism on those grounds is, he
claims, pointless – because the projects did fulfil
what he interprets as the (unstated) objective of
justifying Bank involvement in Lesotho.3 Lesotho
was constructed and defined as ‘underdeveloped’ in
order to legitimize, and facilitate the exercise of,
western dominance over it. Institutional self-inter-
est demanded that a certain view be taken of the
Lesotho economy, and the necessary view was
therefore taken, because those taking the view
operated within a particular discursive framework
of, to them, ‘acceptable statements and utterances’
(Ferguson, 1990: 18).
Storey: Post-Development Theory
Ferguson is sceptical about whether the develop-
ment discourse can be combated by pointing out its
divergences from the reality of Lesotho or else-
where. For Foucault, ‘the problem does not consist
in drawing the line between that in a discourse
which falls under the category of scientificity or
truth, and that which comes under some other cat-
egory, but in seeing historically how effects of truth
are produced within discourses which in them-
selves are neither true nor false’ (Foucault, in
Gordon, 1980: 118). A certain form or exercise of
power cannot be undermined by ‘truth’ in some
objective sense; development ‘talk’/discourse has
its own self-contained rationale and internal logic –
its set of ‘acceptable statements and utterances’ –
that is not amenable to challenge on ‘objective’
grounds. According to Foucault, ‘it’s not a matter
of a battle “on behalf ” of the truth, but of a battle
about the status of truth and the economic and
political role it plays’ (in Gordon, 1980: 132).
To demonstrate the ‘failure’ of development to
reduce poverty is also to miss the point, because the
real purpose of the development exercise is to disci-
pline and dominate – this is, in Foucault’s terms,
‘the economic and political role it plays’. To call for
policy change within the terms of the dominant
development discourse, it is argued, simply rein-
forces the power of dominant institutions such as
the World Bank because they can then rationalize
further interventions in the name of ‘corrective’
action. As Crush (1995: 10) puts it, ‘development
is always the cure, never the cause’. For post-
development theorists, the ‘Third World’ thus
remains objectified, and its peoples’ needs exter-
nally defined. Not only do ‘reformist’ critiques mis-
understand the point of the development exercise,
they may also encourage the adaptation and exten-
sion of the underlying power relationship. Develop-
ment, however revised, ‘can only lead to further
subjugation of the non-West’ (Sardar, 1999: 53).
What, then, is to be done? The question may not
interest all observers (including some within the
post-development school) who feel no compulsion
to go beyond dissection of the problem. However,
for those within the post-development school con-
cerned with effecting change rather than analysis
alone, there would seem to be an obligation to
abandon development discourse altogether, to 41
09 Storey (to/d) 31/10/00 11:26 am Page 42
Development 43(4): Thematic Section
refuse to talk in the terms set by the language of
development. Escobar (1997: 92) argues for a
fundamental reconceptualization of the very
meaning of underdevelopment ‘if the power of the
development discourse is to be challenged or dis-
placed’. What seems to be required is a willingness
to somehow step outside the dominant world of
what Ferguson terms ‘acceptable statements and
utterances’ and to prioritize and valorize other
statements and worldviews, views of ‘people
beyond modernity’ and their ‘sagas of resistance
and liberation’ (Esteva and Prakash, 1998: 290).
The extent to which post-development writers tend
to deploy romanticized language when talking
about non-western communities is striking (Ned-
erveen Pieterse, 1998: 364), and is a theme
returned to later.
And, according to some post-development theor-
ists, it is not just a matter of abstractly altering lan-
guage – change can be brought about through the
actions of certain organized agents, in whom an
anti- or post-development discourse can be seen as
embedded. Escobar (1995: 227) lays great stress on
the potential role of ‘social movements, as symbols
of resistance to the dominant politics of knowledge
and organization of the world’. Munck (1999) also
expresses belief in the transformative power of
‘new social movements’ – women’s groups,
indigenous lands rights movements, and others –
and argues that ‘It is from such movements that a
genuine alternative development strategy based on
empowerment might materialize’ (1999: 207).4
Burbach et al. (1997: 158) describe social move-
ments as ‘the major ideological protagonists of the
postmodern societies’ and as ‘anti-authoritarian
and democratic in their structures and principles’.
A critical engagement
However, the post-development response is prob-
lematic from both an analytical and political point
of view, for four specific reasons.
First, post-development, despite its anti-totaliz-
ing claims, propounds an over-generalized and in
some ways exaggerated conception of develop-
ment. For example, it fails to address the question of
whether there are alternative conceptions of
42 development that might or do entail relationships
of non-domination (or, at least, diminished domi-
nation). Nederveen Pieterse (1998: 363) claims
that the post-development approach ‘conceals
differences within development, homogenizes and
essentializes development’ (see also Jackson,
1998). In an equally essentializing vein, post-
development disregards what might be termed the
achievements of development: dramatic increases
in life expectancy in recent decades, for example.
Post-development theorists may respond that any
such gains are outweighed by losses (or arise only
at the expense of the maintenance of the overarch-
ing unequal structure of power). Whether the issue
of gains and losses can be empirically resolved is
debatable, but what is certain is that gains are
achievable, as they have always been in the context
of an unevenly developing capitalist system. By
insisting on the hegemony of negativity, post-
development theorists are replicating the mistakes
of dependency theorists who denied the possibility
of capitalist development at the periphery and
found themselves confounded by realities in East
Asia and elsewhere (Jenkins, 1994).
Second, how many people and societies have
achieved, or want to achieve, a condition of being
beyond development? Where exactly do ‘people
beyond modernity’ live, to use the phrase of Esteva
and Prakash? And where do they want to live? As
Nederveen Pieterse (1998: 363) notes, many
popular struggles in the South are about access to
development – such as higher product prices, edu-
cation and healthcare (Schuurman, 2000: 15) –
rather than rejection of it. Most such struggles do
not see a land beyond modernity as their endpoint.
The central challenge of the ecological critique of
development practice to date is to question whether
unlimited access to narrowly defined economic
development is sustainable within the context of a
finite ecosystem (Daly, 1997; Douthwaite, 1999).
This may well mean that access to western levels of
material development is impossible for all, but it
does not mean that this is not a desired option for
many people in the South (Sylvester, 1999: 710). To
ignore that desire is to romanticize the aspirations of
many ordinary people – precisely the type of cul-
tural imperialism post-development theorists claim
to reject. As Ray Kiely (1999: 47) puts it, ‘A position
that . . . rejects any movement for development in
09 Storey (to/d) 31/10/00 11:26 am Page 43
the name of respect for cultural difference expresses
the views not of the consistent multiculturalist, but
of the patronizing tourist’.
Third, the commonly designated agents of
change – the social movements – are not, contrary
to the claim of Burbach et al., guaranteed to be
‘anti-authoritarian and democratic in their struc-
tures and principles’. Incidentally, to assume that
they would be is, in one of the more remarkable
contradictions of post-development theory, to
assume that such movements, after long histories
of global capitalist penetration (from colonization
to globalization), somehow occupy a space outside
the otherwise hegemonic control of development
discourse (Sylvester, 1999: 711).
Not all sagas are ‘sagas of resistance and liber-
ation’. Some contemporary environmental move-
ments have been criticized for practising a politics
of social exclusion through their emphasis on the
preservation of allegedly ancient cultural tra-
ditions, however reactionary the political content
of some such traditions (Hildyard, 1999). This
point can be taken further – organizations of the
racist right can lay claim to the label of ‘new social
movement’ just as much as organizations which
claim to be progressive (Cattarinich, 1999). The
existence of so-called social movements does not
guarantee that they will behave particularly ‘socia-
bly’, any more than the existence of civil society
groups guarantees ‘civility’ (Ndegwa, 1996; Kasfir,
1998). Peter Uvin (1998: 178) documents how
social movements in Rwanda ‘often sought non-
emancipatory, racist, exclusionary goals’. To trust
the political project of development or post-
development to these groups, and to assume that
the outcome will be a particularly happy one, is to
engage in romanticism and wish-fulfilment, akin to
the trust some ‘radical’ theorists of the 1970s
placed in guerrilla movements (Sylvester, 1999:
711).
The post-modern philosopher de Sousa Santos
(1999: 42) seems to offer a way around this third
problem by counterposing what he terms an ‘oppo-
sitional’ post-modernism to a depoliticized ‘celebra-
tory’ version which, as he puts it, ‘refuses to
distinguish between emancipatory or progressive
and regulatory or conservative’ movements and
ideas. This theme is taken up by Munck (1999: 67):
Storey: Post-Development Theory
‘To a complacent, conservative post-modernism
which revels in the Northern view of the network
or spectacle society, we can plausibly counterpose a
radical, contestatory and emancipatory post-
modernism’. But contesting what, and emancipat-
ing whom? For de Sousa Santos (1999: 42),
oppositional post-modernism ‘claims a normativity
which both posits sides and establishes criteria to
choose among them’. He states that such criteria
should be established on the basis of ‘bottom up’
and ‘participatory’ methodologies. But if there is
one overriding lesson to be learned from recent
critical writing on the practice of development –
and this is where post-development theory displays
a startling imperviousness to such studies – it is
that concepts such as ‘bottom up’ and ‘partici-
patory’ can often work to conceal and perpetuate
relationships of inequality and domination.
Sarah White, for example, has formulated a pen-
etrating critique of ‘the uses and abuses of partici-
pation’ (1996: 7, 14) in development projects,
warning that ‘The status of participation as a
“Hurrah” word, bringing a warm glow to its users
and hearers, blocks its detailed examination’ – in
particular, examination of how participation may
become ‘the means through which existing power
relations are entrenched and reproduced’. Her
warning, aimed at development practitioners, has
clear relevance for development (and post-develop-
ment) theorists also. Claire Mercer (1999: 3, 31), in
a detailed case-study from Tanzania, documents
how ‘participation’ became, in effect, a mechanism
through which middle and upper income groups in
village women’s organizations gained access to
social and material resources. Giles Mohan (1999:
46), amongst many others, has also dissected the
extent to which the rhetoric of ‘participation’ often
serves to conceal the operation of powerful inter-
ests within communities (see also Mayoux, 1995;
Goebel, 1998; and Hintjens, 1999). It is, therefore,
not surprising that a comprehensive survey of the
issue finds ‘little evidence of the long-term effec-
tiveness of participation [in itself] . . . as a strategy
for social change’ (Cleaver, 1999: 597).
Furthermore, some of the most conservative
social movements may well be at least as ‘bottom
up’ and ‘participatory’ as their progressive coun-
terparts. Thus, the difficulty remains of entrusting 43
09 Storey (to/d) 31/10/00 11:26 am Page 44
Development 43(4): Thematic Section
the political project of post-development to move-
ments that are far from guaranteed to be politically
progressive, and of having no satisfactory basis for
deciding whether they are or not (‘participation’, in
itself, being a wholly unsatisfactory criterion). This
is what Ray Kiely (1999: 45) terms Pontius Pilate
politics, and it can only be transcended if critical
inquiry is willing to go beyond the mere ‘relativiz-
ing of narratives’ (Nygren, 2000: 30).
Fourth, even if progressive intent is somehow
evident, fragmented social movements and groups,
often operating around single issues, may be no
match for the power of, for example, increasingly
globalized capital. Again, de Sousa Santos (1999:
34, 39) seems to offer a way around the problem: to
cope with global forces, he claims, what is needed is
a ‘theory of translation capable of making the
different struggles mutually intelligible and allow-
ing for the collective actors to talk about the oppres-
sions they resist and the aspirations that mobilize
them’ in order to facilitate ‘emancipatory practices
[that are] . . . sustainable only so long as they
become networked’. But, referring back to the third
problem discussed earlier, while the need for net-
working is obvious, what, if anything, is the basis
for deciding which ‘struggles’ and ‘collective
actors’ we are concerned with? And how do we dis-
tinguish an emancipatory from a non-emancipa-
tory practice, given that ‘participation’, for
example, is an inadequate criterion for making
such distinctions (see above)?
Synthesis
The above constitute problems of (mainly) political
strategy that many commentators sympathetic to
post-development theory are acutely aware of
(Franch, 1998). Parpart (1995: 265), who sees
considerable value in the post-development
approach for the advancement of feminist con-
cerns, notes the ‘danger of dissolving into relativity
and political paralysis’. The problems do not,
however, invalidate the entirety of the post-
development approach. I agree with Nederveen
Pieterse (1998: 345) when he argues that despite
its difficulty in generating a future programme,
‘post-development articulates meaningful sensibil-
44 ities’. Despite its shortcomings, there is a very real
political insight within the post-development
critique, namely that challenges to, for example, a
particular development project or policy may ulti-
mately serve to legitimize structures of power and
domination. To criticize such projects and pro-
grammes is, at some level, to speak the language of
dominant power, to recognize its authority. How (if
at all) can this dilemma be resolved? A pointer
towards an answer is suggested by Lohmann:
A strategic awareness of the way the play of class and
institutional interest helps give shape to any particular
body of knowledge and ignorance suggests that it is the
social context of truthtelling, rather than truthtelling
itself, which is the key element in the intellectual battle
against destructive projects. (Lohmann, 1998: 11)5
Thus, if the post-development school cannot
provide a clear model of how social change can be
effected, what it can usefully contribute is an
increased awareness of the social context of dis-
course formation. We can accept that development
is, in large part, a discourse of power that, as a dis-
course, is not amenable to successful challenge on
its own stated terms. (We should not lose sight of
the fact that it is also a reality, and not always a
negative one, as discussed earlier.) But the dis-
course does not exist in thin air – it is formed and
moulded by certain interests and influences, just as
it then helps form and mould the thoughts and
actions of individuals (Crush, 1995: 5). For Hajer,
‘Discourse is . . . defined as a specific ensemble of
ideas, concepts, and categorizations that are pro-
duced, reproduced, and transformed in a particular
set of practices and through which meaning is
given to physical and social realities’ (Hajer, 1995:
44); attention to who is involved in these actions of
production, reproduction and transformation –
attention, in other words, to issues of agency – is by
no means ruled out under such a definition. As
Mills puts it:
A discourse is not a disembodied collection of statements,
but groupings of utterances or sentences, statements
which are enacted within a social context, which are
determined by that social context and which contribute
to the way that social context continues its existence.
Institutions and social context therefore play an import-
ant determining role in the development, maintenance
and circulation of discourses. (Mills, 1997: 11)
09 Storey (to/d) 31/10/00 11:26 am Page 45

Storey: Post-Development Theory

We can analyse that process of discourse for-
mation, especially at the institutional level, and in
that analysis we may find some guidelines for
understanding and, perhaps, challenging the dis-
course, not on its own claimed terms, but in terms
of what it is that actually forms and drives it (Dillon,
1999). This can be interpreted as an investigation
into what Foucault terms ‘the political, economic,
institutional régime of the production of truth’ (in
Gordon, 1980: 133). Relatedly, the texts of
development may themselves be focused upon in
order thereby to cast light on ‘the apparatuses of
power and domination within which those texts
emerge, circulate and are consumed. The aim in
this kind of approach is literary analysis as prelude
to critique’ (Crush, 1995: 6).
In summary, post-development theory wrongly
assumes ‘development’ to be singular, hegemonic
and invariably negative (so much so that it neglects
the extent to which it remains an aspiration for
many of the world’s people); it romanticizes move-
ments of resistance to ‘development’ (and, contra-
dictorily, assumes such resistances to be beyond the
reach of the otherwise hegemonic development
discourse); and it celebrates a diversity which may
be politically progressive in neither intent nor
capacity to effect change. In conclusion, it is the
methodological orientation of the post-develop-
ment school – especially its seemingly ‘negative’
predilection for deconstruction and critical dis-
course analysis – that has, I believe, most to offer,
rather than its problematic attempt to formulate a
more ‘positive’ model for social change.

Notes
1 The non-West is defined as ‘an
unruly terrain requiring
management and intervention’
(Crush, 1995: 3).
2 In similar vein, Mitchell (1995)
demonstrates how USAID
discursively constructed the Nile
Valley in Egypt as an area in
which life had proceeded more or
less unchanged since time
immemorial.
3 They also allowed the Lesotho
government to expand its
bureaucratic state power over
rural areas; the improved roads,
for example, brought people closer
to the organs of state.
4 There is a certain conflation of
‘post-development’ with
‘alternative development’ at work
here (see Nederveen Pieterse,
1998). Munck (1999: 70) also
talks about the desirability of
imagining a ‘post-development
era’, so it is reasonable to place his
writings within the broad confines
of the approach under discussion
here.
5 Lohmann’s reference to ‘truth’
may be a little confusing given the
distrust post-development writers
tend to display towards that
concept (see above).
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