The essentially contested notion of development has come to be many
things to many people, so much so that it has become almost impossible to find
a singular/unitary definition to the concept in itself. What begun in the
1940’s with theory of modernization soon was out of line with the understanding
of development as with the years became somewhat unacceptable owing to the lack
of explanations that it gave.
What is most often questioned is how do we understand development,
this is because of the fact that there are many ways to interpret it like GDP,
HDI and other such indices as many have pointed out development is not a
concept which can be quantified and thus remains abstract in certain terms. Yet
more so what we have seen in the past few decades is also a shift in the
development agendas that have dominated the decade; like 1970’s saw a focus on
sustainable development, 1980’s on the environment and now we see the focus on
climate change mitigating the effects.
Not only does this illustrate the evolutionary nature of the process
of development but rather goes on to show that over time evolution in the realm
of development changes the way we look at development itself and how we
approach it. This is what has been behind what we see as something normal today
like the NGO’s filling up the cleavages that exist between the government and
the society as a result of the change in how the state functions today.
Hopper, P. ‘Understanding Development’ Polity (2012)
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