Hegemony and Counter-hegemony : A study of selected war films
Development as Western Hegemony
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Transcript of Development as Western Hegemony
Frances Tay McHugh ([email protected]) 1/14
Development is a process whereby peoples are dominated and their destinies shaped
according to an essentially Western way of conceiving and perceiving the world.
This is a critical analysis of development. Is it a tool for Western hegemony or is
there more to the post-modernist and post-constructionist view?
Does development shape peoples’ realities? Is it a tool for Western hegemony, a means
by which Western ideals are foisted on to the non-Western world? There are no simple
answers to these questions. That the West has dominated development discourses is
expected given the historical evolution of the world order since the post-war era.
However, the diversity of development thinking is evidence that development is not a
process of simple transmission of foreign ideals. Instead, a distinction must be made
between development theories, strategies and thinking. We argue that culture remains the
dominant source of influence on peoples’ conceptions and perceptions and selective
acculturation prevents domination by a homogenous perspective, Western or otherwise.
Development Theories, Strategies and Thinking
Development is a loaded term. Often, it is perceived in a positive light, as a desirable and
progressive process (Esteva, 1992). It has been linked to disparate ideas, including raising
standards of living, improvements in the general well-being of people, environmental
sustainability and globalisation (Willis, 2005). Potter (2002), in referring to Hettne
(1995), suggests that the term development comprises three elements: development
theories, strategies and ideologies. Development theories relate to the study of
development, how it has been implemented, the lessons learnt and implications for future
Frances Tay McHugh ([email protected]) 2/14
direction. Development strategies refer to the practices, tools and techniques used for
development intervention purposes, while development ideologies reflect “social,
economic, political, cultural, ethical, moral and even religious influences” (p. 62) which
inform all three. To encompass these three aspects, the term “development thinking” as
employed by Potter (2002), will be utilised. The purpose of making these distinctions
clear is to acknowledge that development is multidimensional and multi-spatial in nature.
We cannot consider the impact of development on people’s thinking, livelihoods
and ultimately, potential destinies, without first acknowledging that the term development
carries different connotations depending on the context for discussion. For example, it is
often suggested that development is a Western construct, a result of the development
policies pursued and imposed by the West in the aftermath of the Second World War
(Esteva, 1992; Dodds, 2002). This view is certainly accurate, if one is examining the
evolution of development as a discipline, since “most… theoretical categories and guide
to development policy have been distilled from… European and North American
advanced capitalist nations” (Frank, 1995, p. 27). On the other hand, to suggest that
development thinking is a Western invention is to assume that non-Western nations
neither had the inclination nor the capacity to develop autonomously. To do so would be
an error for as Escobar (1995b) reminds us, non-Western peoples have “rich traditions,
different values and lifestyles, and long historical achievements” (Escobar, 1995b, p. 69).
We can use the case of Meiji Japan to illustrate. Between 1868 and 1911, industrial
growth was characterised by structural changes that would be familiar to the modern
development economist. To facilitate economic growth, the Meiji government employed
a raft of market interventions, including subsidies to merchants, establishing a financial
Frances Tay McHugh ([email protected]) 3/14
market framework to promote the provision of credit, and instituting a land tax reform to
redistribute land and raise taxes (Agov, 2002).
To reiterate and clarify, the reason for providing the above illustrations is to
propose that there is a differentiation between development in terms of what is logically
rationalised, formulated, planned and implemented (theories and strategies) and
development as it is understood and experienced (ideologies). The way in which people
encounter, negotiate and adapt to development interventions are dictated by the
development ideologies which inform that culture. That is, how we conceptualise and
perceive the world is a reflection of culture, the
“integrated pattern of human behaviour that includes thoughts, communications,
languages, practices, beliefs, values, customs, courtesies, rituals, manners of
interacting and roles, relationships and expected behaviours of a racial, ethnic,
religious or social group; and the ability to transmit the above to succeeding
generations.” (Goode, Sockalingam, Brown, & Jones, 2000, p. 1)
Hofstede (2001) has suggested that the way people think, feel and act cannot be
changed by the mere importation of foreign institutions. At the core of culture are values,
norms and belief systems that are unique to a particular collective’s historical
experiences. Rather than a wholesale assimilation and displacement of local culture, there
is “nothing inevitable about convergences of cultural, social, or political values” (Ball,
2005). Instead, there is evidence to support the adaptation of foreign influence in a way
that results in selective acculturation (Hall, 1976). In the following section, we will
explore the development process from the perspective of divergences in development
Frances Tay McHugh ([email protected]) 4/14
thinking. The diversity of development thinking is evidence that development is not a
process of simple transmission of conceptions and perceptions.
Development as Domination, Homogenisation or Evolution?
That the West has led in institutionalising development cannot be denied. That the West
has also had a head start in utilising development as a strategic intervention tool cannot
be refuted either. One can trace the origins of many of the themes central to post-war
development, such as modernisation and industrialisation, to the Enlightenment (Power,
2002). This period was characterised by the Industrial Revolution that swept Europe in
the late 18th
and early 19th
centuries. Ideas equating social progress to technical prowess
and scientific advancement have its roots in this period (Sachs, 2005). Contrasting views
of what conceptualised modern and civilised, as opposed to traditional and savage, also
arose out of the ideologies of the time (Power, 2002).
Further, the West has had a history of practising interventions. Colonial welfare
initiatives, for example, were the forebears of national planning strategies (Midgley,
2003). As far back as 1835, the British had enacted the Government of India Act;
resulting in the widespread education of Indian nationals in European literature and
science (Caldwell, 1998). However, it must be emphasised here that such initiatives in the
colonies did not necessarily spring from benevolence. Rassool (2007) reminds us that
education was often a means to create an elite and literate class of workers for the
administrative regime. Rassool has critiqued such colonial interventions as interruptions
to the natural development process, including “the reflexive forging of sociocultural,
political and economic possibilities of societal self-definition” (p. 61). Instead, she asserts
Frances Tay McHugh ([email protected]) 5/14
that such measures promoted an adoption of colonial culture into the local culture
resulting in “colonial hegemonic consciousness” (p.63).
From the Enlightenment to the post-war era, what can be inferred from the
Western development thinking of the time? That the uncivilised were different from
Western societies as they did not display the type of rational logic thinking prized in the
West (Goody and Watt, 1963). Further, the uncivilised would have to be inducted with
the knowledge and expertise of rational, science-based methods; akin to “a child in need
of adult guidance” (Escobar, 1995a, p. 30). Achebe (1995) elaborated on this eloquently
when he challenged colonial criticism to post-colonial novelists. He summarised that the
views expressed were representative of Western representations of the ‘native’ as
simpletons who, in the course of reconstructing reality on their own terms, were regarded
as misguided and “modern myth-makers” (p. 59). So, when President Truman
presented his inaugural address in 1949, pledging the United States to a global program
of deliberate intervention whereby “the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial
progress” was to be made “available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped
areas,” he was essentially repackaging existing ideas (Truman, 1949). In clearly
demarcating the characteristics of a developed nation as one that was economically
progressive, prosperous, free from the afflictions of poverty and where citizens would be
able to avail of decent standards of living, he was not proclaiming a new division of the
world into two halves. He was simply re-labelling them as developed and
underdeveloped. As Escobar (1995a) put it: “representations of… (the) Third World and
(the) underdeveloped are heirs of an illustrious genealogy of Western conceptions about
those parts of the world” (p.7). However, what is unique about Truman’s address is that
Frances Tay McHugh ([email protected]) 6/14
he charged the West with the moral authority and obligation to propagate wholesale
development to the rest of the World. We can argue that the echoes of such similar
sentiments still reverberate today. In his book The End of Poverty, economist Sachs
(2005) exhorts that we take up the challenge to promote the vision of the Enlightenment –
to “improve human well-being on a global scale” – because “technological progress
enables us to meet basic human needs on a global scale…” (p. 347-348).
To review the development initiatives that have been undertaken since the 1950s,
from the ambitious Marshall Plan to revive a war-torn Europe to the Poverty Reduction
Strategy Planning initiatives in use today, is to confirm that Western efforts dominate the
development landscape. Multilateral organisations such as the World Bank and the
United Nations are constant reminders of how the West has leveraged its wealth and
influence through development aid into political dominance. The development world is a
reflection of the real world. The real world in turn is representative of the global order
that has been collectively established by a handful of powerful core countries (Klak,
2002). These powerful nations have dictated the shape and form of development
strategies for the simple reason that they had the wealth, the means and the opportunity to
implement their will (or good will). In so doing, they have also been able to frame the
discourses surrounding development theories.
However, to suggest that non-Western peoples embraced the development
ideologies behind the theories, that is they docilely accepted the label of underdeveloped
or subscribed blindly to the development strategies imposed upon them, is a fallacy. At
the root of development thinking, we must recognise that power relations are at play. For
example, Said (1995), in explaining the dichotomy of Orientalism to the Western,
Frances Tay McHugh ([email protected]) 7/14
cautions us to not oversimplify Western perceptions of the Orient as “representative and
expressive of some nefarious ‘Western’ imperialist plot to hold down the Oriental
world;” instead, he reminds us that discourse “is produced and exists in an uneven
exchange with various kinds of power” (p. 90).
Therefore, to simply assert that the development process has been dominated
solely by Western conceptions and perceptions of the world is to ignore the dialectics
inherent in the evolution of development thinking. To illustrate, we can briefly explore
how development theories have been transformed over the last five decades. The
development ideals of the 1950s to 1960s were predicated on the assumption that
economic growth was the panacea for the ills of the underdeveloped; it was believed that
the underdeveloped could lift themselves out of poverty by following a common path to
development modelled after the experience of the more advanced nations (Esteva, 1992;
Escobar, 1995a; Power, 2002). However, uneven growth and the continued widening of
the gap in income disparities imploded the myth of linear development (Corbridge, 1995;
Willis, 2002). From the 1960s to the 1970s, mainstream development thinking were
challenged by ideas about dependency and ethnodevelopment (Esteva, 1992).
Dependency theories attempted to explain the state of underdevelopment in Latin
America as a result of the capitalist system; that underdevelopment was due to
exploitation by the developed (Frank, 1995). Alternately, ethnodevelopment championed
development based on upon local capacity and context rather than merely borrowing
foreign ideas (Esteva, 1992). The 1980s can be characterised as backlash to hitherto
formulaic, top-down development strategies. This period heralded the ascendancy of neo-
liberal theories and is characterised by a retreat from heavy-handed government
Frances Tay McHugh ([email protected]) 8/14
intervention; the free hand of the market was seen to be more effective at promoting
economic growth and redistributing resources (Arce, 2003; Midgley, 2003). The 1990s
onwards to the present can be characterised by the growing awareness of the need for
sustainable development. The effects of globalisation, the interconnectivity of relations
and resources, and the challenges of climate change have highlighted the necessity of
“meet(ing) the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their own needs” (Soubbotina, 2004). Sustainable growth and post-
development theories, which shun the imposition of Eurocentric development solutions in
favour of local national and grassroots solutions have taken centre-stage and co-exist
alongside neo-liberalist theories (Wallis, 2002). In this melange of constantly evolving
theories, what can we infer about the conceptions and perceptions of Western and non-
Western peoples? That development is an epistemological and reflexive process; there
are spaces for “to represent different ways of seeing, knowing and representing the
world” (Power, 2002, p. 124). Hence, despite Escobar’s assertion that “reality… had been
colonized by the development discourse” (1995a, p. 5), he nevertheless had to
acknowledge that “rather than being eliminated by development, many ‘traditional
cultures’ survive through their transformative engagement with modernity” (1995a, p.
219). Finally, if we strip away development rhetoric and put aside the counter-arguments
about what constitutes development and what does not, we may return to the
fundamentals of what development, at its core, attempts to achieve – the betterment of
life; to live long and healthy, and while alive, to live well. This is a universal aspiration,
not a Western ideal; it is “strongly valued and desired by nearly all of us” (Sen, 1999, p.
14).
Frances Tay McHugh ([email protected]) 9/14
At this juncture, it would be apt to reflect on the impact of globalisation on
peoples’ perceptions. This is because globalisation is the most prominent result of the
technological advances and economic liberalisation of past development efforts and is
“the most general concept to define contemporary international reality” (Valdés and
Stoller, 2002, p. 39) Globalisation is often perceived as a nefarious, homogenising force.
Rassool (2007) for example suggests that cultural hegemony is promoted through the
mass consumption of globalised mass media (in particular the American variety),
resulting in a hegemony of Western mass consumerism. A dated study by Wilensky
(1964) on mass society in America would suggest otherwise: “the media are not
omnipotent, they are absorbed into local cultures… this absorption involves a self-
selection of exposure” (p. 175). Nevertheless, the view that the effects of globalisation
erode local culture remain prevalent. For example, President Jiang Zemin, voiced his
concerns at the 2000 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting that there would be
negative political and cultural consequences to economic globalisation, that “some
countries… would force their own values, economic regime and social systems on other
countries…” (Barrett, 2001, p. 409). However, as the following artwork named “Thinker”
and accompanying text by the artist Wang Qing Song attests, the effects of development
are not adopted wholesale by individuals but filtered through personal cultural and social
lens: “On the surface, this phenomenon of going after what is western style represents an
ideal for Euro-American materialistic life. But in such an era of globalization, does this
ideal also represent worship that can create a lot of ridiculous contradictions?” (Wang,
Q.S., 2004). Therefore, rather than perceive a borderless world of convergence and
ultimate homogenisation, Yeung (1998) asserts that globalisation is a “dialectical process
Frances Tay McHugh ([email protected]) 10/14
of homogenisation and differentiation” whereby “local resistance and local expression
emerge, reinforcing the interconnectedness of the local and the global” (p. 292). His
views are similar to those of Guillen (2001), who suggests that globalisation “creates
mutual awareness as opposed to mindless conformity” (p. 7). Further, he encourages that
we view globalisation as an opportunity to “abandon modernist dogmas as to what is the
best policy for development” (p.232), suggesting that globalisation provides the
opportunity to review unique strengths and value diversity. In similar fashion, we must
acknowledge the multiple complexities of cultural, social, political and economic forces
at work when reflecting on the impact of development. Just as globalisation does not
presuppose a common destiny of homogenised economies and societies, development has
been revealed to be just as reflexive and dynamic. In summary, it would be apt to quote
Pieterse (1998, p. 370): “As long as there is development, there will be room for critical
development and for ground-up, street views of development” (p. 370). This will
certainly be comforting to those who oppose development due to simplistic assumptions
that development is merely another extension of Western dominance.
Wang, Q.S. (2004) “Thinker”
Frances Tay McHugh ([email protected]) 11/14
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