CECS 714 - Colonialism, Human Development, Modernization

The idea of human development can be traced to European though (the Enlightenment’s idea of progress), whilst development theory has been primarily associated with theories growing out of the post WWII decolonization of period and centered on the perceived economic development “gaps” of the newly emerging nations. In the Social Sciences, development theories “explain” disparities among and within nations. Development theories have also been at the center of economic, sociological and cultural theories of modernization. The idea of modernization, of urban development and urbanization theory are also linked by a common thread: a vision of a “universal” single-continuous-social-economic-cultural-path for all societies, at least since the Columbian Event of 1492. Development and Modernization have been the focus of perhaps almost all academic disciplines, to note, Geography, Anthropology, Economics, Political Science, History, Literature, Art, and so on. The academic/disciplinary trajectory of development and modernization theories therefore, is a case study of the obfuscation produced by the very condition of disciplinary knowledge.

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