After-development

The after-development or post-development is a project again historical “era” in the history of the Occident which would be defined in rupture with the concept of development: the paradigm economist of the capitalist company mondialized and the imaginary one which is associated for him.

The Occident to which one refers here is irreducible with a territory, it is not only one entity religious, ethical, racial or even economic. The synthetic Occident as unit of these various demonstrations is an entity Culture lle , a phenomenon of Civilization.

The after-development corresponds to a minority economic theory strongly criticized by holding of the classical economics.

Historical development by the partisans of the after-development approaches

According to Latouche, the history of the domination of humanity by the Occident can be subdivided in five successive phases more or less quite separate from/to each other:

the Croisades starting from the XIe century, which showed the partial failure, for the Christian Europe, of the evangelization of the East.

the great conquests combine military, commercial and missionaries and start with the reconquest of the Iberian peninsula. They are the maritime exploits of the large navigators (Vasco de Gama, Magellan etc), the discoveries of new grounds and in particular of America and the opening of new roads of trade. It is the eradication by the Occident of Terra Incognita of its charts.

the Colonisation corresponds to the expression of the Western imperialism of the time and to the to have car-allotted European to civilize all human the.

the era of the development begins with the end from the second world war and the invention from the concept of development at the time of the speech of the president states-unien Harry Truman with Philadelphia the January 20th 1949 which it detailed at the time of the Point IV of this speech. It declared there be up to the capitalist countries of North, qualified developed countries, to diffuse their technologies and assistance with the countries described as underdeveloped, so that they are integrated more into the monetarized capitalist economic system and approach the model of company developed: the american company, whose emanates the development project. It is the passage of colonization to the Néocolonialisme via one historical period of decolonization.

universalization or globalisation is in prolongation of the era of the development, and corresponds to the installation of an economic war generalized by the progressive elimination of all the obstacles to the trade and the development of large international markets. It is amplified by the fall of the socialist economies and sees, just like the era of the development, an increase in the inequalities in the distribution of the richnesses between richest and poorest. It also corresponds to the emergence of the world-wide crisis of the planetary environment and climate warming. She sees the resurrection of the concept “development” to fall in disuse in the Eighties, in the concept of écodéveloppement which will pass to the posterity under the name of sustainable development or bearable.

The project of after-development is defined in rupture in this historical continuity which would be marked by the progressive crushing of the companies by the entity technician Occident , the " désocialisation" individuals, " the omnimarchandisation" world, the enrichment of richest and the impoverishment of the majority, the planetary environmental pollution and reduction in its resources.

The thesis of the after-development

The thesis of the after-development considers that the Occidentalisation is the cultural lever of the imaginary developpementist. Like worship of the Technical and disenchantment of the world, it would function as a anticulture which would destroy the structures economic, social, and mental traditional, in their substituent like single life plan, material accumulation without end, and like single society project the perpetual search of the Modernité and the material richness: the development, often with the detriment of the blooming of the To be. Occidentalization désocialiserait and déterritorialiserait the men, would substitute economic exchanges for the social link and would preach the generalized competition which leads to exclusion.

With the planetary scales, this exclusion would not touch only individuals, but whole companies. Thus, as of 1989, Serge Latouche denounced what he regarded as a failure and these drifts: “If the occidentalization of the world is failing, it is not because the transmitters of information are not powerful enough, but more simply because on the one hand, “the base of the culture”, the economy, do not follow and that on the other hand, “the system sociétal” which carries the project is in the process of decomposition. The development is not a generalizable model; it is well rather about an instrument of domination of the world whose complex dynamics always increases, or recreates, of the tears in the “infrastructure”, in so far as this one draws its direction only from the spectacular system of being able which accompanies it. The crisis of the development is necessarily a cultural crisis. Disappointed, floués of the myth turn to aggressive forms of cultural assertion, rebuilt like anti-Western. ”

Proposals

The concept of after-development proposes like a whole of alternatives to the project of modernity, intrinsic with occidentalization. The Occident entity is largely déterritorialisée, even if its vectors remain more palpable, its effects denounced higher are visible as well in North as in the South: destruction of the bond, the representations, the models, just like the destruction of the mediums: Environment by its overexploitation, thus the after-development is not concept specific to the " Nord" or with the " Sud" , as the origins of its defenders show it, nor a specific concept for the " Nord" or for the " Sud". It cannot be defined by a single project of company. It is a project of Civilization S (with or without S according to the designs of each one) which gives up the concept of development and sustainable development all two included/understood like “good economic growth”, a whole of alternative projects to the development which it is advisable for each company car-to define; He proposes to a reculturation individuals and companies alternatively with the transnational cultural model which would standardize the life with the planetary scales in all its aspects. The required objective is the réenchâssement of economic in the social one and to stop the research of the Expansion economic infinite incompatible with our finished world.

The place of the Humanism - Universalism in the development

For the partisans of the after-development, there exists a true polemic around the concept of the humanistic universal values clean at the Western company and the Philosophie of the Lumières. Humanism-universalism is a vector of diffusion of the Western values and development. Only, according to the degree of relativism of each one, he is considered moreover, either like the justification of the need for a after-development, or like a component of " imaginary the développementiste".

For the seconds, like Latouche says it: “the assertion that the values of the occident, being natural , are those of any man and all the men becomes true, without for as much these values are more natural . Quite simply, did not survive and only the companies survive which have, at least partly, accepted these values. So the rétrodictive history can claim that these values were germinates in their cultures of it and that the Occident did to nothing but reveal them with themselves their major truth. ” Thus, always for Latouche, “the idea that a unified humanity is the condition of a harmonious operation of planet belongs to the panoply of the pseudo good ideas conveyed by the ordinary Western ethnocentrism. Indeed each culture is characterized by the specificity of its values. ”

Alternatives to the development

Insofar as the development and the economy were invented then extended on the sphere, there exist historical alternatives to the development, going back to before its invention but not only.

In addition, there exist voluntarist alternatives to the development, real projects for the after-development, characterized by the will to be invented like alternatives to the developpementist project. In this direction, they are decolonizations of the imaginary traditional Western developpementist.

Historical alternatives to the development

the car-organization of the vernacular companies/economies :

They largely form part of the field of study of the anthropologists, of the ethnologists, but also of the historians. In many vernacular companies, the economic one is not autonomisé as tel. It east dissolves, built-in the social one and structuring networks complex. The considerable number of this current society or histories corresponds to as many examples of alternatives to the company Western developpementist, but they are generally badly known and the imaginary Westerner is an obstacle with the good comprehension of the contemporary vernacular companies or historically close relations.

the informal economy :

Thus one generally qualifies the collective organization of the exchanges of the “shipwrecked men of the universalization” by which survive, out of the official field of the work professionnalized and often also of monetary remuneration, them excluded from the globalized market and the richness in the South but also in North. They are local forms of forced after-development.

Voluntarist alternatives to the development or projects for the after-development

the convivial Decrease :

It is a proposal answering the economic problem of overgrowth of the countries of the North whose contents largely make debate. This economic overgrowth is highlighted by the ecological Empreinte of richest which perhaps generalized with whole humanity. Its partisans present the decrease like necessary, not only to preserve the environment but also, and perhaps especially, to restore the minimum of social justice without which the planet is condemned. She preaches the “voluntary simplicity” of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Tolstoï

the localism :

One gathers under this name, a whole of attempts to invent new logical social with the local scales of the basin of life, founded on the revalorization of the not-economic aspects of the life, on the “gift” heard like triple obligation (to give, receive and return) and on new social reports/ratios.

the voluntary Simplicity

the Systems of local exchanges : SALT

the Network of exchanges of alternative and interdependent practices : MEAL

Quotations

As a long time as we will compare the evolution of our company to that of humanity advancing towards an at the same time ideal term and indefinitely future, as a long time as we will see, in our scientific progresses and techniques, the proof of this overall evolution, we will not even manage to imagine a new political project| François Therefore

In the European recovery program, in our good-neighbor policy and in the United Nations, we cuts begun to batter down those advancement national walls which social block the economic growth and the off the peoples off the world. | Harry S. Truman' S Fourth State off the Union Address, 1949 (on Wikisource)

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