Abstract

MASULLO JIMENEZ, Juan. Euphemisms and fetishes: Rethinking development, exploring the postdevelopment. Estud. soc [online]. 2012, vol.20, n.39, pp.287-302. ISSN 0188-4557.

This short essay is inspired by the volume edited by Olga Lucía Castillo, El Desarrollo ¿Progreso o ilusión? Aportes para el debate desde el ámbito rural, published in 2007. It is neither a book review nor a critique; rather, it is a general reflection on some of the questions raised, implicitly or explicitly, by the volume's different contributors. In dealing with the social construction of the idea of development and its current status, it invites the reader to search for possible escape routes to what seems to be a 'dead-end street'. This essay presents post-development's critique as a useful approach for the designing of alternatives to development, both as a concept and a practice; at the same time, it identifies crucial challenges and risks. Nonetheless, underlying the discussion is a genuine concern for the well-being of many of the inhabitants of the so-called "Third World" who have been the object of diverse political technologies through which they have been constituted and framed as subjects in need of development.

Keywords : development; underdevelopment; deconstruction; postmodernism; posdevelopment.

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