Myths of community management: sustainability, the state and rural development in Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu

Abstract

It has become fashionable of late to view ‘development’ as a discourse which problematises ‘the other’ from a western perspective (Escobar 1995, Crush 1995), But while much writing in this vein speaks of one development discourse, that of economism, there are indeed two contending but interrelated levels of discourse on development; that of economism and that of communitarianism. The former is associated with economic rationalism on which there is a large critical literature. The latter, communitarianism is far less rigorously criticised, no doubt due to what Dore (1994:18–21) terms a ‘liberal egalitarianism taboo’. Both discourses share a reality called ‘development’, but they problematise the culture and system of production of particular groups of people in different ways. From the economistic viewpoint, poverty is caused by economic stagnation, organizational inadequacy, underproduction and insufficiency of information. Economism is predicated on belief in the existence of universal human economic aspirations and pathways to modernity via technological change and economic growth. It assumes the efficacy of acts of intervention called projects, in which capital, technology and knowhow are administered in prescribed doses to encourage greater efficiency of production. It measures the results by increasing consumption. It continues to be the dominant paradigm in most aid and development agencies. The communitarian point of view sees poverty as the effects of structural forces of inequality, oppression, and marginalisation. It is predicated on belief in the redemptive potential of transformative social action. It assumes the efficacy of acts of intervention to stimulate ‘sustainable’ self-generated development based on self-help at the ‘grassroots’ community level in a participatory manner, with goals of empowering people to act for themselves to overcome the causes of their poverty. It firmly rejects as ethnocentric Durkheim’s and Weber’s classical theories of modernisation, and their notion that ‘development’ involves a transition from small to large scale forms of organisation, and from collectivism to individualism. In the wealthy democracies of the West, whose taxpayers and voluntary donors provide the funds for most development activities, the communitarian agenda has gained considerable influence on bilateral and multilateral aid policies. Most aid donors and development finance institutions have sought to broaden their legitimacy since the 1980s by borrowing from the communitarian agenda long established by development non-governmental organizations (NGOs).