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Demonstrates that, as it has been implemented by international development agencies, the women in development (WID) regime, with its origins in modernist colonial discourses & discourses of the market, disempowers Third World women. Drawing on relevant literature, colonial discourses are described as privileging the economy, culture, society, & politics of European peoples & homogenizing & essentializing Third World peoples, particularly women. Moreover, the discourses of the market are taken to stress individualism & voluntary choice in a manner that disempowers Third World nations in the international political economy. It is shown that these discourses have been at the root of the WID regime as it has been implemented by the World Bank. The Third World women's, or empowerment, perspective is advocated as an alternative basis for development, because it is rooted in the concrete experiences of women & grassroots strategies of organization that do not essentialize or disempower the people it is trying to assist. D. M. Smith

AbstractThis article seeks to introduce scholars outside of development studies to post‐development thought, and to restate its relevance and value to those working within the development field. It begins with an overview of post‐development thought and its critique of the post‐World War Two development project. Following this, specific critiques levelled at post‐development thought and various responses to these are considered. In the last section, the possibility or desirability of raising the living standards of Third World people to a level comparable to those of the First World through economically based development strategies is questioned. The article concludes by drawing attention to First World overdevelopment and the continued value of post‐development thinking in unsettling the development trajectory for either the First or Third World.

Alternative development has been concerned with alternative practices of development—participatory and people‐centred—and with redefining the goals of development. Mainstream development has gradually been moving away from the preoccupation with economic growth toward a people‐centred definition of development, for instance in human development. This raises the question in what way alternative development remains distinguishable from mainstream development—as a roving criticism, a development style, a profile of alternative positions regarding development agency, methodology, epistemology? Increasingly the claim is that alternative development represents an alternative paradigm. This is a problematic idea for four reasons: because whether paradigms apply to social science is questionable; because in development the concern is with policy frameworks rather than explanatory frameworks; because there are different views on whether a paradigm break with conventional development is desirable; and finally because the actual divergence in approaches to development is in some respects narrowing. There is a meaningful alternative development profile or package but there is no alternative development paradigm—nor should there be. Mainstream development is not what it used to be and it may be argued that the key question is rather whether growth and production are considered within or outside the people‐centred development approach and whether this can rhyme with the structural adjustment programmes followed by the international financial institutions. Post‐development may be interpreted as a neo‐traditionalist reaction against modernity. More enabling as a perspective is reflexive development, in which a critique of science is viewed as part of development politics.