Les développements ambigus de l’après-développement

Abstract

If post-development authors succeed in their harsh criticism of the Western way of development (based on economic growth and faith in progress), we can wonder if their proposals are as relevant as their critics. If the proposal of a locally-based economy seems to be a logical alternative to globalisation, why do these authors need to refer to communitarian ideas? Using concepts which clearly refer to a certain nostalgia of an idealised past (tradition, rural life, community), they seem to have taken for granted the present disinterest in politics. Consequently, they do not confront with the roles that will play market and democracy in their locally-based economy and feed the ambiguity about their societal conceptions. Even if social and ecological damages caused by capitalism seem to be unsustainable, it might be naïve to think that disconnected alternative projects will manage to fuse in a global anti-capitalist network if counter proposals are not clarified.