Alternativas de desarrollo: viejos desafíos y nuevas hibridaciones en China y América Latina

Abstract

In the current, dominant conceptualisation of International Development Studies, «development» is based on the emancipation from poverty for the more than one-billion people who are unable to satisfy their basic human needs, in a world that has never been richer in material terms. Critical development studies attempts to understand why the many projects of development that have been implemented have not led to the stated emancipatory goal after five decades of multiple initiatives and resources, and propose alternatives to the conventional model. To that end, this article examines and theorizes the dynamic of capitalist system's development project; offers tools for the analysis of States, societies and communities which have attempted to create better living conditions and defy orthodox models; outline the resistance to capitalism and the search for alternatives in the peripheries; conceptualize peripheral capitalist subdevelopment or development and post-capitalism or post-development from a perspective of unequal development; reveal the failure of dominant economic development theory and policy that is unable to understand or ignores the underlying dynamic of capitalist development. Consequently, the article proposes going beyond capitalism with the forces of progressive change, oriented toward an alternative development. It analyzes case studies in China and Latin America, where a series of hybridizations are identified that could offer lessons for how to create alternatives to capitalism.