Race in/and development

Abstract

Development discourse owes a great deal to sociological models of modernity. Modern societies are understood to be composed of individuals all of which, regardless of their personal attributes, enjoy equal rights under the law. The distribution of needs through economic and political circuits is supposed to operate in an increasingly universal and objective fashion favouring no-one by reference to particular personal attributes, but by the impersonal demand and supply of the market or by some form of rational meanstested welfare that cover all citizens. The dominant interpretation of modern world development (whether “neo-liberal” and favouring the autonomy of market forces, or a “capabilities approach” and recognising the necessity of political intervention) can be understood as the universalization of these methods and mechanisms of distributing need across all societies and cultures.