The postdevelopment critique holds that modern development theory is a creation of academia in tandem with an underlying political and economic ideology.
The academic, political, and economic nature of development means it tends to be policy oriented, problem-driven, and therefore effective only in terms of and in relation to a particular, pre-existing social theory.
Development as an ideology and a social vision is ingrained in the ideals of modernization, which holds Western economic structure and society as a universal model for others to follow and emulate.
Looking back on the circumstances of this paradigm's creation within the broader context of the material changes accompanying it, the scholar Nick Cullather frames development as "history."
[4] Cullather notes that many historicists who study or promote development construed as history think of the entries in its unfolding through this era in term of a discourse of signifiers.
[4] Influenced by Ivan Illich and other critics of colonialism and postcolonialism, a number of postdevelopment theorists like Arturo Escobar and Gustavo Esteva have challenged the very meaning of development.
According to them, the way development is understood is rooted in the earlier colonial discourse that depicts the North as "advanced" and "progressive", and the South as "backward", "degenerate" and "primitive".
Postdevelopment theory arose in the 1980s and 1990s through the works of scholars like Escobar, Esteva, Majid Rahnema, Wolfgang Sachs, James Ferguson, Serge Latouche, and Gilbert Rist.
According to Sachs, a leading member of the postdevelopment school, "the idea of development stands like a ruin in the intellectual landscape" and "it is time to dismantle this mental structure.
Among the starting points and basic assumptions of postdevelopment thought is the idea that a middle-class, Western lifestyle and all that goes with it (which might include the nuclear family, mass consumption, living in suburbia and extensive private space), may neither be a realistic nor a desirable goal for the majority of the world's population.
In this sense, development is seen as requiring the loss, or indeed the deliberate extermination (ethnocide) of indigenous culture[9] or other psychologically and environmentally rich and rewarding modes of life.
For example, postdevelopment theorists argue that the politics of defining and satisfying needs is a crucial dimension of development thought, deeply entwined in the concept of agency.
Decolonial programmatics include ALBA: The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America,[13] initiated by Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez in 2004 in response to neoliberal development projects such as FTAA and NAFTA.
[14] "Postdevelopment in practice begins with the insistence that an enduring diversity of socialities, a multiplicity of southern knowledges and nature/culture assemblages, and postcolonial political economies reveals already existing alternatives.
"[15] One of the leading anti-development writers, James Ferguson, contributed to what John Rapley termed "the most important of the opening salvos" of postdevelopment theory with his book The Anti-Politics Machine: Development, Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho.
In The Anti-Politics Machine Ferguson describes the failure of the development project to properly understand the cultural and economic values of the people of Lesotho.
This misunderstanding led to misappropriation of resources by the international community and myriad negative consequences for Basotho (residents of Lesotho), prompting Ferguson to comment that "Capitalist interests [...] can only operate through a set of social and cultural structures so complex that the outcome may be only a baroque and unrecognizable transformation of the original intention.
And while communities in the Third World may find that there is a need for some sort of organised or directed change—in part to reverse the damage done by development—this undoubtedly will not take the form of 'designing life' or social engineering.
However, in 1992 he co-authored and edited The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power which contributed greatly to the compilation of postdevelopment literature as a general theory.
Sachs argues that the creation of this term was a discrete, strategic move to secure American hegemony by reinforcing the idea that the United States is at the top, and other countries on a lower pillar, of a linear and singular trajectory of development.
This definition held the potential to provide morally ambiguous justification for imperialist behavior and can be connected to colonial discourse and mainstream development theories.
He leaves the reader with the idea of the "New Commons" and posits that men and women should begin with this awareness before attempting to introduce new political policies with room for creativity and innovation in diverse development paths.
"[23] In short, Kiely argues that postdevelopment theory is merely the latest version of a set of criticisms that have long been evident within writing and thought in the field of development.