Encumbering Development: Development Discourse as Hegemonic Resources in the Developing World

Development as a concept is as complex as it is elusive to definition. Various accounts of the chequered historical course of development thought show attempts to explain the development process as it has been perceived in various contexts and during particular time periods. Post World War Two socio-economic development assessments show bleak as well as paradoxical trends in the developing world, given the efforts of nationalist governments and the donor community to improve people's quality of life. While assessments agree that the development project has under performed, or aggravated the poverty and suffering among the poor, explanations of responsible factors remain a subject of heated debate and shifting opinions. In the SADC region, Malawi's post-independence rapid economic growth and its fall from the early 1980s have attracted divergent explanations, given Western donor community good will and support Malawi enjoyed throughout the cold war era. A worthwhile starting point in tackling the complexities of development is to clarify conceptions of development and their strategies in context. Adopting techniques in Critical Discourse Analysis perspectives that espouse a constructivist approach, a rhetorical and linguistic study of public communication texts within the socio-political context at independence in 1964 and post-independence, throws some light on the development project as encumbered and distracted in Malawi and by extension, among (young) states of the developing world. As such, as much as the development agenda is seen to have primarily socio-economic bearings, analyses of depictions of development show that elites subtly used the development agenda as a hegemonic resource to entrench their positions. This paper focuses on the constructive element that was involved in the conceptualisation of development and the hegemonic purposes the development concepts served