Development Discourses: Conservative, Radical and Beyond

Development holds a central place in many debates but it is seldom deconstructed. It is a discourse made up of a web of key concepts which are simply taken for granted, in both its conservative and radical guises. Development is an amoeba-like concept – denoting everything and nothing – which creates a common ground for right and left to battle on. Thus, if there is a perceived impasse in development theory, this should be seen as due to the stultifying unity of the discursive field and not its regrettable fragmentation (Schuurman, 1993). We argue in this chapter that the crisis of development theory – and by implication the crisis of development perspectives in Ireland – is linked to the limitations of the modernist discourse. As we do not seek an abstract critique of existing radical debates, but a genuine transcending, we shall proceed first to catalogue the considerable achievements of this work – as exemplified in this book – in questioning the findings of conservative or ‘mainstream’ thinking on the development prospects of Ireland. In the course of this analysis we hope to move beyond the language of critique to a language of transformation, necessary in our view for any radical democratic vision and creation of a new Ireland