Elite development theory: a labour-centred critique

The lecture is followed by refreshments.

Free and open to the public, no RSVP required.

The objective of Development Studies, theory and practice is to uplift and empower the world’s poor.

Much development theory, however, is based upon elite-led conceptions of social change.

Whilst distinct from each other such theories form a broader unity of Elite Development Theory (EDT).

EDT conceptualizes ‘the poor’ as human inputs into, or at best, as junior partners within elite-led development projects and processes, rather than as development ‘actors’ in their own right.

In this talk Benjamin Selwyn argues that this elitism contributes to a) the continual (re)framing of the poor as passive beneficiaries of elite policy, b) legitimating economic exploitation and political repression of the poor, especially when they act against the pre-conceived objectives of elite-led development, and c) naturalizing the hierarchical social relations which nourish EDT.

He illustrates these claims by discussing a number of EDT traditions – The Washington/Post-Washington Consensus, Statist Political Economy and Modernisation Marxism.

He argues that EDT and practice contributes to a situation where the benefits of capitalism’s immense economic dynamism are concentrated in the hands of a minority of the world’s population.

He concludes by proposing a non-elite comprehension of human development, conceived here as ‘labour-centred development’.

Benjamin Selwyn is Senior Lecturer in International Relations and International Development, and the Director of the Centre for Global Political Economy at the University of Sussex, UK. He conducted field work in North East Brazil throughout the 2000’s.

He works at the intersection of International Political Economy, Economic Geography and International Development. His publications include Workers, State and Development in Brazil (Manchester University Press: 2012), The Global Development Crisis (Polity: 2014), and 21st Century International Political Economy: A Class-Relational Perspective (European Journal of International Relations, 2015). His research focuses on global development and in particular on the seeming paradox of global capitalism’s simultaneous generation of mass wealth and widespread poverty.