To me, the current discussion on “development� these days resembles the discourse of the colonial era. The way in which the West thinks of non-Western people is still almost exactly the same as it was 100 or 200 years ago, but all we have done is essentially replaced the word “civilized� with “developed� and the word “uncivilized,� with the words “developing� or “underdeveloped.� We still operate on the same concept of the White Man’s Burden and saving and uplifting those heathen (or third world) people.

I personally don’t consider what most refer to as “development� or achieving more Western lifestyles as progress. What the world considers as “development� and “modernization� are not neutral and objective standards, but are based on specific cultures and lifestyles and are thus cultural standards which assume that what is not done the western way is wrong, “traditional,� or “old-fashioned.� The standards of well-being that the West uses emphasize only material wealth, and only certain types of material wealth, without necessarily considering whether these materials necessarily make a difference in the quality of one’s life, for instance in terms of happiness, health, or contentedness. If one is able to provide for oneself and family and live a content life, does it matter whether one achieved that by working in an office or by tending to a garden? Is one necessarily better off if he or she has two TV’s? Not necessarily. If he or she can function in his or her society without a TV, then I don’t see it as improving the quality of life. Is one necessarily better off if one sells one’s produce and then buys someone else’s than if one just eats one’s produce oneself?

The ideas of development often assume the supremacy of western lifestyles. For example, in an attempt to rank countries in a way that avoids income-based measurements, Amartya Sen devised the Human Development Index. Yet, I still don’t believe the criteria of the HDI objectively represent measurements of what is better for human development. The HDI is composed of longevity, knowledge, and income. But the measure of knowledge is based on the adult literacy rate and mean years of schooling. Can you really equate literacy and schooling with knowledge? Doing so assumes the superiority of certain lifestyles. Not all societies were literate societies, but just because someone does not know how to read or did not receive “formal� education based on a western model does not indicate that he or she is not intelligent or cannot contribute to the society. To assume that is to ignore the value of other forms of knowledge and education which may not involve a classroom with textbooks, and which may not include calculus. I can assure you that my mother (who by the way has PhD in linguistics) can identify more organs and their functions in a chicken and a fish just from cooking experience than I could even with AP and college biology (even if she didn’t happen to call them by the English, Greek or Latin names that we use). She can also identify almost any staple crop, vegetable, fruiting, or edible plant or tree by its leaves or can tell me what family it belongs to or what it is related to even if it’s a completely new variety in Mexico or England that she has never seen before. (Not to mention knowing the medicinal value of many plants). She didn’t learn any of this in a textbook. And, the West African woman you see selling produce in the market probably knows the basics of economics, because a lot of it is common sense, and you get much more common sense out of experience than out of textbooks. To rank countries using criteria such as literacy and schooling assumes that “uneducated� people are unintelligent and that the textbook education now predominant in Western societies is naturally superior to ‘informal’ education. I am not advocating that people not go to school and am not saying that there is no benefit to “formal� education, but just demonstrating an example of how development standards are culturally based.

Many people tend to think that people who hold ideas similar to mine think that the “past� is better than the “present.� But, for one, I don’t consider customs which are still practiced in the present as belonging to the past, and it is not that it is better, than that it may not be any worse.

One of the reasons why I think many “third world� countries remain “underdeveloped� and face many problems is that they are too busy trying to imitate what is not theirs without being able to imitate it completely or to accommodate it into the existing structures that they have. For example, many Africans are now in poverty as a result of urbanization and industrialization that has not integrated them and their lifestyles into the process. (In a documentary called “GoldWidows� some Lesotho women complained that they are unable to provide for themselves and their families as they used to because everything now costs money, and since they do not have adequate means to make able to make money, they are now in poverty whereas they weren’t before.) We are too concerned with trying to become like “the west.� But because we don’t have the history, the experience, and the culture that made America America and ‘the West’ “the West,� we may never be able to be or to operate just like them. So we may always rank below them on their scale of development (which is almost essentially a scale of who is the most westernized.) But, if we stop just trying to imitate their society and start trying to improve ours (even if this means integrating ideas from elsewhere), they will never be able to beat us at our game. They will be forced to rank us by our standards and not just theirs.

So are there currently problems in Africa today? Certainly. Does it necessarily mean following in the footsteps of the west and their economic and governmental and societal structures? No. The US may be wealthy, but it is not a perfect society and there are many problems that plague its society and many problems that accompany westernization or industrialization and “modernization� as the west has gone about it. I would be saddened to see Africa turning into another Europe or another United States.

In conclusion, when thinking about development I always ask myself these questions that I think it would be good for other people to reflect on as well. What are the criteria that distinguish a developed country from a developing one, and what is the actual cut off line? Who defines these criteria, and who determines what nation is developed or developing? What are the assumptions behind these criteria? That it is better to replace a lifestyle in which deaths are largely caused from infectious diseases with one in which the risk of death from cancer is 1 in 4? Perhaps. That it is better to wash your dishes in a dishwasher than by hand?

It seems to me that the framework in which you both set the discussion is based on a dichotomous understanding of development -- developed and developing countries forming two mutually exclusive sets and development being the process through which countries in the first set move to or become “like” those in the second set. While this might capture some of what development might be, I do not find it a useful way of understanding and dealing with development. You are both right though that development need not be the convergence of under-development societies to be carbon copies of developed counties today -- a developed Africa of tomorrow need not be the U.S. of today.

The fault of the framework through which you criticize the ideological foundations of popular conceptions of “development” is that it is dangerously close to being escapist. There is no denying that developing countries, especially in Africa, suffer from very high poverty levels, resource under-utilization, lack of opportunities for its young and unnecessary death from curable diseases (malnutrition, malaria, TB) which are all almost exclusively developing country problems.

Therefore, understanding the developed/under-developed countries divide in terms of an admission of tangible issues such as these that developing countries are yet to solve through a "development" process is a lot more helpful. Under this understanding, developing countries will get to be “like” developed countries only in terms of having been able to deal with these issues. I think this is beyond reproach. It means that Zimbabwe would still be a developing country if, hypothetically, on average people are as happy and live as long in both Zimbabwe and the US, yet a greater percentage of deaths in Zimbabwe are caused by malaria.

Thus, what the world considers “development” or “modernizing” can have a “neutral” and “objective” base and it would be escapist for us to gloss over and dismiss the material conditions that force so many Africans to leave Africa and come to the US in search of opportunity and a “better” life.

I also think that the HDI does provide a useful and objective measure of what is better for human development. People do care about longevity (perhaps above all). Income is more controversial but it is a reasonable proxy for quality of life (income expands opportunities and choices). About knowledge, I think literacy rates can be equated to knowledge. If we agree that that intelligence is distributed roughly uniformly around the world, then we have to also agree that it is not useful to add it to the index. What people have the potential to know (as captured by literacy) is much more useful. Admitting the importance of literacy in this sense is not “assuming the supremacy of western lifestyles” or incorporating a western cultural standard onto a measure of “development”. On the contrary it is facing up to the reality that in today’s world, is not enough to simply know everything that can be known in your own community. As with intelligence, local, idiosyncratic knowledge can be taken to be uniformly distributed worldwide -- the Eskimo know a lot about snow and the Khoisan in the Kalahari know a lot about sand -- it adds nothing to an index. The ability to know what lies outside of the familiar is a better measure and literacy is one of the best proxies for that ability.