Understanding Languages of Modernization: A Southeast Asian View

Abstract

More than most of humanity, scholars are prone to sinking their feet into the quagmire of definition. Words are unpacked, nuances of meaning are debated, and discourses are interrogated. Post-developmentalists have been at the forefront of a re-examination of the languages of development and developmentalism. Arturo Escobar, for example, states that his desire is to analyze ‘regimes of discourse and representation’ (1995: 10). Jonathan Crush is similarly concerned with the so-styled discourse of development, and expresses the desire to make the ‘self-evident problematical’ (1995: 3). He highlights work in the humanities and social sciences which concerns itself with textual issues of writing and representation through which this discourse has been framed. Crush suggests that such textual analysis offers ‘new ways of understanding what development is and does, and why it seems so difficult to think beyond it’. He goes on to argue that ‘we need to not only understand why the language of development can be so evasive, even misleading, but also why so many people in so many parts of the world seem to need to believe it and have done so for so long’ (1995: 4).