PH.D. COURSE, UNIVERSITY OF OSLO, 22-24 November, 2010
Development and the environment:
A critical introduction to current Latin
American debates
Co-organized by SUM (Centre for Development and the Environment), NorLARNet (Norwegian Network for
Latin America Research) & Kultrans (Cultural transformations in the age of globalization), University of Oslo
PURPOSE
Latin America is often considered the very cradle of critical development theory. The centuries-long
experience of Latin America with different forms of colonization that have shaped societies, political
institutions and economic structures, has made the region a prime case for theorizing the effects of the
encounters of different cultures, world views and social and economic systems. This has informed early
dependency theory as well as current post-development, postcolonial and post-occidental perspectives, all
of which have aimed to understand the particular form of development and modernity resulting from old
and new forms of colonialization.
However, it is not only its experience as a colonized region that has inspired the critical strands of
development theory. Development theory was also formulated based on examples of Latin America’s
successes with the implementation of innovative development policies, emergence of new agents of social
change, and new ways to understand the meaning and content of development. Such new ways of thinking
have recently not only aimed to address the conditions for and meanings of improvement in the human
condition, but also how this depends on the relationship with nature. Drawing often on ancient
worldviews and symbols, such ideas prove highly challenging to a region which economically is highly
dependent on the exploitation of natural resources.
This doctoral course will give a thorough and critical introduction to current theoretical debates in and
about Latin America. It will also discuss the relationship between development practice and theory in
Latin America by referring to how current radical regimes are inspired by and justify their practice based
on various strands of critical development theory.
COURSE CONTENT
The different strands of dependency theory that emerged as a challenge to the development orthodoxy of
the 1950s were all in some way based on the experiences of Latin America. The positive impact on Latin
American industrialization resulting from the isolation related to the great depression of the 1930s
influenced the formulation of the theory and policy of import-substituting industrialization adopted by
developing countries all over the world (Prebisch 1984). But also some of the most influential of the neoMarxist dependency scholars focusing on the production of underdevelopment of the global capitalist
system based their experiences on the exploitation of Latin Americas natural resources, in a model that
produced enclaves of wealth within seas of poverty (Gunder Frank), as did the range of scholars that
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problematized the potentials in a class compromise for reversing the existing patterns of domination and
exploitation (e.g., Cardoso and Faletto 1979, Sunkel 1979, dos Santos 1996).
The mixed experience with many of the implemented policies, and the political shift towards right wing
governments, led to a complete rejection of them in mainstream development practice in the 1980s.
However, within development theory there was also an internal criticism that led to the emergence of
perspectives that built on the same basic conceptualization of development and modernity in Latin
America as deeply conditioned by global power relations. One may distinguish between several lines of
inquiry that all in some way are based on dependency theory, but that have criticized and reformulated
several aspects. Of these, this course will focus on three:
1.
Dependency, postcolonialism and modernity
Various researchers have inquired further into the cultural, conceptual and epistemological consequences
of colonialism and how it conditions modernity and development. Although what has often been termed
post-colonial studies have their origin in Asia and Africa rather than Latin-America, in fact post-colonial
critiques of the representation of Latin America, of development theory and practice have long roots.
Indeed, as Fernando Coronil has argued “the dependency school represents one of Latin America’s most
significant contributions to postcolonial thought within this period” (2004, p. 223). The academic debate
about what postcolonialism is and means in the Latin American context is vivid. Latin America’s
experience with colonization goes much further back than those of Africa and Asia, it much earlier was
transformed into an “internal colonization” (as it was partly the groups of colonizers that gained
independence from the Iberian imperial countries), and it was later subject to subtler forms of economic,
cultural and social rather than explicitly political subjection. This has made many of the assumptions of
postcolonial perspectives such as a sharp distinction between the indigenous and the non-indigenous,
difficult to apply, and some prefer to speak rather of “postoccidentialism” in order to avoid making the
sharp distinction between forms of subjection experienced during the colonial period and what has been
experienced later (Mignolo 2005).
Yet, perhaps exactly due to its plentiful experiences with colonization, the contributions to the
postcolonial and post-development literature from Latin America prove particularly rich. This ranges
from the critique of how Latin America is constructed as the anti-thesis of development and
enlightenment and a critique of the conditions for social theorization from the “underside, to attempts at
understanding the specific forms of peripheral modernity that emerge in the meeting between the
dominant and the subaltern cultures (Dussel 1995, de Sousa Santos 2008, Quijano 2000, Klor de Alva
1992, Garcia-Canclini 1990, 1995, Costa 2009, Boatcă and Costa 2010, Coronil 1999). However, these
debates do not take place in isolation from political and social projects. While current political projects
partly draw their inspiration from such perspectives, they only partly reflect them, may misrepresent
them, at the same time as they may inspire and deepen them (Escobar 2010).

2.
In this course we will give a critical introduction to current Latin American debates about multiple
forms of colonialism and dependency and their implications for modernity and development.
Participation, natural resource and the environment
The focus on global relations and on industrialization and economic growth of the early dependistas led to
a relative neglect of the diversity of local expressions of development and underdevelopment as well as
different worldviews, cultures, values and strategies of resistance. The critique of the mainstream
development discourse emerging in the 1980s, showed a higher degree of sensitivity towards alternative
discourses (Escobar 1984, 1995). These alternative discourses were found among groups marginalized
from the project of modernity and enlightenment. A key element in these discourses has been a different
conceptualization of nature and the relationship between man and nature (Escobar 1995). This may be
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interpreted as a result of the high dependency on the exploitation of natural resources in the form of
capitalism emerging in Latin America. Thus, although the environmental debate in Latin America is
diverse and views diverge, there is a tendency to associate development as well as colonialism with the
exploitation of natural resources, whereas environmentalism has been linked in theory and practice to
social justice (Carruthers 2008). Protection of natural resources is associated with protection of the rights
of marginalized people, and with views of nature that the modern project has attempted to conquer,
emerging from alternative philosophies, including indigenous thinking, to the occidental one.
Current regimes have drawn heavily on the emerging alternative environmental discourse and
implemented innovative policies to transform the understanding of the relationship between man and
nature, giving, for example specific rights to nature. However, the process of putting these projects into
practice also exposes their vulnerability to the exigencies of modernity and of people’s demands to take
part in the benefits of modernization.
 In this course we will give a critical introduction to the current Latin American debates about the
relationship between man and the environment, and the limits and possibilities of alternative
discourses of development appreciating the rights of nature.
3.
The issue of the state
While in the early critical development theory the Latin American states were viewed either in neoMarxist terms as an expression of leading global capital forces in alliance with the local elite, or in
Gramscian terms as a potential site of a class compromise, more recent contributions have taken an
interest in the nature and meaning of the state institutions as such. These have been analyzed from a
Weberian perspective, seeking to understand the implications of the Latin American experience for such
theories (Centeno 2004, López Alvez 2002), but other contributions have attempted to interpret the state
without the constraining frames of concepts developed originally to understand the evolution of European
states. For this Eurocentric approach, theorizing the Latin American state becomes an exercise in pointing
out what they are not and what they should become. Some have focused on the mythologization of the
state and its symbols of power (Blom-Hansen and Stepputat 2001, Coronil 1997 ). Others focus on the
dual nature of the state as an apparatus of oppression and an instrument of emancipation and initiator of
societal transformations. This contradiction has particular consequences in countries characterized by
deep rooted inequalities, hosting simultaneously different civilizations and modes of production (GarcíaLinera 2004), and it has given rise to a literature focusing on the potential for refounding and
decolonalizing the state (see e.g., Santos 2007, Walsh 2009). The nature of the state and its apparatus to
communicate with, respond to, and control the populations has gained renewed interest in the context of
the emergence of regimes that employ a host of new and old techniques for participation, communication
and control.
 In this course we will give a critical introduction to current Latin American debates about the
nature and role of the state in development and emancipation.
HOW TO APPLY
Are you interested in joining the course and present a paper for post-course revisions? Please visit our
website for information about application procedures and other practicalities. Deadline for application is
15 September 2010. We look forward to hearing from you!
Best wishes,
the organizers
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