The invention of development: power, narrative, and the afterlife of Truman’s speech

Abstract

This article critically examines the concept of development as it is constructed through the Western paradigms. It questions its universalism and highlights its relation with narrative, power, and geopolitics. Following the past of development after President Truman’s speech in 1949 and analysing the UN Declaration on the Right to Development in 1986, the article explores how development has served as a tool of domination instead of a path to human dignity. Through a critical theoretical and anthropological lens, it seeks to compare Western models of development, rooted in economic growth, universalism and institutional hegemony, with other developmental alternatives born in the Global South. Finally, the article engages with the post-development theory, advocating for a decolonial anthropology that empowers local agents and rethinks development. It concludes by framing development not as a linear path but as a plural field where multiple futures can, and should, coexist. 

1. Introduction

In an ever-accelerating world, where growth is pursued as an end in itself and change seems to follow a single, unquestioned direction, the idea of development remains both powerful and ambiguous. It evokes notions of progress, dignity, and opportunity, but it also raises fundamental questions about meaning, agency, and power. Who defines what development really is? 

Since the mid-20th century, development has become a central concept in international relations and politics. At the same time, the international community has recognised the right to development as a fundamental human right. However, the right does not always seem to coincide with how development is conceived and implemented in practice, especially when policies are designed and promoted by Western countries and institutions.

This article critically reviews the evolution of the idea of ​​development, from its birth to the establishment of the post-development theory, and how this confronts the right to development established by the United Nations in 1986. Through a critical theoretical review, the paper explores the Western bases of development, rooted in universalism, economism and ethnicity. It also discusses how the support of international institutions has been key to the success of this Western logic and narrative. At the same time, it explores the visions and proposals of the Global South, which, from the collective and social struggle, has sought alternatives to development. It seeks a way to overcome it, to decolonise itself from the West completely. The anthropological perspective allows explaining what role anthropology should play in post-development, to help overcome it and to make effective a development that is positive for all communities. This takes into account that development is a human right recognised by the United Nations. Finally, the article opens a broader reflection: if development is understood as a fixed trajectory already completed by today’s “developed” countries, what opportunity remains for others to reach the same point? Conceived in this way, development risks becoming a closed pathway, accessible only to early starters. As a result, those left behind may remain so, suggesting that the very concept of development may inadvertently sustain the inequalities it seeks to address.

2. Inventing the ‘Underdeveloped’: Truman’s 1949 Speech and the Birth of Development Discourse

On January 20, 1949, President Truman’s Inaugural Address marked a pivotal moment in the global discourse on development, framing it as both a humanitarian obligation and a strategic imperative. Adopting a paternalistic tone, Truman emphasised the moral duty of the “developed” world to assist the “less fortunate”, declaring that “only by helping the least fortunate of its members (…) can the human family achieve the decent, satisfying life that is the right of all people.” This assistance and aid, he argued, should be delivered through the transfer of American scientific advances and industrial progress, aimed at improving the so-called “underdeveloped areas” of the world. President Truman’s rhetoric introduced a conceptual shift. As language relativity theorist Benjamin Whorf (1956) suggested, there is a connection between language, reality, and thought, concluding that concepts and language shape reality. President Truman’s mere use of the term “underdeveloped” turned an adjective into an urgent situation that required intervention. His rhetoric positioned over half of the world’s population—those “living in conditions approaching misery”—as inherently lacking and in need of guidance. 

This discursive creation coincided with the intensifying tensions of the Cold War. Development emerged not just as a moral mission, but as a geopolitical tool to curb the spread of communism under Stalin in the USSR and Mao Zedong in China. Africa, in particular, became a strategic battleground for superpower influence. As most African nations began to decolonise, it was imperative, amid a bipolar ideological war, that they align with the Western status quo and values. In response to this global dynamic, the 1955 Bandung Conference represented a crucial moment of resistance and solidarity. Newly independent nations from Africa and Asia gathered to articulate a shared vision of unity and mutual support (Appadorai, 1955). The Bandung meeting held significant symbolic weight, offering a foundational moment for the articulation of South-South solidarity and setting the stage for initiatives such as the Non-Aligned Movement. While unity was a central theme, it was less about homogenous alignment and more about forging a collective voice in global forums, strengthening bargaining power in trade and diplomacy, and resisting the polarizing pressures of the Cold War. The conference embodied the tension between shared postcolonial aspirations and the practical challenges of translating them into coordinated political and economic action.

Decades later, in 1986, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) adopted the Resolution 41/126, proclaiming the Declaration on the Right to Development (DRTD). Rooted in key international agreements like the UN Charter, the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Subedi, 2021), the DRTD recognised development as an “inalienable human right”. Article 1 of the DRTD claims that every human has the right to participate in, contribute to, and enjoy social, cultural and political development. The Declaration highlights that all human rights and fundamental freedoms must be realised. While every individual bears some responsibility for ensuring this right, states remain the primary duty-bearers (Arjun, 2014, p. 853). The DRTD recalls the right of all people to self-determination, including the freedom to determine their political status and pursue their economic, social and cultural development. At the same time, the preamble of the Declaration emphasises the importance of eliminating all forms of human rights violations, mainly those caused by colonialism, foreign domination, and threats to sovereignty. This would help to create the conditions for the development of all countries. 

This journey through the origins of the development discourse shows how an apparently neutral and universal idea is, in reality, deeply rooted in power relations, language, and geopolitics. Development, as articulated from Truman’s speech, emerged more as a strategy of control and projection of influence than as a genuine response to the needs of people. This invites us to reconsider a fundamental question: what is development, and for whom?

In this context, it is necessary to explore in depth both the dominant Western approach to development and the alternative visions that have emerged from the Global South, not simply as opposing perspectives, but as an expression of radically different worldviews.

3. Western approach to development

The Direction of Development

The Western approach to development is not merely a technical strategy; it is a profound act of world-making. Emerging in the aftermath of World War II, this approach proposed a single path of progress, framing the historical experiences of Europe and North America as the universal “destiny” of all humanity (Rist, 2002; Escobar, 1995). However, behind its promises of growth and modernisation lies an architecture of power – a project that not only defines what development should be, but also determines who has the authority to define it.

Development, as a purely universalist concept, assumes that the rules of logical thinking are the same in all countries, which is far from its theoretical definition and practical application. The lack of reality of this statement is such that many of the countries that have suffered from developmental dynamics did not have a word to define this concept in their respective languages. Aligning with Whorf’s (1956), if concepts create reality, societies in the Global South may not have perceived a need for “development” because the concept did not exist in their linguistic framework.

Truman’s 1949 speech exemplifies this discursive imposition. By invoking imagery of misery, ignorance, and backwardness in the so-called “underdeveloped” world, he crystallised a new form of soft domination (Truman, 1949; A. Pallotti, M. Zamponi, 2014). Development was framed as the “civilised” world’s duty to the “primitive” world – a reproduction of colonial hierarchies under a humanitarian guise. In this discourse, being “developed” meant adopting the Western model of capitalist democracy, while being “underdeveloped” meant being incomplete and deficient, awaiting transformation (Escobar, 1995). As Plaatjie (2013, p. 128) argues, the developmental discourse is nothing more than a Euro-American “truth” of totalitarian drift that establishes a universal reality. At the same time, the author establishes that development, rather than fulfilling its promise of prosperity, often brings disruption, especially for racialised societies. Similarly, Serge Latouche (2009, pp. 62–63) in his book “Sobrevivir al desarrollo”, where he questions the notions of growth, poverty, and basic needs, presents this idea: “Before the 1970s, in Africa, populations were “poor” by Western standards, in the sense that they had few manufactured goods, but no one, in normal times, died of hunger. After fifty years of development, this is what is happening.”

Building on these critiques, poverty ceases to be interpreted as the result of historical dispossession or unequal global relations. Instead, it becomes framed as a lack — a deviation from an ideal. According to this perspective, development was not approached as a dialogue, but rather a diagnosis, with the West presented as the inevitable solution.

The Economics of Imposed Imitation

Traditionally, development has been directly linked to economic growth and accumulation – the higher the GDP, the greater the development of a country. Understanding this model more closely, one realises that at its core lies an assumption: that modernity must be exportable, and that poverty is not a historically situated or structurally produced condition, but rather the absence of specific Western traits, such as productivity, rationality, and industrialisation. This understanding of development, rooted in Eurocentric ideals, has had concrete material consequences. The implementation of market economies in southern communities systematically impoverished them. As Escobar (1998, p. 49) claims, “mass poverty in the modern sense only emerged when the spread of the market economy broke community ties and deprived millions of people of access to land, water, and other resources.” This logic, embedded in the dominant economic narrative, turns development into a matter of recovery rather than reimagining. 

Theories of modernisation, especially during the Cold War, reinforced this belief. Thinkers such as Rostow (1960) and Lerner (1958) described societies in terms of stages, tracing a unique path from “traditional” to “modern.” On the one hand, the West stood at the end of this path, while on the other, the Global South was still at the beginning. Development thus became not only technical but also temporal: to be underdeveloped meant to exist in a different time, always lagging behind.

Truman’s speech (1949) already equated progress to development, claiming that scientific advances and industrial progress should be exported to improve and “grow” underdeveloped areas. This shows how Western perspectives on development were to be introduced in the Global South without taking into consideration local views. Without going any further, while the West looks to the future for ways to progress, other societies look to the past and their ancestors. Each society has its own trajectory of progress, adapting to new local, national, and global contexts, and not all find their foundations in the future. The creation of new needs to pursue specific objectives in the Global South represents another form of colonialism, which is not only ethnocentric but also pro-European. This ideology of imitation shaped the very economic mission of development. It legitimised policies that promoted industrialisation, urbanisation, and market liberalisation as universally beneficial, regardless of local needs and values. It also erased other conceptions of welfare, making them irrational or invisible. The problem lies in this model’s inability to recognise alternative ways of living and knowing. It erased cosmologies, traditions, and solidarities that did not fit the Western mould. Difference was not valued, but rather pathologised. 

Institutions as Vectors of Western Norms

This Western approach to development was institutionalised and disseminated by a network of global organisations that shaped not only policies but also perceptions of what development should look like. These institutions created a language of legitimacy that continues to govern international cooperation today. The World Bank, the OECD-DAC, and the UNDP became the operational arms of this paradigm, influencing not only funding flows but the very terms through which development was understood.

The first of those, the UNDP, was often viewed as a progressive actor. In 1990, it introduced the Human Development Index, aiming to move beyond GDP by emphasising health, education, and capabilities (UNDP, 1990; Sen, 1999). Yet even this broader framing remained embedded in global governance logics. Participation was measured, and empowerment evolved into a policy tool. The model resulted in a shifted vocabulary, but not in a more inclusive structure (Development, 2024).

The second, the OECD-DAC, codified development cooperation through principles like ownership and aid effectiveness. However, “ownership” was largely defined by donors, and “effectiveness” meant alignment with liberal market priorities. Behind terms like “good governance” lay assumptions about how states should behave: efficient, open and fiscally restrained (A. Pallotti, M. Zamponi, 2014).

Lastly, the World Bank, through its structural adjustment programs, imposed a model of growth rooted in austerity, liberalisation, and privatisation (Ferguson, 1990; Sachs, 2010). Even as the Bank gradually adopted more inclusive language, it continued to condition support on economic conformity. It provided not only financial assistance but also promoted a specific worldview.

Together, these institutions became central architects of a global moral and political order grounded in Western norms (Ferguson, 1990; Sachs, 2010). Far from being neutral, aid often carried embedded conditionalities and assumptions that reflected a particular vision of the economy, society, and human welfare: one that implicitly asserted its superiority.

A Contested Path 

This dominant conception of development has always been contested. Far from being a universal or inevitable path, it represents a field of competing meanings in which different conceptions of life, well-being, and dignity are at stake (A. Pallotti, M. Zamponi, 2014). Referring to thinkers such as Foucault, post-development scholars have emphasised how “development” operates as a discourse that constructs its subjects, producing the “poor” as objects of intervention and the “South” as an unfinished project in need of external guidance (Escobar, 1995). At the heart of this critique lies a profound philosophical question: Who has the right to envision the future for others? By equating development with modernisation, the Western project has eliminated alternative visions of the good life — visions based on different histories, cosmologies, and social orders. It has replaced multiple possible futures with a single destiny.

Amid ecological crises and growing global inequalities, the Western model appears increasingly exhausted. Emerging alternatives – from buen vivir in Latin America to sufficiency economies in Asia – call for a radical rethinking of development. This reconceptualisation must begin with listening to the diverse aspirations of the world’s peoples, not with imposing new patterns. The challenge, therefore, is not how to improve the Western development project, but whether it is time to abandon its fundamental principles and imagine development differently, from the ground up rather than from imperial power centres.

4. Non-Western approach to development

Non-Western approaches have offered (in theory and increasingly in practice) alternative ways of imagining development. These visions do not simply reject the Western canon; instead, they offer a new perspective on it. They displace its central assumptions, placing life, harmony, and relationality at the heart of political imagination. They are not merely critiques, but invitations to think otherwise.

In Latin America, the constitutional turn known as nuevo constitucionalismo has marked a profound reorientation. The 2008 Ecuadorian and 2009 Bolivian constitutions institutionalised buen vivir (or vivir bien), a conception of collective well-being rooted in Andean cosmovisions. Here, development is not defined by GDP or market integration, but by relational goods, ecological balance, and the dignity of all beings:  human and non-human alike (Bagni, 2012). The Ecuadorian constitution mentions buen vivir over 90 times, granting legal subjectivity to nature, and recognising its right to exist, regenerate, and be restored (Ecuador Constitution, Art. 71–74). This legal pluralism is not merely symbolic. It is grounded in a different way of understanding the world – what scholars refer to as a political ontology, meaning a set of beliefs about what exists and how it should be valued. In this view, nature is no longer treated as a passive resource to be exploited, but as an active participant in political and social life. This idea draws on the Gaia hypothesis, which suggests that the Earth functions as a living, self-regulating system in which humans, animals, plants, and ecosystems are deeply interconnected. It contrasts with more traditional Western views, such as those of Hobbes, where nature is something to be controlled by human reason and political authority. These alternative models do not treat diversity as a problem to be managed, but as the very foundation of democratic coexistence.

Africa, too, offers conceptual resources that challenge the modernist template. The South African notion of ubuntu — “I am because we are” — shifts attention from autonomous individualism to relational personhood. Recognised by the Constitutional Court in cases such as S v Makwanyane (1995), ubuntu grounds human dignity in mutual responsibility and social harmony (Mokgoro, 1998). While not explicitly enshrined in the constitution text, ubuntu has functioned as a guiding principle for post-apartheid restorative justice. It proposes a vision of rights not as protection from others, but as obligations to others.

Meanwhile, in Asia, Bhutan’s model of Gross National Happiness (GNH) offers another counter-narrative. Embedded in its 2008 Constitution, GNH emerges from Buddhist philosophy, prioritising spiritual, ecological, and communal well-being over mere economic output. Its indicators include psychological well-being, environmental quality, cultural resilience, and equitable development (Ura et al., 2012). Happiness, here, is not a commodity or a ranking, but a measure of balance between the inner and outer worlds.

What unites these approaches is not a fixed formula, but a shared sensibility: a refusal to reduce life to productivity or rights to market access. They re-politicise questions long treated as technical, and re-sacralise domains rendered inert by extractivist logic. Rather than exporting “models,” they emerge from rooted struggles for land, language, spirituality, and dignity.

None of these alternatives is immune to contradictions. Bolivia’s vivir bien has coexisted with extractivist policies; Bhutan’s monarchy remains central to governance; and South Africa’s social inequalities endure. Yet their existence disrupts the presumed universality of Western development paradigms. They remind us that to develop is not to converge, but to pluralise. As the Ecuadorian constitution boldly declares, “we decide to build a new form of public coexistence, in diversity, with nature, to achieve the good way of living”. These are not utopias — they are counter-hegemonies. They do not ask to be adopted wholesale, but to be taken seriously.

5. Post-development and the role of anthropology

Social discontent with development in many parts of the Global South gave rise to the post-development school of thought, which offers a profound critique of dominant development paradigms. These paradigms are challenged for being ethnocentric and universalist, promoting Western models of industrialisation as the norm. Post-development theorists argue that these models are unsustainable in a world with limited resources and ineffective due to their disregard for the local realities, cultural contexts, and specific histories of the peoples on whom they are imposed.

Arturo Escobar (1997) presents a division of anthropology based on the approach to development issues. First, he establishes anthropology for development, in which anthropologists seek to enter international institutions to change their modus operandi. The second strand is the anthropology of development, whose anthropologists must collaborate with groups in the Global South to understand the developmental issues. This is the approach that advocates for the idea of post-development and is structured around four main pillars, as outlined by Escobar (2005, p. 20):  

1. create different discourses and representations that are not so affected by the concept of development;  
2. change the way of knowing and doing, as well as the political economy of truth; 
3. introduce new relevant actors and multiply all producers of knowledge;  
4. identify local resistance against development and highlight alternative strategies produced by local social movements when they encounter development projects. 

Ultimately, post-development must attempt to decolonise, de-economise, and demystify the collective imagination that has been built over the last century. However, it cannot fall into the same mistakes as development.

6. Conclusions: Is there an alternative? 

The Western approach to development, shaped in the aftermath of World War II, has imposed global understandings of progress through a singular narrative based on Euro-American historical experiences. While framed as a benevolent mission to modernise the “underdeveloped,” it has often operated as a mechanism of domination. By institutionalising Western norms and economic models as universal, this approach has pathologised difference and often deepened inequalities rather than alleviated them. Development, as traditionally conceived, is not a universally shared goal but a contested field where power, knowledge, and identity are continually negotiated. Instead of fostering plural futures, the Western paradigm has frequently excluded them, defining success as imitation and treating the Global South as a perpetual site of intervention.

Yet, alternatives exist. The challenge is whether they are recognised as legitimate ways of organising life, governance, and value. From buen vivir to ubuntu, from communal economies to ecological worldviews, these approaches reveal that development is not a singular road but a contested terrain. They are not ready-made models to be exported or scaled; they are lived practices — embedded in context, shaped by histories of resistance, and often fragile in the face of global pressures. They invite not replication, but rethinking: of what we mean by progress, who defines it, and for whom it is meant.

To imagine a truly post-development future means shifting the question from “how can we fix development?” to “how can we decolonise the way we imagine futures?” This requires legitimisation of non-Western epistemologies, supporting legal and political frameworks rooted in local ontologies, and radical rethinking of the institutional architecture of international cooperation. In this effort, ​​anthropology’s role is not to refine the tools of development, but rather to amplify the voices of resistance, help articulate new imaginaries, and support the creation of plural, grounded, and emancipatory futures.

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