[TLDR (too long didn’t read): This Reader points to where the blocking of human rights occurs in the current development paradigm. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text].
The current development paradigm is not an enabler of human rights.
First things first:
1. A paradigm is the model with which we look at reality. (LuisWeinstein) It is a permanent undertaking in which every generation builds upon those who were (and upon that that was) there before them. As for the ruling paradigm, it is the one that actually determines how people act within it, how whole governments and nations are born, how constitutions are written, how institutions are structured and how educational systems are adapted to it. (Albino Gomez)
2. Each compartment of universal knowledge has a ruling paradigm. In the ruling paradigm of Northern-led development, I contend that the real issues are not addressed regarding the pros and cons of the long list of approaches tried so far, i.e., neoliberalism, monetarism, supply-side economics, market economics, health for all, the child survival revolution, UNICEF’s old GOBI and all the endless series of etiquettes that keep people who make a living off this discourse busy. We have tried them all and our fundamental problems keep recurring. (J. Bracho) –wither human rights.
3. The supporters of the ruling (and prevailing) paradigm –and thus the opponents of (or too lukewarm towards) human rights (HR)– have always stood by and defended their preconceived moral and political ideas. Veritable ideological constructs are presented as being a-priori when, in reality, they are a-posteriori constructions designed to justify an ethico-political theory that is preconceived. (adapted from Jacques Monod) …And that may be partly OK, but it also contains lot of rubbish and a bunch of empty signifiers, i.e., you can find in it many a kind of clichés parading as new wisdom.
Key among the clichés: The technical fix approach
4. The technical fix approach*, particularly in the external funding of development projects, is part and parcel of the current development paradigm —and the extent to which this paradigm pervades our minds is a tribute to the efficiency of its propagation, often beyond any common sense.
*: Technocracy bases its credo on the (supposed) competence of experts. [As an aside, absolute monarchies base theirs on the divine providence; aristocracies base their credo on birth rights and on the force of tyranny; and republics base theirs in the opinion of the people]. (Regis Debray)
5. This dominant paradigm never gets to the heart of the matter and that is why all its strategies, systems, ‘isms’ and etiquettes have failed. Under the influence of the Northern-led development paradigm, the South lost its own creative self-assurance, began to think the North knew better and embarked on changing its ways of life accordingly. In a sort of ‘Westernizing Avalanche’ the global reach of this Northern paradigm has overshadowed/overruled/belittled/relegated ideology, political empowerment and local grassroots politics in the development process to a secondary level. (J. Bracho)
The pretension of universality of the West has taken it to believe that the West is the spokesperson of humanity
-…and this counts with the consent of the hegemonic academic community…
6. Europe built this narrative as a theoretically neutral and supposedly objective space that it sustains falling back on the two pillars of modernity: an enlightened thought and the scientific method. This being so, we are told that knowledge with a capital K (understood as absolute knowledge), by necessity, arises in the West and thus has to be taken up as a universal truth by the rest of cultures and societies. The West has hereby gotten away with creating a ‘scientific, pure and aseptic’ fallacy taken up as much by intellectuals as by public servants.** It is departing from the premise that the West ended up becoming the spokesperson of humanity —and this has allowed it to set the current colonial/neocolonial, racist and capitalist order that has benefitted it politically, socially and economically by subordinating non-Western peoples. (Paula Guerra Cáceres)
**: An intellectual is, by definition, a conscious person. An intellectual who does not understand what is happening in her/his time and in her/his country is a walking contradiction; and that intellectual that understands and does not act will have a blemished place in history. (Rodolfo Walsh) Reviled be the country in which public servants –and what is worse, educators– had to think and feel according to what the political-comedians-that-have-climbed-the-ladder think and feel! In such a situation, what percentage of cretins would the country have? May god protect us! (Alberto Martínez)
Knowledge generated by the paradigm will eventually lead to power, or at least to how those in power justify their ‘enlightened policies’
7. But history shows that transformational change simply does not happen the way ankylosed paradigms hang-on to through the actions of the army of guardians of the paradigm (e.g., editors of scientific journals). Such transformational change happens not through persuasion of elites to change policies, but rather through direct, disruptive, rebellious uprisings, though not necessarily through violent struggle. *** (Howard Waitzkin)
***: In the field of politics, one does not speak of ‘discontinuity’, but of revolution. A revolution pertains to a fundamental social change in the structures of power and of the paradigm in a rather short period of time. This fundamental change does not have to necessarily pass through a civil war. (Louis Casado) In the field of international negotiations (UN and other), the powers-that-be-guardians-of the-paradigm influence ‘zero’ and successive drafts of important global resolutions with their bracketing of proposed texts that, at the end, leads to compromise language that waters down the respective resolutions making them non-binding and full of open loopholes.
So, you see?
8. Quite a bit remains to be done before a new equity-oriented, people-centered sustainable and enabling development paradigm puts disparity reduction and HR upfront in the battle against maldevelopment. We need to put disparity reduction and HR at a higher level of priority instead of uncritically accepting yet more purportedly ‘innovative’ quick-fix technical packages that the guardians of the paradigm so ably put forward every so-and-so time.
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com