Introduction

Abstract

From the push for ‘Third World’ modernization to the current human security development discourse, there has been no scarcity of ideas and practices claiming to represent the blueprint for the match towards cultural, political and economic capitalist modernity for social formations in the global South (South). Overall, in the post-1945 period, ideas embedded in shifting development discourses have emerged as the ‘common sense’ (Gramsci, 1971) through which this process is imagined and mapped out in policy. This development has made questioning the underpinning philosophy, aims and effects of development discourses in a prevailing conjuncture an act of pure folly in the eyes of most people in the global North (North) and the South. Thus, despite the fact that the history of the last several decades has indicated the limitations of these discourses, the promise of development in the South along Euro-American lines continues to ‘gain acceptance everywhere’ even though ‘the moral duty is fulfilled in the very act of proclamation rather in any actual success’ (Rist, 2004: 215).