Resetting Our Goals?

Development was one of those topics that I knew about from courses at Allegheny and reading about current events, but I did not think that I would have a lot of first-hand experience with the concept of development, other than the fact that I enrolled in a Politics of the Developing World course at JCU.

But once again, my predictions were incorrect and I have been exposed to issues of development a lot. I agree with Gilbert Rist that development is a very complex and elusive term. Development seems to be used in so many contexts, so regularly that its true meaning is not clear.

Once again, my most direct experience with issues of development comes from my studies of indigenous Australians. Because I am in two Indigenous Studies Courses and have made friends with the people in my classes, we often discuss these types of issues outside of class, which has been eye-opening for me. 

Now that I am more familiar with Australian history, I realize that the Australian Federation was formed in the name of development. When Captain James Cook came to Australia, he set his sights on building a strong, prosperous, and developed Australia.

However, this had serious implications for the people who already lived in the region. Their definition of development was very different than the colonizers' definition, and as a result, conflict ensued. For example, when Europeans arrived, they saw what they thought was an "undeveloped" and "archaic" group of people. After all, there was no such thing as a wooden wheel or European-style agriculture, so how could it possibly be considered a developed civilization? 

As a result, the Europeans claimed Terra Nullius, meaning that Australia was a land without an owner and could therefore be claimed "legally" by Europeans. Europeans justified this by saying that because indigenous peoples did not make continuous use of the land through agriculture, they did not have a claim to the land and therefore it was not theirs. This has since been overturned, but it still shows the issues associated with different conceptions of development. 

Furthermore, when the Australian Federation was in its formative stages, it was said that the only way to create a strong and developed Australia was by implementing a "White Australia Policy," which defined "an Australian" as a white European, with no consideration for the traditional owners of the land. This also exemplifies how routes to development can directly conflict with one another, which ties into Rist's claims on page 488 that development has "undeniable failures in improving the conditions of the poor." I think that this is a result of development generally being viewed from the point-of-view of the developed. 

Our Aboriginal Cultural Guide, Uncle Rusty

Again, the White Australia Policy is no longer on the books, but you can still see the effects of it. Because indigenous Australians were seen as underdeveloped savages when the Europeans first arrived, that perception has been retained and white Australians often fear for their safety around indigenous peoples, because they see them as a threatening and undeveloped group of people.