The Open University | ou_futurelearn_d890_2019_vid002

INSTRUCTOR: Hello again. You will have already picked up from discussions with each other in the
comments, there are many different meanings and interpretations attached to development.

This shows it's a contested concept.

To try to make sense of this complexity, these meanings can be categorised into those that
refer to development as historical progress and those that refer to development as deliberate

interventions.

This meaning focuses on economies and societies changing over great sweeps of time. Ideas

of industrialization, urbanisation, and liberal democracy are associated with this meaning as

the drivers of development, and which together are captured by modernization. It is where the
focus is on the means of development rather than the ends, such as through parliamentary
democracy.

This is a more purposeful view of development that happens through planned interventions in
the economic, social, and political arenas. The most prominent example of this has focused on

poverty reduction, improving people's livelihoods, health, and education.

An example of this sort of development is improving access of rural communities to safe water

and sanitation. It focuses on the ends of development, rather than the means.

On the ground, the differences between these two meanings is going to be more blurred than I
am suggesting here. Just think, progress as the great sweep of history has itself been made
up of purposeful interventions in historical past. And planned interventions are not standalone

events, but firmly anchored in the progress that has already been made.

See if you can distinguish between the two meanings of development in the short quiz that

follows.