%0 Journal Article
%T The Case of the Awkward Statistics: A Critique of Postdevelopment
%A Daniel Clausen
%J Journal of Alternative Perspectives in the Social Sciences
%D 2009
%I Guild of Independent Scholars
%X Nearly a decade after its publication, Arturo EscobarĄ¯sEncountering Development remains a classic work of Postdevelopmentand Critical Development Studies, continuing to provide a relevant and devastating critique of development as a discursive tool for ordering and managing the Global South. What remains unanswered in EscobarĄ¯s work, however, is whether there is a material reality beyond mere representation that still needs attending to. I find that within EscobarĄ¯s work, the thorny problem of underdevelopment--as a persistent and abhorrent material condition--finds its way through EscobarĄ¯s poststructuralist epistemology. As this essay argues, though Escobar asks us to deconstruct development statistics in a way that upsets the WestĄ¯s discursive hegemony, at the very least it is premature to call for an end to development, as well as the statistics and technical solutions development agencies provide.
%K Development
%K Postdevelopment
%K Underdevelopment
%K Statistics
%K Hegemony
%K Global South
%U http://www.japss.org/upload/16._Clausenarticle.pdf