EN - FR - Yükselen Afrika ve Türkiye / Rising Africa and Turkey 3

254 Yükselen Afrika ve Türkiye / Rising Africa and Turkeycepts had emphasized the central role of the state in social and infrastructuralprovision, and also in planning for development. The state as a vehicle fordevelopment and social provisioning was being discredited; and there was aview that donors were becoming wary in dealing with states (donor fatigue).Instead, following the examples of the church volunteer agencies, they werebecoming increasingly keen to deal with “communities” directly, vialocal/indigenous organizations/institutions. The world scene had changed:there increasingly emerged initiatives from Europe and USA which put moreemphasis on developing of local/indigenous organizations as “partners” in“participatory development strategy”. Many organizations had turned to whatwas termed ‘empowerment of local communities’ and alternative strategies forAfrica’s development. The major theme in the development discourse amongvolunteers now turned “development workers” was the question of “peoplebased development”, and researches and consultancies were increasinglybeing channeled towards this direction.The concept of development itself has been quite elusive, in that the lastfour decades of development of the third world countries have seen it beingtransformed from modernization, as that transformation of ‘traditional’ societiesto ‘modern’ ones (i.e. western) 3 to sensibilities of “development as a managementof a promise”—of economic growth through adopting commoditybasedforms of production with accumulation being the overriding logic andpossibilities of the outcomes of the benefits trickling to the poor. In these conceptionsof development, ‘class’ antagonisms were on the main hidden andemphasis was on the existence of shared ‘values’—progress, universalism,conquering of nature, quantifying rationality, etc.By the end of the 1960s and early 1970s, against this conception, theDependency School had raised the questions of global inequality and exploitation.Development was increasingly under attack, and critical approaches tothe process tended to focus on the dark side of it. In a bid to remain relevant,‘new’ conceptions of development emerged by the late 1970s. Among theearly ones was Alternative Development or Another Development, whichfocused on the lack of popular participation. Another one was HumanDevelopment, which addressed the question of the need to invest in people.These were taking up challenges that were posed by the Dependency school,ecological critiques and eco-feminism. Within this context, a multitude ofdevelopment conceptions emerged: self-reliant development, endogenousdevelopment, participatory development, integrated development,autonomous development, popular development, equitable development, sustainabledevelopment, local development, micro-development, endo-development,etc.