ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the history and present of so-called “alternative development approaches.” It will demonstrate that there is a constant interplay between discourses of development alternatives and the practice of constantly changing development aid apparatus. Particularly since the 1970s, new utopian ideas – human-centered, ecological, and inclusive – have been proliferating in terms of how to rethink, renovate, and transform the development aid apparatus. However, as the chapter will show, much of the so-called “alternative development” has been tamed and co-opted by mainstream development thinking and practice (basic needs, sustainable development, and gender mainstreaming to name a few). Nevertheless, the chapter will also introduce more radical alternatives beyond aid apparatus, namely post-development scholarship that considers Western modernity and its growth paradigms as a threat to human existence in terms of their social and ecological effects. Furthermore, the chapter discusses contemporary transition alternatives – namely Buen Vivir/Vivir Bien, Ubuntu, and Swaraj – that are currently proliferating in the varied contexts of the Global South outside the epistemological and political confines of international development in order to address, in very diverse ways, the asymmetrical power relations of global capitalism and historical and contemporary forms of coloniality.
