Using examples, critically evaluate the statement: ‘Development is Colonial Orientalism renewed’
Introduction: Edward Said’s work on Orientalism, which he expresses as knowing the Orient and concurrently ‘a western style of dominating, restructuring and having authority over the orient’ (Said 1978:3), in which reveals and confronts the political representation that still used policies from the colonial periods to portray the countries currently in the process of dealing with the difficulties of development. Though this could be believed to be understandable as many of these developing countries are in the tropics, in areas such as the West Indies, the Orient, as well as the continent of Africa, that were once colonial hot spots for European nations such as Great Britain and now these parts of the world are going through development that is largely financially led from abroad by the former colonial rulers.
Section 1: Western oppression in developing countries is key to their loss of culture that creates a vacuum that is soon filled by a Western way of life. As Jan Nederveen Pierterse believed that development was a certain vision of the West’s, that is neither benevolent nor guiltless. It reworked and remoulded itself for the modern era but was never wholly able to break away from its colonial dialogue. This is aided by the Western presence within the Third World that acts a sort of elite above the indigenous people of the area, they are Western agencies, consultants and charities whose geopolitics bind up the Third World with its power and development strategy (Nederveen Pieterse, 2000).
Section 2: Has development not entered a post-colonialism age? Post-colonialism challenges the belief and views that there are only two levels in the World, the North- ‘advanced and progressive’, the South- ‘backward, degenerate and primitive’ (McEwan, 2001).
Conclusion: Is development colonial Orientalism renewed? Not entirely. Has the West forced itself upon these...