Esteva and Prakash’s Grassroots Postmodernism presents a powerful theoretical model for alternatives to development.  In reading this accessible, yet deep survey into the competing ideologies of development and local people’s power, one is confronted with a text rife with aphorisms that challenge the sacred cows of global development.

Esteva and Prakash summon the spirit of Ivan Illich and hand him a Zapatista ski mask.  Grassroots Postmodernism is perhaps fully reliant upon the history of the EZLN resistance, imbibing its politics of localism and radical democracy with a distinctly revolutionary spirit and defiant opposition to global thinking, global ethics, global economy and global politics.

The label of “post-modern” may seem curious.  If the tradition of post-modernism in the West (and the North) can be credited for anything, it is the injection of a practical ethical ambivalence in the wake of its rejection of grand narratives. But the authors argue that grassroots postmodernism “is not only something that comes after modernity, but also something that happens against modernity”(1998, 192).

The grassroots postmodern project is in defiance of the “Global Project,” which Esteva and Prakash describe as

“the current collection of policies and programs, principally promoted all over the world by the governments of the industrial countries with the help of their ‘friends’: the international institutions and corporations equally committed to the economic integration of the world and the market credo … Other ‘friends’ include most heads of state as well as the elites of ‘underdeveloped’ states, aspiring to ‘catch up’ with the ‘social minorities’ of the ‘developed’ nations, in the global race for ‘progress’ and ‘development’” (ibid., 16).

Postmodernism at the grassroots is interested in maintaining community on a human scale, rooted in cthonic traditions, yet responding to contemporary demands.  It is not nostalgic, but grounded in deep history.  Further, the project is aimed at “marginalizing the state” that has “marginalized ‘the people’” (ibid., 163).

Over the past decades, a distinct paradigm, critical of the practices of the “Global Project,” has developed in the West.  Martin Kohr of the Third World Network has summed up this paradigm as involving “the choice to work in the system of globalization, which we feel we are trapped in.”  From this paradigm, critics of the way in which the “Global Project” has played out, ask questions such as:  “Are the rules of the game fair, particularly to the weaker partners, or are they being twisted and manipulated by the strong partners in order to keep the weaker countries down?”  From this paradigm, one might conclude:

“If the latter, then we should fight for the reform of the rules of the game so that they can be more fair. We should monitor and be aware where the rules of the game go against the weak and the poor … [W]e will be working and arguing within the parameters of the system and trying to tinker with it, because we may conclude that there is no choice, at least in the short run…”

This paradigm, Kohr argues, is short-term, stating “this may be an approach pragmatic people will take who are involved in, say, survival for the next five or ten years” (2002, 13).

Grassroots Postmodernism confront development from an alternate paradigm.  Like the Zapatistas, Esteva and Prakash say “¡Basta!”  Like other post-development theorists, they seek alternatives to development, rather than alternative development.  This perspective challenges the ideology of development as rooted in a myth of progress, and holding to three “sacred cows.”

This first of these sacred cows is “the myth of global thinking,” which is “the intellectual counterpart to the global economy” (Esteva and Prakash 1998, 10-11).  They argue that global thinking is beyond paternalistic – it is delusional and impossible.  The second sacred cow is the belief in “the universality of human rights” which provides the “moral justification behind ‘think global’” (ibid., 11).  Such a perspective undermines local values and priorities, rooted in deep history among the people and between communities and the land in which they dwell.  The third sacred cow is “the myth of the individual self.” Adherents to this religion of individualism profess its benefits: “Finally liberated from his or her pre-modern strings, the modern self can be fully incorporated into the ‘global economy’” (ibid., 12).  The empty promises of the gods of development witnessed by literally billions at the grassroots are responded to with the heresy of local thinking and communitarianism.

In the ivory towers, grassroots postmodernism is heretical.  Post-development theorists are regularly attacked by some of the most outspoken critics of the outcomes of past development (i.e. Pieterse 2000).  But Esteva and Prakash are not looking for friends and adherents in the academies or governmental institutions.  The post-modern challenge is directed to “the people,” to the “social majorities” of the world “to grasp what they already possess; and, shaking off the oppressive minorities, to begin exercising their power for their own common good” (ibid., 162).

Works cited:

Esteva, Gustavo and Prakash, Madhu Suri, Grassroots Postmodernism, Zed Books, 1998. Print.

Kohr, Martin, “Conflicting paradigms,” in Alternatives to Economic Globalization, The International Forum on Globalization, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2002. Print.

Pieterse, Jan Nederveen, “After post-development,” Third World Quarterly, 21:2, 2000, pp. 175-191.  Print.