The idea of ethno-development
Ethnodevelopment
is the means of countering ethnocide by enabling ethnic, minority, and/or
exploited groups to revive values of their specific culture with a focus on
strengthening their ability to resist exploitation and oppression and
especially, their independent decision-making power through more effective
control of the political, economic, social, and cultural processes affecting
their development. Ethnodevelopment is a policy established in response to
ethnocide, where indigenous cultures and ways of life are being lost due to
large-scale development and exploitation in certain developing countries around
the world. This large-scale development could include urban development in
rural communities and exploitation of natural resources including building
dams, mines, or clear-cutting forests. Typically self-led ethnodevelopment is
favoured, where the indigenous peoples are involved in creating a plan for
their future development and organization of communities in a way that follows
their tradition beliefs and customs.
Outside intervention on indigenous minorities can have
devastating effects. The effects include the growth of the more dominant
society and encroachment on the traditional lands and subsequent displacement
of peoples from resource rich land to the peripheries; the destruction of
normal means of livelihood and interactions with habitat; an increase in trade
debts and a decline in self-governance due to new political, legal and
educational systems and the deterioration of traditional religious and cultural
values.
The most
common responses to the effects have been to retreat or assimilate, which can
lead to extreme poverty, welfare requirements, social dislocation, alcoholism,
and prostitution. Ethnodevelopment is proposed to end the increasing
vulnerability of minority groups and produce a degree of economic, social, and
political equality. One of the first steps in overcoming these trends is to
reverse the notions about dominant Western developmental models and recognize
the variability in traditional cultures, practices and values these populations
have. The emergence of Neoliberalism in developing countries instigated a
reduction of subsidies, and fiscal cutbacks that most indigenous and rural
livelihoods were based on. In many Latin American countries with large
populations of indigenous peoples such as Ecuador, Bolivia, Mexico, and
Guatemala, the elimination of rural development programs in the 1980s and 1990s
provided an incentive for indigenous outcry and protestations.
Davis’s
vision built on positive qualities of indigenous societies, such as ethnic
identity and capacity to mobilize labor, capital, and other resources for
shared goals. Davis maintained that development involving indigenous peoples
must be built “upon the cultural strengths of the indigenous populations…[and]
entail their active participation”. He favored programs that aimed at
“enhancing the ability of the indigenous organizations to design their own
development strategies and formulate their own development projects”.
a)
From economic growth to human development The growth
of colonial economics of development has generated dependencies of colonial
countries on their rulers. The colonial rulers are mainly the European
countries. It has been experienced that such dependencies has not created any
environment of proper industrialisation in the colonial countries, although
some development has been taken place in the interest of colonial rulers. In
the name of the development the European or colonial countries have destroyed
native manufactures as found in case of textile manufacturing in India and
sabotage efforts at industrialisation in Egypt, Turkey and Persia.
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