Rethinking (post)Modernism, Postcolonialism, and Posttraditionalism: South—North Perspectives

Abstract

Many social scientists and development experts working in the South have dismissed postmodernism and related perspectives as irrelevant in the context of continued poverty and struggles for modernisation. Conversely, Northern authors on postmodernism frequently imply the global salience of the paradigm in a universalising manner redolent of modernist discourse, whereas critics of conventional development(alism) tend to base their arguments on caricatures in which the diversity of real-world experiences and some important improvements in the quality of life over the last 30 years are ignored, Neither approach is tenable, and in this paper the author explores the scope and basis for more fruitful engagements with postmodernism, postcolonialism, and related perspectives, including Southern notions of posttraditionalism, in the context of current developments and popular aspirations in the South. A critical reading of the literature is combined with examples drawn from different regions. In the analysis a pathway is offered through these often confusing fields and the relationships between globalisation, modernisation, and postmodernism, the changing roles and abilities of state and nonstate actors, and the complex ways in which local communities engage with such dynamics in pursuit of a better life, are encompassed.