Development must come from within a country, not imposed from outside: Jay

TEHRAN, July 22 (MNA) - Professor Martin Jay believes that there are no superior models of development and that development is predicated on a country’s cultural richness. “The idea of development cannot be simply dismissed as the imposition of the cultural hegemony of the allegedly ‘leading’ and most ‘advanced’ country,” Jay, Professor of History at the University of California, told Mehr News Agency in an interview. The following is a transcript of the interview: Q: To our knowledge, without the development of humanities within a country, no state can fully develop, as was demonstrated with the USSR. On this basis, what is the relation between the strength of humanities in a country and its socio-economic development? A: Before addressing the relationship between development in the human sciences and development in the socio-economic or political sense of the term, we have to step back and put some pressure on the concept of development itself. Its etymology, at least in English and other Western languages, derives from earlier words for unfolding or unwrapping, which suggests something that is already there and is ready to be revealed. In biological terms, it is like an acorn that matures into an oak or an embryo that becomes the animal latent in it. Thus “development” suggests an evolutionary model in which there is an organic transition from simple to complex, immature to mature, primitive to advanced. In most respects, these are very value-laden terms, which suggest both that there is an internal pressure to develop, as in an organism, and that the later stage is somehow higher or superior to the earlier. If we then impose this metaphor on social, economic or political processes, the results are already highly prejudiced, especially if we measure one culture’s alleged “development” against others. So-called “backward” societies are anxious to “catch up” to ones allegedly in advance of them, a result of our imposing a single model of organic development on what might in fact be highly diverse and resistant to a single normative model. Because we have come to understand the dangers in such a uniform evolutionary model of development, what used to be called “modernization theory” is now often under attack, even in the countries where “modernity” might be said to have reached its apogee. This is not to say, however, that our evolutionary narratives are always inherently meaningless and we have to entirely abandon the idea of progress or improvement. The idea of development cannot be simply dismissed as the imposition of the cultural hegemony of the allegedly “leading” and most “advanced” country. As humans we all seek to minimize the infirmities of our fragile bodies and the dangers of a natural environment that is not always as nurturant as we would like it to be; we all hope for relief from the violence resulting from human weaknesses, and the inequalities of condition that follow from unjust social, political and economic arrangements. We all want our children’s lives to be better than ours and those who follow to live in peace and plenty. And so there is a strong imperative to seek the “development” of those institutions, practices, technologies, etc. that will maximize the chances for this outcome. At the same time—and this is where the human sciences, broadly speaking, play a role—we have become increasingly aware that no matter how we understand development in the senses mentioned above, there may well be costs that involve the loss of something else we also value. In other words, we have an ironic understanding of the simple logic of development, which prevents us from feeling fully confident that we have ever really mastered it. In the case of the Soviet Union, which you have brought up, forced economic development based on rapid accumulation of capital and technological innovation was bought at the cost of horrible regression in the quality of life for the people who were supposed to benefit from it. The questionable logic of sacrificing present generations for the supposed happiness of future ones led to misery for all. If there is one lesson that the human sciences have learned in their own “maturation,” it would be to accept pluralism and diversity and recognize the fallibility of our judgments. The more we have “developed,” the greater our humility about the difficult choices we have to make and the costs of assuming that any one solution will answer all of our needs. In this sense, we know that what is unfolded or unwrapped in the developmental process may not be what we expect and even less what we hope for. Although perhaps a source of uncertainty and confusion, this realization should also give us the courage to invent futures that are not necessarily latent in the past in the ways that only oak trees can grow from the acorns out of which they develop. Martin Jay is a professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a renowned intellectual historian and his research interests have been groundbreaking in connecting history with other academic and intellectual spheres, such as the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School, other figures and methods in continental social theory, cultural criticism, and historiography among many others. ( By Javad Heirannia )