As inequality and environmental degradation worsen, the search is on not only for alternative development models but also for alternatives to development itself. Leading post-development theorist Arturo Escobar, co-editor of The Post-Development Dictionary and author of Design for the Pluriverse, discusses the fight for pluralism and justice in Latin America with Allen White, Senior Fellow at the Tellus Institute.
Tell us about your personal journey. What inspired you to become a critic of mainstream development theory and a pioneer of a new paradigm?
I grew up in Cali, Colombia, a city of a half million people, in the 1960s, in many ways a typical member of a generation seeking modernization and development, in the mainstream sense of the words. Both of my parents came from the countryside—my father from a very poor peasant family and my mother from a middle-class family in a small town. They migrated to Cali to improve their lives and secure opportunities for their children. We attended good elementary and high schools, which required substantial sacrifice on the part of my parents. Upon graduation, I attended Cali’s public university, Universidad del Valle (the only affordable option), where I majored in chemical engineering.
As I was nearing completion of my undergraduate degree (1975), I realized two things. First, I didn’t want to work as a chemical engineer because that probably meant working for a large, multinational company. Second, I was becoming very interested in questions of food and hunger. Through acquaintances in Colombia, and with knowledge obtained through study of UN documents about the hunger crisis of the early 1970s, I was awarded a fellowship to begin a Master’s Degree in international nutrition and food science at Cornell University in the late 1970s.
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