Artículo



Dados vol. 25 n. 2 Rio de Janeiro 1982

Por uma Teoria Não-Etnocêntrica do Desenvolvimento: As Concepções Alternativas do Terceiro Mundo

Wiarda, Howard J.

Resumen

A revolution of far-reaching breadth and implications is presently sweeping the Third World involving a rejection of the basic development models and paradigms originating in the West and a corresponding assertion of non-Western, non-ethnocentric, and indigenous ones. The proposition set forth here is that the rejection of the "Western" {i.e., Nort-West European and United States) model of development, in its several varieties, is now widespread throughout the Third World, that there are many new and exciting efforts on the part of intellectuals and political elites throughout these areas to assert new and indigenous models of development, that these represent serious and fundamental challenges to many cherished social science understandings and even to the presumption of a universal social science of development, and that we underestimate or disregard such changes at the risk of both perpetuating our malcomprehension of Third World areas and retaining a social science of development that is parochial and ethnocentric rather than accurate and comprehensive. The paper examines the Third World critique of the Western developmental paradigm, summarizes the newer and indigenous conceptions emanating from the Third World, discusses the problems with these formulations, and explores some of the implications of these Third World trends, for the nations affected, for policy, and for the social sciences.

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Por uma Teoria Não-Etnocêntrica do Desenvolvimento: As Concepções Alternativas do Terceiro Mundo