The 'development episteme' and the politics of mystification
Dr Heloise Weber – University of Queensland

Debates about development, poverty and inequality are no longer confined to those between and among modernization theorists and the proponents of dependency and/or world systems perspectives. Moving beyond economic reductionism in conceptions of development, post-colonial, post-development and critical IPE /development studies have enriched and broadened the parameters of discussion. The latter have included critical reinterpretations of the history of (global) development as well as incorporated questions of identity, difference and/or culture. These approaches, in way or another, examine and engage the question of how development has been conceptualised, practiced and studied. In this paper, I hope to contribute to these debates by identifying and critically engaging with the development episteme in global politics. I do this by specifically examining the comparative imagination integral to the development episteme which I argue has enabled a mystification of the relational dynamics constitutive of development processes, as a consequence of which, narratives of development as a sequential process (catch-up) has framed development thinking. The latter abstracts from complex social relations and conceals social power and social struggles in development. The argument is developed through an engagement of temporal and spatial underpinnings of the development episteme.