Building Reality in the Context of Global Development

Happy Friday!

     I wanted to mention an interesting connection to the text I discovered in a book for one of my other classes. We are studying colonialism and the spread of development throughout the world and our textbook made reference to the division between "underdeveloped," "developing," and "developed" in categorizing countries. This form of classification was brought about by President Truman in January of 1949 and with it came a slew of political and economic implications. It instantaneously solidified the superiority complex of the Western/First World at the top of the scale and made all other countries less than. It institutionalized a mindset of "lack" among the so-called developing and underdeveloped nations and placed them all on one continuum with the same endpoint- to reach the status of the developed countries.
     This directly relates to chapter three because it is a great example of how some people have more of a say in creating our realities than others and how language is a major component of how we view/interact with the world around us. It demonstrates how our realities are not constant, but constantly changing. A quote from the Mexican intellectual Gustavo Esteva sums up this scenario well: "Underdevelopment began, then, on January 20, 1949. On that day, two billion people became underdeveloped. In a real sense, from that time on, they ceased being what they were, in all their diversity, and were transmogrified into an inverted mirror of others' reality: a mirror that defines their identity...simply in the terms of a homogenizing and narrow minority."
     There are endless other connections between how people build reality together the history of colonialism, development, and globalization but this definitive categorization of countries stood out the most.

Amanda