ABSTRACT
Three major theoretical resurgences, closely related yet distinct, have thus far taken place in the broad discipline of social science since the early 1960s. These have come to be known as neo-marxism, post-structuralism and post-marxism, respectively. While the neo-marxists are credited with the dependency/world system approach, it was the post-structuralists who floated the post-development paradigm, and the post-marxists the project of radical democracy and identity struggles. Throughout their forays into the realm of knowledge and practice, reflections on development and its historical implications have ever remained at the forefront. Even so, the post-development approach, though in itself lacking coherence on many grounds, offers an intellectual space for an insightful and radical critique of the way in which the idea of development is conceived and practised. Deriving as it does social insights from as wide a range of disciplines as political economy, social anthropology, human ecology and identity politics, it offers scope for a confluence of various theoretical streams. More importantly, the new social movements on which it anchors hope find themselves allied with such varying concepts as ‘anti-systemic movements’, ‘counter-hegemonic struggles’ or ‘movement of movements’. The present chapter attempts to explore the nuances of the inherently synthesising modes of the post-development approach, which, though, is not immune to criticism, and to build up a case for what could be termed a post-development social movement (PSM), as is evident in this study of the cola-quit movement in Plachimada, which has ceased to be a mere name; it is now a post-development resistance metaphor that not only portrays but also defines the reality.
