ABSTRACT
Harold Brookfield (1975: ix) wrote sixteen years ago that ‘the terms “developed” and “underdeveloped” occur within quotation marks wherever they appear, for the fundamental argument is that there is only development, but development of different qualitative orders.’ Brookfield’s point was twofold. First, that the process of development in the rich countries of the North ‘is part of the same process of development of Africa or Asia towards a dependent, skewed economy, which we call “underdeveloped”’, and second that development had only one meaning: change. The connotation that change, in the sense of increasing material consumption, is inevitably progressive, was strong when Brookfield was writing. Perhaps it is less so now that in the North there is a growing awareness of the ecological price paid for that level of consumption. So even that ‘development’ may not be ‘development’, simply change.
