ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 looks at the parallel evolution of development aid and the Danish “modernisation” of Greenland. Whereas modernisation represents the Danish reestablishment of its powerful position in Greenland after the Second World War, development aid marks the Danish re-entrance on the scene of global politics. The logic behind the massive transformation in Greenland was largely identical to that which informed the more modest attempts at converting the Third World into “modern economies”. The two large-scale Greenlandic modernisation programmes G50 and G60 are examined with a view to establishing whether a different and more accommodating Danish position vis-à-vis the Greenlanders as agents in their own “modernisation process” can be identified in the political-administrative culture. The last part of the chapter investigates the parallel development of development aid as discourse analysing the surprisingly few major works on Danish development aid history.
