ABSTRACT
The chapter investigates the discourse of ‘development’ which led to the post-2015 agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and identifies the discursive shifts and continuities related to it. Systematically comparing it to the Truman address of 1949 which heralded the period of development aid, it shows that in crucial aspects – the diagnosis of global poverty as a problem, the promise that this problem can be solved today, the recipes of technical solutions and economic growth, and the credo of a global harmony of objectives – the discourse of ‘development’ has been remarkably persistent for the past 75 years.
