ABSTRACT
The discourse of development is appropriated by the Third World heads of state in the UN for three primary reasons: first, to reject international trusteeship; second, to demand social justice, equality and denounce prevailing disparities; and third, to devise a comprehensive program of planned intervention which would include the global economy. This chapter is concerned with the constitution, appropriation and contestation of this new discourse and its corresponding norms. Taking a closer look at the processes of appropriation reveals that while the discourse of development has been appropriated by Third World leaders in the 1960s and 1970s. Although the discourse of development was constituted in the first half of the 20th century as a transformation of colonial discourse which legitimised the North to maintain economic domination and exert global influence, during the course of the next decades the discourse was appropriated by the newly independent countries of the South in ways not intended by the North.
