Post Development and the Re-Founding of Social Utopias

Abstract

The relationship between post-development and refoundation of social utopias is based on two tesis: one, that the theoretical categories of development are losing explanatory and normative effectiveness as the deterioration of sociological indicators (exclusion, violence, drugs, environmental degradation, reduction of civic and community solidarity, among others) is widening, not being this deterioration compensated by the advance of material production of wealth that, in addition, continues being progressively appropriated by a minority. The other tesis, which is articulated with the previous one, is that there is an exhaustion of the natural resources necessary to maintain a growing rhythm of economic progress. The disappearance of fresh water reserves and forests directly impacts on large and small agricultural properties and on the reproduction of the human survival chain. To this physical exhaustion that denounces the myth of the abundance of natural wealth - and which stimulated the depredation of social, cultural and environmental nature by coloniality policies - we must add the perverse effects of concentration of profits through financial capitalism that extends its territory of action by the increasing control of lands and productive resources that now are directly to the speculation.