Basic Needs, Peasants and the Strategy for Rural Development (1976)

Abstract

During the 1970s a number of alternative viewpoints questioned the unchallenged hegemony of the theories that the unfettered market was the only one to bring about economic development. The ‘basic needs’ approach provided new thinking about economic growth and gave rise to important debates in university centers and multilateral organizations such as the International Labor Organization. The Dag Hammarskjold Foundation in Sweden provided support for international meetings between scholars from the North and from the South. One such effort led to the study of alternative development approaches to which I contributed the paper presented here on the needs and possibilities of poor peasants in underdeveloped countries. The idea of peasant development has been completely ignored by mainstream development analysts.

This chapter was first published in 1976, in: Marc Nerfin (Ed.): Another Development: Approaches and Strategies (Uppsala: The Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation): 40–65. The permission to reprint this text was granted on 18 July 2012 by Dr. Henning Melber (Executive Director), The Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, Uppsala/Sweden.