Beyond Development: Liberation

Abstract

Most Euro-American psychological theories are oriented around values concerning individual development, and most Euro-American economic theories are centered on material development. In these theories, culturally preferred ways of being are stationed as endpoints, with sequential stages of change laid out like stepping-stones on a path toward them. A lattice of implicit and critically unexamined cultural values structures developmental psychology (Kaplan, 1983a, 1983b). Its discourse often colludes with the language of “progress” that we have come to expect from psychology’s roots in the nineteenth century. Economic development planning has assumed that individuals want the same level of material infrastructure that exists in Euro-American urban environments.

Peace, justice, love, and freedom are not private realities; they are not only internal attitudes. They are social realities, implying a historical liberation.

(Gutiérrez, 1988, p. 167)