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CRITICISMS OF ESCOBARWorld Bank and IMF representatives disagree with much of what Escobar claims. Economic and infrastructural development is positive because it improves the ability of peoples and governments to recognize universal codes. They argue that human rights are more likely to be recognized in a developed nation because the funding exists to enforce bans on violations. Protections of human rights are most easily found in these nations. In fact, the nations with the best human rights records are all in the West. Developers are also very adamant about the improvement of the environment in developing nations. Undeveloped nations are unable to recycle or clean up environmental catastrophes because they don’t have the funding or the technology. They also fail to recognize world pollution standards because they are too poor to survive without polluting. Once the country is developed, with sufficient funding and strong infrastructure, then that country can effectively respond to environmental problems. Developers claim that cultural awareness is part of their job. Development projects are closely coordinated with government officials. Development studies closely watch over the people and their changes as nations develop to make certain that their lives are not adversely effected. Most of these claims are easily debunked. Human rights do appear to improve in some developing countries, but the definition of human rights is a Western conception of the treatment of people. The development discourse defines what success is, and then defines the measurement tools for declaring what is successful. Also, not all developing countries have great human rights records. Sweatshops and slavery are not problems of the past for these countries. The environmental improvements are miniscule, and they don’t compare to the environmental destruction that wreaks havoc during the transitional phases of a country’s development. During transition, raw materials are striped from wherever they may be found so that production increases enough that profits can be seen. Cultures die out. People give up their traditions to don business suits and automobiles, unless they are unlike enough to be too poor to escape greater poverty and enslavement. LD APPLICATIONSLD’s tendency to stick to Enlightenment thinking makes most of its advocacy open to use of development discourse. Equality, welfare, and foreign policy topics in LD are the most likely places to hear development discourse used. I am especially interested in introducing criticisms of development discourse in the debate round because many LD debates tacitly assume the superiority of Western conceptions of progress. To win the debate, this argument will require convincing the judge that the older Enlightenment framework of reason and progress must be thrown out. Structuring a value and criteria around a development argument will be very difficult. You can run a value such as cultural autonomy or something like it, but you are likely to set yourself up for disaster doing this. The value that you will likely be facing on the other side will probably refer to life, progress, or something else that will appear to outweigh culture for most judges. You can’t allow your opponent to establish a false choice between feeding someone and seeing them represented as inferior. The representation of them as inferior is the thing that will be used to take advantage of those people further down the line. Development will ultimately fail to deliver the goods it promises because of greed. It will pretend to do good while striping the environment, enslaving people, and ruing their cultures. I like the idea of structuring this argument aside from the case. Write a case with a distinct thesis, but make sure that it doesn’t link to your development argument, and then read the development argument as a separate attack on the case. You can win with the development argument by itself because it turns the opposing value of life/progress/selflessness by showing that development will backfire. If you are not winning the rest of your own case, you can kick out of it and win by proving that you turn your opponent’s value. One good strategy might be to frame the development discourse as symbolic of a dangerous mindset. The inferiority that is conferred by development discourse is exactly the kind of thinking that institutional developers use when they manage other peoples and enslave them. You need to argue that your opponent’s endorsement of this mindset is dangerous because it leaves people open to continuing to think of other cultures as underdeveloped instead of just different. Pulling out charges of racism and cultural insensitivity as parts of the mindset will make is more difficult for judges to unquestionably vote in favor of the progressive improvements claimed by the developers. Paternalism will be a difficult argument to prove. You should use cross-examination to bait your opponent into admitting the problems with it. Ask them how they feel about their parents babying them. Paternalism is bad because it reduces choice and freedom. Your opponent might give people life, but only as slaves in Nike sweatshops. Also, development effectively destroys the ability of people to practice the kind of life that they have been for centuries because it transplants Western culture and impresses it upon them. Development is definitely not about choice. Development means to change the other into something more developed than the other was before. The poststructuralist part of the argument is the most difficult to win. It is highly unlikely that judges will see representations of starving people as more harmful to them then the possibility of feeding them. You need to cast some doubt on the credibility of the arguments claiming that people are starving. Definitions of malnutrition come from the West. People of some nations have lived on less food for centuries. The West sees malnutrition and poverty in other countries because those countries do not appear to look like the West. You can take the offensive against arguments that assert their ability to ‘save’ people by arguing back that the very assumption that they need to be saved is racist and imperialist. 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