My Glasses - Episode 1

In the first episode of the podcast "My Glasses," the host, Mia Kim, introduces herself as a third-year student studying philosophy and global development studies. She discusses her interest in exploring different aspects of development and growth around the world. Mia shares theories she learned in class, starting with the modernization theory, which suggests that developing countries should follow modern methods for growth. However, she points out that this approach may not always be sustainable or culturally appropriate. Mia also mentions the post-development theory, which emphasizes direct democracy and a mix of traditional and modern knowledge for development. She discusses the dependency theory, which explains transactional relationships between core and periphery countries, leading to inequality and corruption. She briefly mentions the capabilities approach, which focuses on expanding opportunities for people. Mia then delves deeper into the post-development theory, relating it Hi everyone, and welcome to the first episode of the podcast, My Glasses. My name is Mia Kim, and I will be your host for this episode. Just a brief introduction about who I am. I am currently a third year student at the University of Virginia, studying philosophy and global development studies. I know that sounds fancy and all, but it's mostly doing a lot of reading and thinking. I was born in Korea and moved to Florida when I was eight years old, and I moved around every few years since then, somehow ending up in Virginia, where I currently study at. I have two younger brothers, and I'm also a pious Christian. I hope this will help explain some positions and biases I may take throughout the podcast. And let me explain a little bit more about one of my majors, global development studies. As the name suggests, it's a major that allows students to explore different aspects of development around the world. Currently, we are discussing questions such as what is development, and how should we even measure development or growth? I think the topic interests me because I personally saw a lot of development and growth happening throughout my lifetime. Not too long, I admit, but I hope to dive in deeper to the questions I had since I was little. Today, I want to share with you some theories I learned in my class, and also my own ideas and interpretations of some of these theories. Now, let's get started. Let's begin with the classic model, which is the modernization theory. When people think of development, most people would probably think of the modernization theory, where countries that are still developing are thought to have the best outcome when they just follow the lead in the modern methods. Whatever is the most modern, new way of doing things, they should follow, and it will lead to growth in education, economics, social, political. Yet, this has some problems. As we discussed in class, it's sometimes not sustainable. Sometimes culturally, it doesn't fit. It's not right for some countries. So what do we do? Another theory that we talked about in class is the post-development theory, which has been heavily influenced by Escobar, as we read in class. This is also known or talked about as the alternative method to development. Development should be centered around direct democracy, and there should be a mix of traditional and modern knowledge instead of it just being modern. This kind of helps to push the idea that, hey, developing countries should also get a say in how they want to develop. We also talked about the dependency theory, where the core and periphery countries have these transaction relationships. Core is considered to be the more developed part of the world, whereas the periphery is the developing nations. This can also just explain some inequalities, where the periphery provides raw goods and resources to the core, and in turn, the core provides produced goods and services to the periphery. However, in the transaction process, it can very well lead to a lot of corruption and misdistribution. Thus, this relationship can happen not just between countries, but within as well. I also want to briefly mention the capabilities approach, where Emeritus Sen, Nobel Prize winner in economics, discusses development in terms of expanding opportunities for people, not necessarily increasing their standards themselves, although that is hopefully the outcome, but expanding the ability for people to reach the higher standard of living, for example, education and just being able to have a stable job. Now, I want to discuss one of these ideas a little bit more in depth, and that is the post-development theory. Now, for post-development theory, I wanted to make the connection to another class I am taking, and that class is called Child Growth and Development. As you may have noticed, the word development is in the class, and we look at how the individual from birth, from infancy, develops into adolescence and of childhood. Now, this idea of post-development theory, that development should be centered around direct democracy, and there should be a mix of traditional and modern knowledge, fits in really well with what I am learning in the class about individualism. Because in the beginning, children grow, and we are taught about how different cultures value different aspects of, let's say, for example, individuality, how much you depend on parents. One really cool example of this is there is a concept called attachment, and there are three different types of attachments that have been defined by child psychologists. One is secure, another is avoidant or anxious, and these three kind of explain how people see the relationships between babies and children and their caregivers. However, what might be interesting is that every culture has a slightly different way of defining these terms, and thus, development is valued differently. Now, I think it's easy to connect this back to the post-development theory and say, hey, not everything has to be quote-unquote modern and in the Western way of doing things because each culture values different traditional things. So, I also want to put a disclaimer out there that this is not me trying to make a connection about colonialism or trying to validate those things because that is not the case. Thus far has been my episode on my brief analysis on the post-development theory, and I hope you enjoyed listening to the podcast, My Glasses. My next episode will be on the power of labels and how we may have to refrain from using some labels and reconsider current labels. Thanks for listening, and see you next time. Bye!