Aid for which development?: official development assistance from four theoretical perspectives

Author(s)

Larissa Catão

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas
• Defense date: 2019-09-24

Examining board members

Reginaldo Carmello Corrêa de Moraes; Pedro Paulo Zahluth Bastos; Henrique Zeferino de Menezes

• Advisor: Reginaldo Carmello Corrêa de Moraes

Abstract

This dissertation has as its main purpose the analysis of the development perspectives that underlie the practice of Foreign Aid, from its beginning, in the postwar era, until its political reaffirmation in the new millennium. The proposal was to demonstrate that Foreign Aid is not a neutral instrument and is linked to a development perspective. On the one hand, we analyzed the theoris that are central do Aid discussion and are also the grounding for it, the Modernization Theory and Neoliberalism. On the other, we analyzed perspectives that are critical of Foreign Aid, Economic Liberalism, and Developmental Structuralism. The identification of the approaches, and the view of each of them on the phenomenon of Aid, was performed by reviewing seminal authors and exploring texts dealing with this instrument. The aim was to identify the hegemonic perspectives of development in the postwar international debate and the current one; to understand which development model is the basis of Foreign Aid; to advance in the theoretical debate on this instrument and contribute to the rediscussion of this practice in the development agenda. What we have identified is that the perspective that supports Aid practice understands underdevelopment as an earlier stage of development. Thus it does not question the implications of the economic model and, therefore, does not address the structural causes of underdevelopment, only its most extreme symptoms (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 17/22151-1 - Official development assistance from four theoretical perspectives
• Grantee: Larissa Fernandes Catão
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master