IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/ctwqxx/v38y2017i9p2143-2158.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Power relations? What power relations? The de-politicising conceptualisation of development of the UNDP

Author

Listed:
  • Juan Telleria

Abstract

The UN′s Sustainable Development Goals agenda points far into 2030, which shows that its post-war development endeavour is not functioning effectively. This article implements a discourse analysis of the UN Development Programme′s (UNDP) Human Development Reports (HDR) and exposes their internal contradictions. This analysis enables a critical reflection on the UNDP′s political position: its reports conceal the political causes of underdevelopment. By concealing the antagonistic/conflictual dimension of social issues – poverty, inequality, and exclusion – the UNDP naturalises the actual neoliberal order. The HDR turns political problems into technical issues; according to this approach, no power relations have to be changed in order to overcome underdevelopment.

Suggested Citation

  • Juan Telleria, 2017. "Power relations? What power relations? The de-politicising conceptualisation of development of the UNDP," Third World Quarterly, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(9), pages 2143-2158, September.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:ctwqxx:v:38:y:2017:i:9:p:2143-2158
    DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2017.1298437
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01436597.2017.1298437
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/01436597.2017.1298437?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Johannes M. Luetz & Elizabeth Nichols & Karen du Plessis & Patrick D. Nunn, 2023. "Spirituality and Sustainable Development: A Systematic Word Frequency Analysis and an Agenda for Research in Pacific Island Countries," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(3), pages 1-14, January.
    2. Juan Telleria, 0. "Development and Participation: Whose Participation? A Critical Analysis of the UNDP’s Participatory Research Methods," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 0, pages 1-23.
    3. Sarah Cummings & Anastasia‐Alithia Seferiadis & Leah de Haan, 2020. "Getting down to business? Critical discourse analysis of perspectives on the private sector in sustainable development," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(4), pages 759-771, July.
    4. Juan Telleria, 2021. "Development and Participation: Whose Participation? A Critical Analysis of the UNDP’s Participatory Research Methods," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 33(3), pages 459-481, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:ctwqxx:v:38:y:2017:i:9:p:2143-2158. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/ctwq .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.