Development in Theory and Practice: Culture, Ethnocentrism, and the Liberal Model

This article discusses how Howard J. Wiarda's writings on ethnocentrism in scholarship and policy making have deepened our understanding of politics in less developed countries by imploring scholars to recognize the importance of cultural context as well as their own built-in, Western-centric biases. It applies Wiarda's critiques of ethnocentrism in theory and practice by addressing the inherent problems with development paradigms that are derived from Western experiences and anchored in the tenets of neoliberalism. It then explores these issues by examining China's market socialism paradigm and the dynamics of civil society in sub-Saharan Africa to illustrate the point that development trajectories in the Global South do not always conform to Western experiences or expectations.