Towards Intercultural Development : a Bolivian perspective

Abstract

To talk about development is to talk about economy, society, environment, technology, organization and culture. However, the mainstream approach to development, as well as development and policy makers, has tended to think and equate development to only one of its realms: the economic development,; leaving the rest of the realms subjugated to it. And the neoliberal capitalist model has become, through colonialism, globalization and conditionalities in international financial relations, the economic global system. However, the approach undertaken is far from giving the promised results. The assumption that a capitalist development approach -based on free markets, outward oriented and having the private sector as the main actor- was going to induce economic growth, has proven not to be real. The other assumption dismantled by the evidence is that the benefits of economic growth were going to be almost automatically distributed to all society. (...)