Irony and Development

I found that this week’s reading was very unique simply because the amount of paradoxes that existed within each article. The combination of culture, the Western world, and development created the basis for these ironies. Rachel talked about this conflict a little when she said “How can a country with such a strong sense of culture…find balance between that culture and international policies in order to develop?” Based on Cook and DeHart’s article, I think that the best way to brighten Guatemala’s future is to take into account the various contradictions and inconsistencies that come with development, and to understand and be aware that they are natural to the development process. However, I believe that these ironies can be both an indicator of the failings of a country to progress as well as a sign of their success and improvement. Further, these paradoxes can say a lot about the condition and status of development in a region.

Cooks defines transculturation as “a sometimes effective strategy to accept profound change in some aspects of a culture in order to preserve some other institutional arrangement” (48). The idea of transculturation is itself ironic, as it suggests that to save some parts of a culture, you must “adopt accommodative external forms”. While this idea may seem counterproductive, tranculturation proves especially relevant in Cook’s article for the continuity of Mayan religion. Within the article, the author cites the many ways in which Mayan religion has changed in the past years to include many traditional elements of worship as well as indigenous forms of theology. However, the article also states that many aspects of Mayan religion have adopted Pentecostal forms of worships such as a focus on “a charismatic leadership” (55). In relation to development, the fact that Guatemalans are changing the ways in which they worship based on their own desires represents a significant step towards the instrumental freedoms cited by Sen. By forging new religions, people are exercising their right to choose what they value from other doctrines and are subsequently incorporating those aspects into their own worship. Transculturation thus can be seen as an extension of development and freedom.

However, paradoxes in communities also allow us to see the inaccuracies of some developmental processes. For example, in DeHart’s article, the author explains the way in which the CDRO chose the Mayan woven mat or “pop” as a means to symbolize it’s “development methodology, institutional configuration, and it’s authentic Mayan identity”(141). By using a traditional symbol and being based locally, the cooperation hoped to identify itself as an authentic indigenous communal group, “in opposition to Western Capitalist”(146). Ultimately, the distance between the CDRO and Western capitalists became very hard to calculate- the group began to link development and business together. Thus, the cooperation ended up becoming everything it was originally set against. This contradiction represents one way in which irony and development are connected. DeHart’s example demonstrates how paradoxes are able to highlight important truths about development, and attests to the problems that occur when the process is understood with a limited perspective.