RESTRUCTURING DEVELOPMENT THROUGH TECHNOLOGICAL PLURALISM

An attempt to understand and analyse the relationship between technology and development must focus attention on human actions within the framework of societal priorities and social values. World history as well as present-day international development show the necessity of finding a viable praxis for what the author calls 'Appropriate Technologies'. Ten precautions should be seriously observed: (1) to develop low-energy life-styles, one should take care to (2) avoid radical alternatives between developments old and new. There (3) is a need for a philosophy of life capable of decentralising development projects. This should (4) discard the false dichotomy between the urban and the rural, which only supported (5) the cults of affluence and destructive consumerism. Precaution (6) should sharpen the awareness of false conceptions of modernisation in favour of (7) indigenous forces, (8) native and (9) religious traditions. Thus development regains (10) its inner fortitude to partake in universal processes of humanisation.