Paul Simon's popular lyric about these being “the days of lasers in the jungle” reflects the stark contrast, contradiction, or even exploitativeness of conventional strategies of development. Once paraded as the ultimate recipe for progress and the solution for poverty, the idea of development itself is now being criticized for its poverty of substance, as well as for its impoverishing and regressive propensities. Apparently, development as we know it has been indicted for the social production of poverty because it can only exist in symbiosis with conditions of underdevelopment. Within its capitalist framework, it is impossible for all to be “developed” and there can be no rational distribution of resources across the board; massive one‐sided accumulation and the co‐existence of surplus wealth with severe poverty are more consistent with the present process and reality of development. Increasingly, people are questioning the very paradigm of development and its dominant blueprint which is predicated on a presumption of the superiority of the Western system of production and signification. Some critics advocate alternative development and others reject the concept entirely, arguing instead for alternatives to development. My reading of the controversy surrounding development suggests that it is largely a critique of the discrepancy inherent in its unidimensional conceptualization and implementation. Even as oppositions to established discourses and practices of development are gaining ground, the most (dis)affected, the so‐called lesser developed countries (LDCs), are agitating for redress through the recognition of a right to development. How do we interpret, and respond to, this initiative or subversive act by those who were never given the option to elect out of (mal) development, but were forced to put up with its effect? Do we continue to disregard it or do we engage it as a forward to a tentative proposal ‐ a point of entry for inclusion, or as an invitation to begin to explore what development should be by revisiting and revising problematic orthodox models and modes? Can we see it as a challenge to idealized conceptions of human rights and a case for harnessing the human rights regime to make it more actualizable and sustainable? At the very least, can we approach claims about the right to development as seeking to secure the dignity and well‐being of the human subject? If seen in the light of conquering poverty and protecting the physical environment for the general good of humanity, would the right to development be better appreciated as a prerogative of and a mandate for both the North and South. After all, communities in these places that once “marginalized the economy” and achieved relative equilibrium are now violently compelled to contend with the colossal hunger, scarcity and social disintegration dictated by their place of insertion in the world economic structure? Could the right to development be seen as espousing the entitlement of the dislocated and disempowered to a reciprocation of the bene...
In this Critical Review Essay, Professor Obiora brings together work from many traditions to address the issue of how differences among students beyond gender–and, in particular, differences in terms of race–might affect legal education. After situating the question in terms of the literature on legal education generally (including standard critiques), she delves into work on gender–in law generally, in kgal education, in moral development and learning, in language use, and in education generally–to elucidate hypothesized differences between men and women that might affect differential experience in law school. She then moves on to make the picture more complex by drawing on work that indicates cross‐cultural and class‐based variation around conceptions of gender. Using research by sociolinguists on educational processes and work by historians and feminists of color on the intersection of gender, race, and class, Professor Obiora suggests specific ways in which women of color and working‐class women might diverge from middle‐class white women in their approach to kgal education. In particular, she notes: (1) different speech patterns and linguistic socialization lend different meaning to “voice,”“silence,” and “interruption” in classroom interactions; (2) the historical distinction between public and private spheres has been much more sharply drawn for upper‐middle‐class white women than it has been for black and working‐class women; (3) the exclusion of black women from male “chivalry” and feminine idealization necessitated the development of agency; black women could not afford to be passive. Given these points of divergence, but also given convergences among the experiences of women, Obiora suggests a complex and contextually sensitive approach to the issue of gender in legal education, one that takes seriously the differences that exist among women. Because of the richness of the literature reviewed here, we include a Bibliography at the end of the article.
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