During the 1980s and 1990s, post-modern and post-colonial
approaches to theorizing development became more popular. While
the two approaches have similarities in terms of their focus on
considering diversity and understanding power in the construction of
‘development’, they do not overlap completely. Post-modernism is
difficult to define because it can be applied in a number of fields and
in a variety of ways (Simon 1998). In the context of ‘development’ it
has been particularly important in considering the ways in which
previous understandings of ‘development’ assumed that the
populations of the South were homogenous and that the European
route to development was the only correct way. As previous
chapters have shown, modernization theories were Eurocentric.
Post-modernism considers the ways in which these assumptions
can be challenged.