This paper uses Castoriadis’s idea of the imaginary and Agnes Heller’s conceptualization of modernity as an interplay of the historical and technological imaginations, to examine how modernity engages with the idea of development to foster a particular vision of the future as always in progression. It uses the examples of Tasmania and Kerala, in Australia and India, respectively, as case studies which challenge the dominant perception of development as a linear and progressive ideology of growth that translates into ‘the development of productive forces and the rational mastery of nature’. The case studies also show how, despite the radically different paths through modernity, it is the same logics of modernity that are at work in both locations.
Baldacchino G. ( 2005) The contribution of ‘social capital’ to economic growth: Lessons from island jurisdictions. The Round Table94: 31-46.
2.
Broinowski A. ( 1992) The Yellow Lady: Australian Impressions of Asia. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.
3.
Castoriadis C. ( 1998) [1965]) The Imaginary Institution of Society, trans. Blamey K. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
4.
Castoriadis C. ( 1981) From ecology to autonomy. Thesis Eleven3: 8-16.
5.
Centre for Development Studies/United Nations (CDS/UN) ( 1977) Poverty, Unemployment and Development Policy: A Case Study of Selected Issues with Reference to Kerala. Bombay: Orient Longman.
6.
Damodaran A. ( 2006) Tribals, forests and resource conflicts in Kerala, India: The status quo of policy change. Oxford Development Studies34(3): 357-371.
7.
Devika J. ( 2007) A people united in development: Developmentalism in modern Malayalee identity. Working Paper 386. Thiruvananthapuram : Centre for Development Studies.
8.
Devika J.(2009) Contemporary bodies gone awry: The abjection of sexuality in development discourse. Indian Journal of Gender Studies16(1): 21-46.
9.
Devika J. (in press) Egalitarian-developmentalism, communist mobilization and the question of caste in Kerala state, India. Journal of Asian Studies.
10.
Franke R. and Chasin B. ( 1994) Kerala: Radical reform as development in an Indian state , 2nd edn. Oakland CA: Institute for Food and Development Policy.
11.
Franke R. and Chasin B. ( 2005) Kerala: Radical reform as development in an Indian state . In: Edelman M and Haugerud A (eds) The Anthropology of Development and Globalization: from Classical Political Economy to Contemporary Neoliberalism. Malden/Oxford: Blackwell.
12.
George KK and Kumar A. ( 1997) Kerala: The land of development paradoxes. Working Paper2. Kochi: Centre for Socio-economic & Environmental Studies.
13.
Hay P. ( 2006) A phenomenology of islands. Island Studies Journal1: 19-42.
14.
Heller A. ( 1999) A Theory of Modernity. Malden/ Oxford: Blackwell.
15.
Heller A. ( 2005) The three logics of modernity and the double bind of the modern imagination. Thesis Eleven83: 63-79.
16.
McMahon E. ( 2005) Encapsulated space: The paradise-prison of Australia’s island imaginary. Southerly65(1): 20-30.
17.
Menon D. ( 1994) Caste, Nationalism and Communism in South India, Malabar 1900-1948. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
18.
Menon D. ( 1999) Being a Brahmin the Marxist way: E.M.S. Nambudiripad and the pasts of Kerala. In: Ali D (ed.) Invoking the Past: The Uses of History in South Asia. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 55-90.
19.
Pring GW and Canan P. ( 1996) Slapps: Getting Sued for Speaking Out. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
20.
Sen A. ( 2009) Capitalism beyond the crisis. The New York Review of Books Online. 56(5). Available at: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22490 (accessed 17 July 2009).
21.
Sen A. and Dreze J. ( 1989) Hunger and Public Action. New Delhi and New York: Oxford University Press.
22.
Sharrad P. ( 2006) Convicts, call centres and Cochin kangaroos: South Asian globalising of the Australian imagination. Unpublished paper presented at the Centre for Postcolonial Writing, Monash University ‘Globalisation and Postcolonial Writing’ Conference, University of Calcutta, February.
23.
Steur L.(2009) Adivasi mobilisation: ‘Identity’ versus ‘class’ after the Kerala model of development? Journal of South Asian Development4: 25-45.
24.
Stratford E. ( 2006) Isolation as disability and resource: Considering sub-national island status in the constitution of the ‘New Tasmania’. The Round Table95 (386): 575-588.
25.
Stratford E. ( 2008) Islands as contested spaces. Island Studies Online. Available at http://www.islandstudies.ca/node/192 (accessed 22 June 2009).
26.
Walker KJ ( 1999) Statist development in Australia. In: Crowley K and Walker KJ (eds) Australian Environmental Policy 2: Studies in Decline and Devolution. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 22-44.
