188 Coping with Social Complexity Meanings of development George KENT University of Hawaii and East-West Center, Honolulu, Hawaii After Wor ld War II national development efforts focused on the achievement of rapid economic growth. In the early stages the central purpose was the achievement of industrializa- tion. Only later, beginning in the 1950s, did the alleviation of poverty become a central concern. It soon became evident that there was li ttle direct linkage between economic growth and the extent of poverty. New strategies were designed to achieve growth-with-equity. Some efforts were made to take account of non-economic, physical quality-of-Iife indicators of develop- ment. Emphasis has remained on the material aspects of develop- ment, but in the 1970s some writers gave attention to the non-material dimensions of development. It is now argued that development should be underst ood in terms of the condition of consciousness of individuals, particularly in relation to their views of their capacities and rights to act in the world. More- over, it now seems increasingly evident that the natural unit of development is not the nation and not the individual but the community. Social development requires the development of community consciousness. At any level of soci ety , development is best understood as the increasing capacity to identify, ana lyze, and solve one's own problems. The task is not so much the a ll eviation of poverty as the alleviati on of powerlessness. Keywords: Development , consciousness, community, growth George Kent is presently Research Fel- low at the Environment and Policy Institute of the East- West Center and Professor in the Departmen t of Politi- cal Science of the University of Hawaii. His work centers on prob lems of de- velopmen t, with special atten ti on to the roles of oceans and food. He has published a book on The Politics of Pacific Islands Fisheries, and numer- ous articles, including "Pedagogy of the middle class" in Peace and Change , . "Community-based development plan- ning" , in the Third World Planning Review, and the "The poor feed the rich" in Development Forum. North-Holland Pub li srung Company Human Systems Management 3 (1982) 188-194 1. Introduction The idea of development-here taken to be roughly equival ent to social progress-has under- gone many sharp changes through its evolution in human history and human consciousness. Under- standings of the meaning of development are closely linked with people's most fundamental views of the place of humankind in the universe. That is, our understandings reflect our cosmologi- cal frameworks. We often forget that there was a long period in human history in which there was practically no conception of progress at the social level. The cosmological view was that of a static world, a world in which one's life task was to adjust to these unchanging conditions. If there was any progress, it was in one's progression beyond this world to other worlds and other lives. This static view prevails today in many corners of the world, but we tend to dismiss it, relegating it to the past by describing it as pre-modern. Development thinking centered on the idea of the progress of human communities did not really begin until after World War I, and did not flourish until after World War II. The first published long-term national development plan was the Soviet Union's First Five-Year Plan, adopted in 1929. According to Ivan Illich, the modern intellect- ual history of development began on January 10, 1949: "That day, most of us came to know the term ' development' in its present meaning for the first time when President Truman announced ills Point Four Programme. Until then, we used the term 'development' to refer to species, real estate, and moves in chess-only thereafter to people, countries, and econom ic strategies". [4] From that time onward, development efforts focused on the achievement of rapid economlC growth. The motivation for striving for economic 0167-2533/ 82/ 0000-0000/ $02.75 © 1982 North-Holland