El bachillerato ecuatoriano (características, demandas de

promise of money and the vicarious joy at someone winning lots of money, or more commonly spectacularly losing said money, draws millions of viewers.

The third reason to which Soong ascribes the popularity of Reality programmes is what he calls the “guilty pleasure syndrome” This he describes as taking delight in the misfortunes of others. “It is a guilty pleasure. You feel you shouldn‟t be watching. It‟s always been in good taste not to look at these things... It‟s a moral envelope that‟s being pushed”.

Reality Television in the context of this study would refer to an unscripted and recorded presentation, whether dramatic or documentary, which uses untrained actors (or ordinary people) in ordinary or arranged settings, responding to situations in an unrehearsed manner.

Such a recorded material may also employ web and mobile based technologies which would introduce subtle and pervasive changes to communication between the actors, the producers and the audience, especially allowing for creation and exchange of user-generated content.

higher state particularly in terms of infrastructure, inter and intra communal associations and economic indices.

For many years, global institutions erroneously equated development with infrastructural increase, especially along western paradigms. Others weigh all countries on the economic scale and declare them to be “developed”, “developing” or “least developed”, based primarily, on the growth or otherwise of their respective gross national products (G N P).

Nnamani, discussing this strictly economic view of development, describes it as the capacity of a national economy, which had been static for some time, to generate and sustain an annual increase in its Gross National Income (GNI) at rates of 5% to 7% or more. It can also simply be described as the ability of a nation to expand its output at a faster rate than the growth of its population (1).

Following this line of thought, Gustavo Esteva traces the contemporary concept of development back to January 20, 1949 when President Harry Truman made his inaugural speech in which he described the southern hemisphere as „underdeveloped areas‟. With Truman‟s declaration to “embark on a bold new program for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas”, (Esteva, 7) it was no wonder that the whole field of development thinking was permeated by emphasis on economic growth and industrialization. Esteva writes that for development promoters, the concept consisted simply of growth in the income per person in economically underdeveloped areas and this was the goal proposed by Lewis in 1944, also insinuated by the United Nations Charter in 1947 (12).

Kagolobya citing Eade states:

The word development entered the lexicon of international relations in 1949…

Development then, and continues to be widely perceived as synonymous with western-style modernization. Under-development, within this word-view, is thus the widespread poverty that characterizes the (mostly agriculture-based) economies of the south, hence development process is perceived as one of

„catching up‟ with the industrialised economies of the north. (213)

He then argues that in a bid to systematically follow the footsteps of the western development model, development planners in the south, sometimes, trample upon the indigenous or local knowledge base while implementing development projects. This is because traditional societies and their knowledge matrix have been superciliously associated with backwardness, paganism, subsistence, conservatism, lack of ambition and irrationality (214).

However, there can be a multitude of dire consequences if the value of local or indigenous knowledge were to be ignored in the planning and implementation of development programmers. Such one-sided and alien approach could lead to conflict between the local people and the project implementers. Kagolobya, again, cites Percy Oware as stating that rural communities have always had ways of meeting their basic needs, which do not need the validation of outsiders. The knowledge of local people may appear parochial and unrefined to an outsider. Yet, it demands respect and acknowledgement in policies (218).

As such, it was in recognition of the narrowness of this Western economic paradigm that development economists broadened and redefined the concept in terms of reduction or elimination of poverty, inequality and unemployment within the context of a growing economy. Nnamani quotes Seers as asking the following questions:

What has been happening to poverty?

What has been happening to unemployment?

What has been happening to inequality?

Thus, development experts now place emphasis on health, education and empowerment and have referred to countries with high levels of income but poor health and education standards as cases of “growth without development” (Nnamani, 2).

For some critics of the general idea of the term „development‟, like Wolfgang Sachs, Gustavo Esteva, Majid Rahnema, C Douglas Lumnis and many more, the age of development, as it is known today, and which received its life following Truman‟s 1949 speech, is a disaster coming to an end. Sachs writes:

The idea of development stands like a ruin in the intellectual landscape. Delusion and disappointment, failures and crimes have been the steady companions of development and they tell a common story; it did not work. Moreover, the historical conditions which catapulted the idea into prominence have vanished. (1)

This derisive view of development stems from a perceived flawed premise of Western superiority encapsulated in Truman‟s labeling of the Southern hemisphere as

“underdeveloped” which “subsequently provided the cognitive base for both arrogant interventionism from the North and pathetic self-pity in the South” (2).

Moreover, this school views development as a misconstrued enterprise because it “cannot be separated from the idea that all peoples of the planet are moving along one single track towards some state of maturity, exemplified by the nations „running in front‟ (Sachs, 3). Thus for them, from the start, development‟s hidden agenda was nothing else than the Westernization of the world.

Esteva declares that “the metaphor of development gave global hegemony to a purely Western genealogy of history, robbing peoples of different cultures of the opportunity to define the forms of their social life. The vernacular sequence (development is possible after envelopment) was inverted with the transfer (9).

However, for Luke Uka Uche, development is a participatory process; development is centered on people; development is based on the culture, values, traditions and orientations of the people being programmed to accept a new social order; development is based on an even flow of information (13). Going further, Uche insists that development must involve a continuous process of harnessing all the available human and material resources of a society in a way that is compatible with the cultural expressions of the people (14).

Development, therefore must be seen from the perspective of the individual as he exists in society, what he sees, knows, needs; what he does, can do and needs to do; and how what he believes and does can enhance his existence in society.

Also criticizing the Infrastructural-increase Western paradigm of development, Judith Osuala opines that “this view of development perceives the growth of the economy as a means instead of the other way round. This narrow view of development has ignored many vital aspects of human well - being which lack a market value such as social cohesion, a sense of belonging and the strength of the society‟s traditional values” (15).

It was only inevitable that many other approaches to development, especially for indigenous peoples of the poor south would emerge. Until recently, development theory has been dominated by theorists and models derived from the experiments of Western economic history. Burkey also notes that the emergence of capitalism and advance of the industrial revolution gave a distinctive form to western developmental thinking. “Development and economic growth became synonymous with progress and higher levels of civilization” (27).

Thus, development as applied in this study would simply imply the uplifting of the quality of lives of individuals within a society, affecting their understanding of themselves as individuals who co-exist with others in a society, with rights and responsibilities to harness

resources within them and about them, in the society, for the provision of basic needs, be they material or otherwise. This implies that development, whether initiated by external agencies or by a community itself, must involve and affect the lives of individual members of the community in question