Maldevelopment is the state of an organism or an organisation that did not develop in the "normal" way (used in medicine, e.g. "brain maldevelopment of a fetus"). It was introduced as a human and social development term in

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

in the 1990s by

Samir Amin Samir Amin ( ar, سمير أمين) (3 September 1931 – 12 August 2018) was an Egyptian-French Marxian economist, political scientist and world-systems analyst. He is noted for his introduction of the term Eurocentrism in 1988 and considered ...

to challenge the concept of "

underdevelopment Underdevelopment, in the context of international development, reflects a broad condition or phenomena defined and critiqued by theorists in fields such as economics, development studies, and postcolonial studies. Used primarily to distinguish sta ...

." The word ''maldéveloppement'' did not exist before then (the medical terms are ''malformation'' or ''développement anormal''), so the word is a

neologism A neologism Greek νέο- ''néo''(="new") and λόγος /''lógos'' meaning "speech, utterance"] is a relatively recent or isolated term, word, or phrase that may be in the process of entering common use, but that has not been fully accepted int ...

meant to be analogous to the difference between

undernutrition Malnutrition occurs when an organism gets too few or too many nutrients, resulting in health problems. Specifically, it is "a deficiency, excess, or imbalance of energy, protein and other nutrients" which adversely affects the body's tissues a ...

and

malnutrition Malnutrition occurs when an organism gets too few or too many nutrients, resulting in health problems. Specifically, it is "a deficiency, excess, or imbalance of energy, protein and other nutrients" which adversely affects the body's tissues a ...

. Maldevelopment is a global concept that includes human and social development. Under the philosophy of

sustainable development Sustainable development is an organizing principle for meeting human development goals while also sustaining the ability of natural systems to provide the natural resources and ecosystem services on which the economy and society depend. The des ...

, economic development is only a "tool" that allows for greater human and social development, not the final goal. ''Under''-development is a quantitative notion, implying that a nation has a lack and must gain something to reach a particular reference state—the state of the nation that judges another nation as underdeveloped. So this notion also implies a unique development model—the one of the judging nation. ''Mal''-development, or ''ill''-development, is a qualitative notion that expresses a mismatch, a discrepancy between the conditions (economic, political, meteorological, cultural, etc.) and the needs and means of the people.

References

{{Reflist Human development

See also

References