Maldevelopment

Maldevelopment is the state of an organism or an organisation that did not develop in the "normal" way (used in medicine, e.g. "brain maldeveloment of a fetus"). It was introduced for the human and social development in France in the 1990s to replace the word "underdevelopment". The word maldéveloppement did not exist since then (the medical term is malformation or développement anormal), so the word is a neologism built with the analogy between undernutrition and malnutrition.

The maldevelopment is a global concept that includes the human and social development. The economical development is only a "tool" that allows the human and the social development, not the final goal.

The under-development is a quantitative notion, implying that a nation has a lack and must gain something to reach a reference state; the reference state is the state of the nation that judges a nation as underdevelopped, so this notion also implies a unique develoment model, the one of the judging nation.

The mal-development, or ill-development, is a qualitative notion, that expresses a mismatch, a discrepancy between the conditions (economical, political, meteorological, cultural... conditions) and the needs and means of the people.

See also

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See also: Maldevelopment, 1990s, France, Human development theory, Malnutrition, Neologism, Underdevelopment, Vocabulary, Wiktionary