This definitive study explores what the postcolonial condition has meant to rural people in the Third World. Based on fieldwork done in the village of Alipur in rural north India from the early 1980s through the 1990s, POSTCOLONIAL DEVELOPMENTS challenges the dichotomy of "developed" and "underdevelopoed", and offers a new model for future ethnographic scholarship. 15 photos.
In this comparative-historical analysis of Spanish America, Mahoney offers a new theory of colonialism and postcolonial development. He explores why certain kinds of societies are subject to certain kinds of colonialism and why these forms of colonialism give rise to countries with differing levels of economic prosperity and social well-being. Mahoney contends that differences in the extent of colonialism are best explained by the potentially evolving fit between the institutions of the colonizing nation and those of the colonized society. Moreover, he shows how institutions forged under colonialism bring countries to relative levels of development that may prove remarkably enduring in the postcolonial period. The argument is sure to stir discussion and debate, both among experts on Spanish America who believe that development is not tightly bound by the colonial past, and among scholars of colonialism who suggest that the institutional identity of the colonizing nation is of little consequence.
This book uses a postcolonial lens to question development’s dominant cultural representations and institutional practices, investigating the possibilities for a transformatory postcolonial politics. Ilan Kapoor examines recent development policy initiatives in such areas as ‘governance,’ ‘human rights’ and ‘participation’ to better understand and contest the production of knowledge in development - its cultural assumptions, power implications, and hegemonic politics. The volume shows how development practitioners and westernized elites/intellectuals are often complicit in this neo-colonial knowledge production. Noble gestures such as giving foreign aid or promoting participation and democracy frequently mask their institutional biases and economic and geopolitical interests, while silencing the subaltern (marginalized groups), on whose behalf they purportedly work. In response, the book argues for a radical ethical and political self-reflexivity that is vigilant to our reproduction of neo-colonialisms and amenable to public contestation of development priorities. It also underlines subaltern political strategies that can (and do) lead to greater democratic dialogue.
Decolonizing Colonial Development Models in Africa: A New Postcolonial Critique confronts colonial development models to decolonize methodologies, epistemologies, and the history and practice of development in postcolonial African societies and advocates for Afrocentric alternatives. By taking a critical approach and drawing on postcolonial, postmodern, post-developmental, and post-structural theories, the contributors identify and analyze the effects of global inequality, racism, white supremacy, crisis, climate change, increasing environmental insecurity, underdevelopment, chronic diseases, and the vulnerability of the postcolonial societies of the global South. Together, the collection calls for and theorizes a new direction of development that incorporates indigenous-Afrocentric alternatives.
Hidden behind the much-touted success story of India’s emergence as an economic superpower is another, far more complex narrative of the nation’s recent history, one in which economic development is frequently countered by profoundly unsettling, and often violent, political movements. In Democracy against Development, Jeffrey Witsoe investigates this counter-narrative, uncovering an antagonistic relationship between recent democratic mobilization and development-oriented governance in India. Witsoe looks at the history of colonialism in India and its role in both shaping modern caste identities and linking locally powerful caste groups to state institutions, which has effectively created a postcolonial patronage state. He then looks at the rise of lower-caste politics in one of India’s poorest and most populous states, Bihar, showing how this increase in democratic participation has radically threatened the patronage state by systematically weakening its institutions and disrupting its development projects. By depicting democracy and development as they truly are in India—in tension—Witsoe reveals crucial new empirical and theoretical insights about the long-term trajectory of democratization in the larger postcolonial world.
Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) lies at the heart of global, regional and national policy agendas, with the goal of achieving socially and environmentally just development through the provision of inclusive, equitable quality education for all. Realising this potential on the African continent, however, calls for radical transformation of policy and practice. Developing a transformative agenda requires taking account of the ‘learning crisis’ in schools, the inequitable access to a good quality education, the historical role of education and training in supporting unsustainable development, and the enormous challenges involved in complex system change. In the African continent, sustainable development entails eradicating poverty and inequality, supporting economically sustainable livelihoods within planetary boundaries, and averting environmental catastrophe, as well as dealing with health pandemics and security threats. In addressing these challenges, the book: explores the meaning of ESD for Africa in the context of the ‘postcolonial condition’ critically discusses the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as well as regional development agendas draws on a wealth of research evidence and examples from across the continent engages with contemporary debates about the skills, competencies and capabilities required for sustainable development, including decolonising the curriculum and transforming teaching and learning relationships sets out a transformative agenda for policy-makers, practitioners, NGOs, social movements and other stakeholders based on principles of social and environmental justice. Education for Sustainable Development in the Postcolonial World is an essential read for anyone with an interest in education and socially and environmentally just development in Africa.
In this book, Nalani Hennayake unravels how the development experience of a postcolonial society is deeply embedded in a complex historical relationship between culture and politics by focusing on the country of Sri Lanka.
Postcolonialism, Decoloniality and Development is a comprehensive revision of Postcolonialism and Development (2009) that explains, reviews and critically evaluates recent debates about postcolonial and decolonial approaches and their implications for development studies. By outlining contemporary theoretical debates and examining their implications for how the developing world is thought about, written about and engaged with in policy terms, this book unpacks the difficult, complex and important aspects of the relationships between postcolonial theory, decoloniality and development studies. The book focuses on the importance of development discourses, the relationship between development knowledge and power, and agency within development. It includes significant new material exploring the significance of postcolonial approaches to understanding development in the context of rapid global change and the dissonances and interconnections between postcolonial theory and decolonial politics. It includes a new chapter on postcolonial theory, development and the Anthropocene that considers the challenges posed by the current global environmental crisis to both postcolonial theory and ideas of development. The book sets out an original and timely agenda for exploring the intersections between postcolonialism, decolonialism and development and provides an outline for a coherent and reinvigorated project of postcolonial development studies. Engaging with new and emerging debates in the fields of postcolonialism and development, and illustrating these through current issues, the book continues to set agendas for diverse scholars working in the fields of development studies, geography, anthropology, politics, cultural studies and history.
This open access edited volume offers an analysis of the entangled histories of education and development in twentieth-century Africa. It deals with the plurality of actors that competed and collaborated to formulate educational and developmental paradigms and projects: debating their utility and purpose, pondering their necessity and risk, and evaluating their intended and unintended consequences in colonial and postcolonial moments. Since the late nineteenth century, the “educability” of the native was the subject of several debates and experiments: numerous voices, arguments, and agendas emerged, involving multiple institutions and experts, governmental and non-governmental, religious and laic, operating from the corridors of international organizations to the towns and rural villages of Africa. This plurality of expressions of political, social, cultural, and economic imagination of education and development is at the core of this collective work.
