The Postcolonial Politics of Development
Price: $44.95
Add to Cart- ISBN: 978-0-415-77398-0
- Binding: Paperback (also available in Hardback)
- Published by: Routledge
- Publication Date: 7th February 2008
- Pages: 200
About the Book
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.
Reviews
Kapoor forces development theory and practice to face an unlikely combination of critical traditions: European social theory, postcolonial analysis, and dependencia thinking. In relatively few words, he hits the missing notes in standard and critical scores of foreign aid, democratization, local participation, liberal modernity, basic needs, structural adjustment, good governance, and human rights. Then he serves up Homi Bhabha as antidote. Terrific --and very stylish.
Christine Sylvester, Lancaster University, UK
Development studies are usually long on policy and short on theory. By juxtaposing postcolonial theory and development studies, this book offers a social theory perspective on development and does so in a lucid manner that gives both postcolonial theory and development new depth. It presents a 'self-reflexive and democratic postcolonial politics' as a tool to make development more just.
Jan Nederveen Pieterse, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA
Table of Contents
Introduction Part 1: Postcolonial Insights? 1. Capitalism, Culture, Agency: Dependency versus Postcolonial Theory 2. The Culture of Development Policy: Basic Needs, Structural Adjustment, Good Governance and Human Rights Part 2: Postcolonial Complicity and Self-Reflexivity? 3. Hyper-Self-Reflexive Development?: Spivak on Representing the Third World ‘Other’ 4. Participatory Development, Complicity and Desire 5. Foreign Aid as G(r)ift Part 3: Postcolonial Politics? 6. Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism?: The Relevance of the Habermas-Mouffe Debate for Third World Politics 7. Acting in a Tight Spot: Homi Bhabha’s Postcolonial Politics 8. Bend it like Bhabha: Hybridity and Political Strategy. Conclusion
About the Author(s)
Ilan Kapoor is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University, Toronto. His research focuses on postcolonial theory, participatory development, and democracy, and has been published in several academic journals, including Third World Quarterly and Alternatives. He has worked with many development organizations, including the Canadian International Development Agency.
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