Tag: post-development

Taming a capitalist EU, socialist ‚development‘ and Post-Development

by Aram Ziai

In their text, Tough questions for new EU ‚development‘ commissioner‘, Sarah Delputte, Jan Orbie and Julia Schöneberg are criticising EU development policy from a Post-Development perspective. Appreciating the renaming of the EU development commissioner as one responsible for international partnerships only as a first step in a long series of necessary changes, they suggest to ‘fundamentally reconsider the EU‘s engagement with the rest of the world‘. They criticise that Van der Leyen expects ‚value for money‘, wants to pursue ‘investment opportunities in Africa‘, and intends to leverage aid for private investment. And they castigate the focus on ‘countries of migration origin and transit‘ and the corresponding adaptation of funding as the ‘instrumentalisation of EU aid for geopolitical and migration management purposes‘. Instead, the EU should reflect its growth-centered model of ‘development‘ and tackle ‘global structural injustices and inequalities‘ through abandoning the free trade orthodoxy of the EPAs and establishing a ‘truly fair‘ global trading system, ending tax evasion, promoting climate justice and engaging in reparative action for the crimes and robberies committed during colonialism.

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Urgencies and imperatives for revolutionary (environmental) transitions: from degrowth and postdevelopment towards the pluriverse?

by Jorge Garcia-Arias and Julia Schöneberg

Ontological transitions from the ‘one’ world to ‘a world in which many worlds fit’

There can be no doubt: revolutionary steps are needed to build just alternatives to the failed mainstream model of hegemonic ‘development’ and the universal conception of the ‘one world’ that have proven themselves to ultimately be destructive (Büscher 2019). ‘Pluriverse. A Post-Development Dictionary’ and ‘The Case for Degrowth’ provide clues and inspiration as to where, how, who, with whom, and by what means to start walking. Neither book disappoints, although they leave important questions open.

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Beyond human rights ‘promotion’: reimagining the EU-South Caucasus relation

by Laura Luciani

The EU’s policies of human rights ‘promotion’ in the South Caucasus region are loaded with coloniality. Rather than projecting a pre-set agenda with homogenising outcomes, the EU should recognise the ‘right to opacity’ of South Caucasus communities and create space for locally meaningful, emancipatory claims to emerge.

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On the Colonial Problem in the EU’s ‘Sustainable’ Trade Agreements

by Camille Nessel

This contribution is part of a blog series seeking to explore how postdevelopment approaches can inform, infuse and potentially transform the study of EU (development) policies and relationships with the Global South.

European colonialism describes a complex period of economic exploitation, racial ideologies and cultural domination. In the last stages of colonialism towards the 1880’s, ideas of a philanthropic civilizing mission were institutionalized. During this civilizing mission, EU member countries like France began to systematically civilize indigenous people through Western “superior” values. This logic shows surprising parallels with sustainable development ideas in the EU’s trade agreements, as I will argue.

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EU trade policy and the “meta-participation” challenge

by Diāna Potjomkina

This contribution is part of a blog series seeking to explore how postdevelopment approaches can inform, infuse and potentially transform the study of EU (development) policies and relationships with the Global South.

The ways in which citizen participation is currently organized for “development” purposes have been questioned by critical observers including the post-development community but also by  representatives of the mainstream development world, such as some of the World Bank’s lead economists. Criticism is – justifiably – directed at top-down approaches of the donors, ignoring local power relations, and at participatory fora which lack real impact. In too many cases, the search of “fast policy” and easy solutions has led to uncritical adoption of one-size-fits-all solutions which can easily fail in foreign contexts, even if they were genuinely successful in their place of origin.

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Development Cooperation in a Post-Growth Era

by Ulla Puckhaber & Tanja Brumbauer (NELA -Next Economy Lab)

“Without growth – no investments, without growth there are no jobs, without growth there is no money for education, without growth there is no help for the weak”, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said when introducing the Growth Acceleration Act in November 2009. However, in times of massive ecological overshoot and increasing inequalities worldwide, this growth dependency is increasingly questioned, particularly the notion of ”green growth”. Critics ask:  Is economic growth really indispensable for wellbeing and (global) justice? Or is it, on the contrary, rather a source of global inequalities, severe environmental crises and- even a possible economic decline in the long run?

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An African Renaissance perspective on EU-Africa relations

by Valentina Brogna

In this blog Valentina Brogna explores how the concept of African Renaissance (AR) may reshape the relations between the European Union (EU) and Africa. Partly building on African and diasporic perspectives, she argues that EU-Africa relations are still imbued with coloniality, that there is unclarity as to what delinking from Western modernity would entail for Africa, and that the EU should first and foremost listen rather than proactively seek agreements.

This contribution is part of a blog series seeking to explore how postdevelopment approaches can inform, infuse and potentially transform the study of EU (development) policies and relationships with the Global South.

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In times of crises: Why there is no place for ‘development’ in imagining a just future for all

by Adriana Cancar

In these current times of crises, and I purposely use crises in the plural, fatal misconceptions of ‘development’ and ‘growth’ are becoming even more blatantly apparent. Any given day we can see the consequences of ‘development’. Humans are forced to look for a safe place to live as their homes are simply inhabitable due to environmental degradation, land grabs, extractivism, heat waves, floods, droughts and fires. All the while, it feels like the climate crisis is  only taken seriously by young people most likely to experience the devastating consequences of a fossil-based, mass consumptive and resource-intensive lifestyle. Slowly but surely global warming is also hitting the global North –  and that means crises also affect ‘us’, the (relatively) ‘privileged’. By ‘privileged’ I mean those that for decades have profited from a fossil-based, mass-consumptive lifestyle all the while externalizing its costs. Continue reading “In times of crises: Why there is no place for ‘development’ in imagining a just future for all”

The What and the How of Teaching Global Development

by Anke Schwittay

A little over two years ago, this Convivial Thinking blog started with a collective conversation about decolonizing teaching pedagogies. Since then a number of posts have further added to the discussion, and especially its decolonial dimension. Since John Cameron wrote in 2013 about the ‘broader failure in the academy to subject our teaching to serious critical reflection and to consider it worthy of serious writing and publication,’ things are slowly changing in Development Studies, not in small part due to efforts to decolonize the development curriculum. This is both encouraging and important, for as bell hooks has argued, ‘the classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy.’ Many of these contributions have focused on what we are teaching development students, often looking to diversify reading lists. That is not enough, however – how we teach is just as important as what we teach.

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