Post Development Theory

The risk concept, meant as hierarchical historical and cultural product, is a social elaboration acquiring different meanings according to the context. Even though it is inevitably characterized by indeterminacy, it is, in its practical purposes, a vision of the future affecting the present time: therefore, following certain principles, it could be possible to avert, control, mitigate a future disaster. In this way, the emergency planning becomes a political outlook made up of laws, territorial delimitations, emergency drills, preparedness, resilience pedagogy. In such general picture, the case of Vesuvius volcano in Naples district stands out. In 2011 the scientific journal Nature defined it as «the Europe's ticking time-bomb». The certainty of a future eruption together with the uncertainty about the time and way in which it will take place, make the effects of the "announced catastrophe" visible in the practices and policies that are currently carried out by local g...

El atractivo del Nordeste Brasileño para el turismo forma parte de un discurso reproducido desde la década de 1980 y sirvió como uno de los argumentos para justificar la elección de cuatro sedes de la Copa del Mundo 2014 en la región. Haciendo foco en las muchas controversias en torno a los legados dejados por el evento, el presente trabajo tuvo por objetivo evaluar los discursos que rodean la promesa de desarrollo turístico del Nordeste Brasileño a partir de la Copa del Mundo FIFA 2014. Por medio de entrevistas, observación directa y documentos, se analizaron tres posiciones discursivas sobre el tema: de los organizadores, de la prensa y de la sociedad. Como método se utilizó el Análisis Foucaultiano del Discurso y la Teoría del Posdesarrollo fue adoptada como lente teórica. Los resultados revelan dos formaciones discursivas que se oponen al entendimiento de la herencia propiciada por el evento para el turismo en la región. PALABRAS CLAVE: Copa del Mundo de la FIFA, turismo, Nordes...

This paper is concomitant with our comparative study analysis of the interests and power of the stake-holders involved in Community Forestry (CF) in six countries. The study hypothesises that, “governance processes and outcomes in CF depend mostly on interests of the powerful external stakeholders”. For this paper which is on CF in Cameroon, the study hypothesizes that, “Power is a hidden factor in Develop-ment cooperation”. Based on political theories, the paper uses the “actor-centered power ” (ACP) concept of the Community Forestry Working Group (CFWG) in Göttingen, Germany, the post-development the-ory and empirical findings, to back up the assertations made in the study through the analysis of thirteen different CFs in the South West region (SWR) of Cameroon. It analyzes the empirically applicable ACP concept, that consists of three elements: trust, incentives and coercion and at the same time connects these elements with the post-development theory. The elements were derived f...

In 2015, artist Brendan Fernandes was invited to interpret ‘African collections’ from the Agnes Etherington Art Centre and the Textile Museum of Canada. The result, Lost Bodies, critiques racist ideologies that justified presenting objects from colonised African peoples as evidence of ‘superstition’ or ‘witchcraft’ in early European museums. Fernandes redirects the deferential gestures of ballet, professionalised in Louis XIV’s court at the same moment of the objects’ collection, to reanimate and apologise to them. Considering Lost Bodies, I explore how it is possible to nuance Western museums’ public development narratives by engaging such artefacts without either ignoring their history or rejecting museums on account of their own.

The universalist ambition of the 17 Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs) and 169 targets as a global plan of action for people, planet, prosperity and peacebuilding deserves analytical scrutiny from multiple angles. While the SDGs are largely heralded as a paradigm shift compared to their predecessor Millennial Development Goals (MDGs), we argue that four fundamental dynamics undermine or severely hamper SDGs as a game changer to address the deep-running sustainability challenges facing the planet. Free download till April 28 : https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1ej7C3pILaAFx

The universalist ambition of the 17 Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs) and 169 targets as a global plan of action for people, planet, prosperity and peacebuilding deserves analytical scrutiny from multiple angles. While the SDGs are largely heralded as a paradigm shift compared to their predecessor Millennial Development Goals (MDGs), we argue that four fundamental dynamics undermine or severely hamper SDGs as a game changer to address the deep-running sustainability challenges facing the planet. Free download till April 28 : https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1ej7C3pILaAFx

In the past two decades, the rise of Post-Development theory has witnessed the questioning of the core assumptions of development. Post-Development theorists point to the failures of "development" to create significant decreases in poverty or inequality worldwide. Meanwhile, other theorists call for radical transformations of conventional practice. This paper seeks to grapple with these questions, using the example of The Valley Trust, a development NGO in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, as an entry point into the debate. Research was conducted over a four-week period through a mixture of participant observation and formal interviews with staff members of The Valley Trust. An account will be given of the practicum done at The Valley Trust in this paper as well as an analysis of the responses given by staff members in the interviews. The conclusion of this paper argues that The Valley Trust, as an example of recent theoretical developments in the field such as the learning organization and "developmental facilitation," offers a possibility of one direction in which development practice could transform so as to meet the needs of the coming century.

A diversity of place-based community economic practices that enact ethical interdependence has long enabled livelihoods in Monsoon Asia. Managed either democratically or coercively, these culturally inflected practices have survived the rise of a cash economy, albeit in modified form, sometimes being co-opted to state projects. In the modern development imaginary, these practices have been positioned as 'traditional', 'rural' and largely superseded. But if we read against the grain of modernisation, a largely hidden geography of community economic practices emerges. This paper introduces the project of documenting keywords of place-based community economies in Monsoon Asia. It extends Raymond William's cultural analysis of keywords into a non-western context and situates this discur-sive approach within a material semiotic framing. The paper has been collaboratively written with co-researchers across Southeast Asia and represents an experimental mode of scholarsh...