Climate change and related adaptation strategies have gender-differentiated impacts. This paper reviews how gender is framed in 41 papers on climate change adaptation through an intersectionality lens. The main findings show that while intersectional analysis has demonstrated many advantages for a comprehensive study of gender, it has not yet entered the field of climate change and gender. In climate change studies, gender is mostly handled in a men-versus-women dichotomy and little or no attention has been paid to power and social and political relations. These gaps which are echoed in other domains of development and gender research depict a ‘feminization of vulnerability’ and reinforce a ‘victimization’ discourse within climate change studies. We argue that a critical intersectional assessment would contribute to unveil agency and emancipatory pathways in the adaptation process by providing a better understanding of how the differential impacts of climate change shape, and are shaped by, the complex power dynamics of existing social and political relations.

No abstract

The Modernity/Coloniality/Decoloniality (MCD) research program is a collective project associated with Latin America. In addition to a critique of Eurocentric “colonial modernity,” the project highlights non‐Eurocentric forms of knowing and being in the world. It also aims to foster alternative or decolonial thinking emerging from the lived colonial experiences of those situated “outside” Europe. This last is what MCD proponents claim differentiates it from postcolonial critiques of modernity with their emphasis on deconstruction. This review provides a brief but critical overview of the MCD project's parameters and claims. It makes a cautionary call to those tempted by “alternatives to modernity,” who might want to uncritically adopt alternative decolonial thinking. It concludes with a call for a closer and critical engagement with Latin American decolonial ideas and those they contest.

The post-development school associated with the thought of Arturo Escobar treats development as a discursive invention of the West, best countered by ethnographic attention to local knowledge of people marginalized by colonial modernity. This approach promises paths to more equitable and sustainable alternatives to development. Post-development has been criticized vigorously in the past. But despite its conceptual and political shortcomings, it remains the most popular critical approach to development and is reemerging in decolonial and pluriversal guises. This paper contends that the post-development critique of mainstream development has run its course and deserves a fresh round of criticism. We argue that those committed to struggles for social justice must critically reassess the premises of postdevelopment and especially wrestle with the problem of representation. We contend that Gayatri Spivak's work is particularly important to this project. We review some of Spivak's key texts on capitalism, difference, and development to clarify the virtues of her approach.Resumen: El pos-desarrollo, la corriente de pensamiento asociada con Arturo Escobar, trata el desarrollo como una invención discursiva de Occidente, la cual es contrarrestada de mejor forma a través de la atención etnográfica a saberes locales de los pueblos marginalizados por la modernidad colonial. Este enfoque ofrece alternativas al desarrollo que son más equitativas y sustentables. El pos-desarrollo ha sido criticado rotundamente en las últimas décadas. Pero, a pesar de sus deficiencias conceptuales y políticas, sigue siendo la crítica más popular al desarrollo y está resurgiendo en teorías decoloniales y de pluriverso. Este trabajo plantea que la corriente de pos-desarrollo como crítica del desarrollo dominante ha sido agotada, y que el desarrollo merece una nueva mirada crítica. Proponemos que los comprometidos con las luchas por justicia social deben revisar las premisas del pos-desarrollo y lidiar especialmente con la representación como una problemática central al desarrollo. Sostenemos que la obra de Gayatri Spivak es clave para este proyecto. Ofrecemos una reseña de algunos textos claves de Spivak sobre capitalismo, diferencia y desarrollo, aclarando sus aportes para una evaluación crítica del desarrollo dominante. Palabras clave: capitalismo, desarrollo, Escobar, pos-desarrollo, Spivak [Let us] demystify theory that ignores subaltern experiences and knowledge … in order to relocate their politics of place as key to our understanding of globalization. (Escobar 2008: 15)[T]o confront them is not to represent them (vertreten) but to learn to represent (darstellen) ourselves. (Spivak 1988: 288)