Being Cosmopolitan: Marketing Development Studies in the Neoliberal University

Development knowledge sharing (DKS) by Japan, South Korea and China has rapidly expanded over the last decade. However, little scholarly attention has been paid to the nature and processes of their claimed-to-be ‘unique’ development knowledge production. To address this research gap, we explore their international development studies (IDS) as key sites where researchers and resources are ‘mobilized’ under high-level policy initiatives. We find that processes of DKS are principally dictated by the governmental agenda. We also find that, in contradiction to three countries’ claim of ‘unique knowledge’, their IDS share common traits with Western IDS offering knowledge that is decontextualized, depoliticized and which claims to be universally applicable knowledge.

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development Knowledge in the Making: The Case of Japan, South Korea and China

Kim

Wang

Sato

2023

“…Whilst the concept of development has been extensively critiqued, contested, reinvented and rejected (see, amongst many others, Escobar, 1995; Esteva et al, 2013; Lang and Mokrani, 2013), it continues to have a high degree of resonance and traction as a set of normative ideas, values and practices aimed at tackling poverty and inequalities—indeed a whole industry and global architecture continue to exist based on designing, implementing and evaluating development initiatives (Ingram and Lord, 2019; Mawdsley and Taggart, 2022; Patel, 2022), dating back to ‘the multiply scaled projects of intervention in the “Third World” [that] emerged in the context of decolonization struggles and the Cold War’ (Hart, 2010, p. 119). Whilst these colonial histories and presents have been extensively problematized (Kothari and Wilkinson, 2010; Wilson, 2012; Taylor and Tremblay, 2022), I argue that it is still vital to understand how development is conceived, engaged with, rejected or embraced, by those who can be considered to be at its coalface—in this case grassroots, Global South women actively engaged in contesting the dominant model of neoliberal economic development as experienced in much of Latin America—extractive-led development (Acosta, 2013; Svampa, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Between Hope and Loss: Peruvian Women Activists’ Visual Contestations of Extractive-led Development

Jenkins

2023

This paper critically explores how women anti-mining activists conceptualize development, in the context of living with and resisting large-scale resource extraction in Cajamarca, Peru. I contend that participatory photography provides an opportunity to contest hegemonic development narratives and the notions of ‘lack’, ‘poverty’ and ‘progress’ that are bound up with such narratives, enabling participants to simultaneously evoke both hoped-for alternative futures and nostalgic renditions of a threatened present. Moving beyond an explicit and immediate focus on the socially and environmentally destructive nature of large-scale mining, I explore how the women instead document productive Andean livelihoods and everyday ways of life, capturing the ways in which hoped-for futures are enacted in the present. The women activists articulate their resistance through photography, identifying and celebrating practices of hope in their everyday lives and communities and providing an emotive counter-narrative to extractive-led neoliberal development discourses. The paper reveals that participatory photography approaches generate critical insight into the emotion-suffused ways in which development is understood by grassroots activists in contexts of extractivism.

“…… [Curricula become] designed to satisfy customers and meet their expectations which may not be the same as providing challenging, inconvenient and at times radical ideas that do not produce feelings of satisfaction among students. (Patel and Mun, 2017: 11)…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Making Strange’: Discourse Analysis Tools for Teaching Critical Development Studies

Gasper¹

2022

Critical development studies require not just a critical attitude, but also usable tools. This article suggests some forms of discourse analysis that can add substance to critical development studies’ aspirations and that can yet be learnt and used by students without specialist background. Central are tools for ‘making strange’ (defamiliarization), so that we view both texts and social realities in a fresh independent way and start to discern better their blindspots, and our own. The article presents accessible yet helpful forms of text analysis, argumentation analysis and content analysis that contribute in required processes of defamiliarization and reconstruction.