Race and a decolonial turn in development studies

Abstract

This paper reviews and revives a longstanding conversation about race and development studies, which was prominently explored in a collection of papers on race and racism in the journal Progress in Development Studies back in 2006. This revival is timely in the context of a global call to decolonise higher education. Given the central logic of race and racism in European colonialism, and the decolonial argument that colonialism continues in the production and value of knowledge, I examine the presence and absence of race and racism in discussions of decolonising higher education and in development studies. Through a systematic review and content analysis of papers published in six major development studies journals over the past 13 years, I identify where and how race is present in current development scholarship and explore the implications of this for a decolonial turn in development studies.

Tracing Histories of 'Black' Servants at Zwartkoppies Farm through Narratives

“…Decoloniality's point of origination was the Third World, in its diversity of local histories and different times, and Western imperial countries that first interfered with those local histories (Mignolo 2011). The issue of decolonisation of literature is vast and longstanding and emerges through transdisciplinary engagements, which include critical race studies, Negritude literature, queer feminism, subaltern studies, postcolonial studies and Indigenous and Pan-African scholarship (Patel 2020). Because of its opposition to colonising practices, 'decolonisation helps to confront the imposing of Eurocentric ideologies on the ways of being and ways of knowing e-ISSN 2664-3405 that have shaped the educational, cultural, linguistic and economic realities of the colonised' (Oyedemi 2021: 217).…”

The Politics of Knowledge in Inclusive Development and Innovation

“…The academic world has experienced a 'visible resurgence of decolonisation/ decoloniality' evident in many recent publications (Bumpus, 2020;Demeter, 2020;Doharty et al, 2021;Istratii and Lewis, 2019;Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2019;Pailey, 2020;Patel, 2020) that build on the work of others (Busia, 1960;Mafeje, 1978;Nkrumah, 1961;Okot p'Bitek, 1997;Said, 1979). Decolonisation of knowledge is a group of processes and actions that intentionally dismantle the entrenched, unequal patterns of knowledge creation and use that emanate from our colonial past; it is a process full of 'complexities, tensions and paradoxes' (Oliveira Andreotti et al, 2015, p. 22).…”

“…In this section, we consider two categories of difference that exist at the landscape level-namely, race and gender-while recognising the importance of intersectionality which we will discuss further below. According to Patel (2020), the issue of race has largely been ignored in development studies, despite considerable literature on its historical and contemporary effects, numerous movements to decolonise the university, and recognition that race is directly relevant to both decolonisation and development. Kothari (2006, p. 9) also considers that 'understanding development in terms of "race" can spotlight inadequacies, contradictions and misrepresentations in development ideologies, policies and practices, as well as relations of power.'…”

From the Inside Out: Gender Mainstreaming and Organizational Culture Within the Aid Sector

“…While intersectionality has most often been applied to people rather than structures, there are growing calls for intersectional analysis on the racialized structures of organizations (Miller, 2020;Tariq and Syed, 2017). Within the aid sector, debates on race and humanitarianism have historically been absent (Crewe and Fernando, 2006;Kothari, 2006) though this has shifted in recent years with the calls for localization and decolonization of aid (Patel, 2020). This includes problematizing the practice of bringing international "experts" in to build capacity or lead projects, instead of relying on local knowledge (Kothari, 2005;Eade, 2007), which compounds racialized power hierarchies already present in the aid sector.…”