ABSTRACT
As we saw in Chapter 1, until recently, there has been little dialogue between postcolonialism and development, reflecting differences in disciplinary traditions, politics, wariness over motives and divergences in the languages and concepts used to articulate core issues. The main mutual criticisms are that development studies tends to impose ideas and practices without listening to those people in the South who are subject to development interventions, while postcolonial studies neglects material issues such as poverty. As Sylvester (1999: 703) puts it: ‘development studies do not tend to listen to subalterns and postcolonial studies do not tend to concern itself with whether the subaltern is eating’. Similarly, Sharp and Briggs (2006: 6) argue:
This chapter explores how the politics of postcolonialism diverge sharply from other discourses. Although it shares similarities with dependency theories, its radicalism rejects established agendas and accustomed ways of seeing. This means that postcolonialism is a powerful critique of development (as an idea and as a practice), fuelling the mutual distrust between the two approaches. However, it is precisely because of these
divergent traditions that a dialogue between development studies and postcolonialism offers significant potential for an alternative conceptualization of development.
