ABSTRACT
As discussed in Chapter 4, the ways in which development is written and analysed have been subject to intense scrutiny, reflecting the influences of broader philosophical and theoretical debates that have swept through western social and political sciences. More specifically, since the widely acknowledged crisis, or ‘impasse’, in development studies in the mid-1980s (see Chapter 3), it is recognized increasingly that development is about power – its operations, its geographies, its highly uneven distribution and strategies for achieving it (Watts 1995). The analysis of power is, therefore, central to contemporary development studies (Crush 1995; Radcliffe 1999). Much of this analysis has its roots in postcolonial and feminist theories, both of which have had significant consequences for how development is conceptualized.
