Introduction

The possibility of producing a de-colonized, postcolonial knowledge in development studies became a subject of considerable debate in the 1990s. Despite this, however, there has been little dialogue between postcolonial and development studies. As Christine Sylvester (1999: 703-4) argues, the two fields ‘ignore each other’s missions and writings’; both are ‘giant islands of analysis and enterprise [that] stake out a large part of the world and operate within it – or with respect to it – as if the other had a bad smell’. This reflects differences in disciplinary traditions, politics, wariness over motives and divergences in the languages and concepts used to articulate core issues (Table 1.1 summarizes some of the essential differences between the two approaches). In addition, the two fields are often adversarial and mutually critical. On the one hand, development is one of the dominant western discourses that postcolonial approaches seek to thoroughly challenge and destabilize. On the other hand, there have been a number of recent criticisms of postcolonial approaches, from those in more applied fields such as development, accusing them of being too abstract and of little relevance. In particular, postcolonialism as a subject has been criticized for its alleged failure to connect critiques of discourse and representation to the realities of people’s lives, and its apparent inability to define a specific political and ethical project to deal with material problems (e.g. poverty) that demand urgent and clear solutions (McEwan 2003).