Introduction

Postdevelopment emerged in the 1980s drawing on poststructuralist legacies in order to destabilise the discourse or apparatus of development as a hegemonic principle organising social life. Postdevelopment has sought to displace the universalisation and globalisation of modernity, insisting instead on the need for what Gustavo Esteva has described by paraphrasing the Zapatista motto, as ‘a world in which many worlds can be embraced’. Beyond the well-known link with poststructuralist theory, postdevelopment has cultivated a dialogue with other theoretical discourses. Aided by social movements and the irruption of Indigenous mobilisation in national politics, the left turn’s post-neoliberalism would encompass the return of statist political economies, a renationalisation of ‘the economy’, new regional and South-South trade initiatives and the rebranding of social spending as ‘social investment’. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.