2023/07/01 by Ilan Kapoor · 3 citations
Social Sciences · #Global Educational Policies and Reforms #International Development and Aid #Tourism, Volunteerism, and Development
paper · pdf · doi:10.1017/s026021052300013x
openalex publication_date 2023/07/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Abstract This article explores ways of decolonising Development Studies by: (1) examining the discipline’s tendencies towards what some have called ‘imperial amnesia’, that is, proclivities towards disavowing if not erasing European colonialism, most evident in 1950s–1960s Modernisation theory, but also more recently in the work of such analysts as Bruce Gilley and Nigel Biggar; (2) considering the opportunities and perils of ‘epistemic decolonisation’, that is, ways of decolonising knowledge production in the discipline, including the limits of ‘non-Eurocentric’ pedagogies; and (3) reflecting on forms of material decolonisation (e.g., the reduction of socioeconomic inequalities by improving better access to education or resisting the corporatisation of publicly funded research) that need to accompany any epistemic decolonisation for the latter to be meaningful.