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- Convenors:
-
Hannah Stevenson Doornbos
(South West International Development Network)
Owasim Akram (Örebro University)
Tigist Grieve (University of Bristol)
Send message to Convenors
- Chair:
-
Hannah Stevenson Doornbos
(South West International Development Network)
- Discussant:
-
Frances Hill
(SWIDN)
- Format:
- Roundtable
- Stream:
- Decolonization and knowledge production
- Transfer:
- Open for transfers
Short Abstract:
Through exploring decolonisation discourses and practice, these innovative panels consider opportunities and challenges in shifting international development, debating whether it’s possible to shape development into reparative, anti-oppressive practice and identifying actionable strategies to do so.
Description:
Bringing together academics, practitioners and policy experts, this panel addresses the deepening crisis in international development, marked by colonial legacies, systemic racism, and a legitimacy crisis within global politics. Amid shifts in funding frameworks and mechanisms, organisational relocations to the Global South, and the creation of job roles focused on decolonisation, development actors are increasingly moving towards decolonisation and locally-led approaches. Yet these shifts raise critical questions:
1. Can the colonial foundations of “development” be meaningfully dismantled, or do they remain inherent to its structures?
2. What role can ‘Global North’ actors play in fostering equitable and reparative development, if any?
3. How might a reparative solidarity framework redefine the Global North’s role in development from perpetuating harm to advancing anti-oppressive practices?
4. How are the most marginalised participants responding to these approaches—are they embracing, resisting, or adapting to them?
5. In a world increasingly shaped by populist politics, what aspects of development rhetoric and practice still have relevance or a future?
Through creative formats and two diverse and authoritative panels of global heterodox thinkers and practitioners, these experimental panels envision a shift toward reflexive, responsible, and reparative development. Through two panel events, our collaborative partnership will offer brief statements from panellists, moderated discussion with bold ideas, and practical analysis of real-world cases. Audience contributions will shape inclusive dialogue, producing practical recommendations for ethical, anti-oppressive approaches to development. These sessions promise to identify actionable strategies for meaningful global change and foster collaboration between academia and practitioners to reimagine development.
Accepted contributions:
Session 1Contribution short abstract:
Using empirical data from Bangladesh, this study seeks to initiate a discourse on the influence of various development agencies at multiple levels and locations in perpetuating oppressive systems that conflict with localization and decolonization agendas.
Contribution long abstract:
One core mission of development is to empower and activate the individual and collective agency of people to combat all forms of injustice, violence, and oppression that hinder opportunities for a dignified life. Relying on decolonial and postcolonial perspectives, this paper critically explores the current localized practices of NGOs in Bangladesh that engage the most marginalized.
The ongoing research draws on primary data collected through one-to-one interviews, informal group exchanges and focus group discussions with the older adults, disabled and the santals, a plainland indigenous group. Data has been collected in a semi-ethnographic manner yielding in a bottom-up perspective of people’s everyday experience of engaging with development agencies and interventions.
The findings suggests that NGO operation in Bangladesh rather exemplifies what Paulo Freire termed ‘false generosity,’ where NGOs in the name of supporting the marginalized, subscribe to and perpetuate existing oppressive power structures. NGOs routinely engage with powerful bureaucrats, local elites and political leaders with the intention of smooth operation of their activities than challenging the status quo. NGOs are also seen as elite organizations with unbounded accountability to the communities they serve. This makes the NGOs operate in a ‘crisis of confidence’ (Cullen et al., 2022) despite their continuous presence and survival. Further research is required to understand the consequences of such legitimacy crisis and the future of development.
Contribution short abstract:
This research examines power dynamics in Ghana's development sector through critical discourse analysis and interviews. We analyse how African feminist scholars and women development workers resist capitalist approaches, advancing strategies for accountable, reparative development practices.
Contribution long abstract:
International development organisations have been criticised for perpetuating power dynamics that maintain the othering of developing countries. Guided by capitalist thoughts and liberal feminist ideas, international development programs particularly situate the othering of African women. While alternative development approaches prioritising accountable practice within the Global South and non-Western feminisms have been proposed, there remains a disconnect between these alternative feminist approaches and mainstream international development practices. Through critical discourse analysis and in-depth interviews, this research explores how African feminist scholars and Ghanaian women development workers navigate and interrupt the invocation of power in the course to ‘help’ countries in the Global South when development projects are implemented in Ghana. Power dynamics are revealed through the relationships between donors, international organisations, staff, and 'beneficiaries', particularly in how projects are conceptualised - with an apparent disconnect between intended goals and participants' needs and the universalising of participant identities that reinforces images of vulnerability and lack of autonomy. Advancing a transnational, intersectional African feminist theoretical framing, we highlight how African women in development and feminist scholars resist, negotiate, and strategise within these spaces. By examining strategies of resistance and combining African feminist scholarship with development practice, this research proposes pathways toward more accountable and reparative development approaches that challenge historical patterns of oppression.
Contribution short abstract:
The emergence of diaspora philanthropy is fast changing the landscape of aid in Africa especially in the domain of social investment and development of marginalized communities.
Contribution long abstract:
The study examines how diaspora philanthropy is emerging as a development alternative that radically upsets the hegemonic aid structure through the reconsideration of power dynamics. Additionally, the study seeks to analyze whether the crux of collaborative and participatory approaches in diaspora philanthropy actually empowers local communities to proffer decolonization, localization and shifting of power dynamics in development without falling trap to perpetuating the same power relations it seeks to challenge. By dissecting how diaspora philanthropy is different from the white savior donor community the study argues that decolonization is not just about changing the skin color of the donor but the system and methods need to change as well. Theoretically, the study is predicated on the principles of the Bandung conference on decolonization in combination with Julius Nyerere’s Arusha declaration and its principles on self- reliance. Methodologically, the study is anchored on empirical data collected through 15 in-depth semi structured interviews with members of the Zimbabwean diaspora involved in philanthropy and experts in the field of African philanthropy. The study highlights how diaspora philanthropy is becoming a key component of decolonized aid futurities and development. What is distinctive about diaspora philanthropy is its linkages with African traditions and cultures of Ubuntu (“nobody goes hungry in the village”). The rise of diaspora philanthropy has a potential to concretize struggles for alternatives and the decolonization of development, exhibiting how Zimbabweans in the diaspora exercise African humanism as an anchor for social responsibility and self-reliance.
Contribution short abstract:
We call for a reflexive re-examination of South Korean development knowledge production by interrogating its unwittingly Western-centric and colonial epistemic foundations of its development policies, institutional practices, and academic scholarship.
Contribution long abstract:
We critically examines the production of international development (ID) knowledge in South Korea through the lens of intellectual decolonization, challenging the dominant Eurocentric, binary, and linear development narratives embedded within its development discourse. As a former aid recipient turned donor, South Korea occupies a unique position in the global development hierarchy, presenting itself as a successful non-Western and non-white example of ‘catching up’ with the West following its liberation from Japanese imperial rule in 1945. Despite this positioning, South Korea’s ID knowledge production remains deeply influenced by Western-centric, imperial, and colonial perspectives—perspectives that local scholarship simultaneously seeks to reject. This paradox often results in the reproduction of epistemic dependencies and colonial legacies within the field of international development. We argue that South Korea’s development knowledge production operates within a framework of ‘coloniality of knowledge’, which perpetuates Western-centric racist methodologies and conceptual frameworks while marginalizing alternative epistemologies from the Global South. Within the global knowledge production hierarchy, South Korean scholarship often assumes a quasi-Western stance, reinforcing Seoul’s self-proclaimed status as a pivotal middle power in international politics. This process of development knowledge production thus serves as a form of colonial and proxy-imperial statecraft. We call for a reflexive re-examination of South Korean development knowledge production by interrogating the epistemic foundations of its development policies, institutional practices, and academic scholarship. It advocates for the promotion of decolonial epistemic plurality to foster more inclusive, equitable, and just global development discourses.
Contribution short abstract:
This paper explores how UK INGO efforts to address global inequality often sustain colonial, capitalist, and racist systems. It critiques performative decolonisation, highlights feminist insights on power, and advocates inclusive, practical steps towards reparative justice to transform development.
Contribution long abstract:
International NGOs in the UK’s development sector face increasing scrutiny for their role in perpetuating or dismantling global inequality. Safeguarding scandals since 2018, involving some of the sector’s largest organisations, have exposed a troubling gap between their stated missions and their attitudes and actions. In 2022, the UK Parliament’s International Development Committee reported that the sector remains rooted in colonial power dynamics and structurally racist practices. Despite a growing focus on decolonisation and locally-led development, limited data reveals persistent problems: in 2021, 68% of employees reported witnessing or experiencing racism (Bond 2021).
Many organisations espouse anti-racist policies and decolonisation strategies. However, such efforts risk being non-performative (Ahmed 2006) when the system continues to operate within imperialist, capitalist, and racist frameworks (Mohanty 2003). This context has spurred vital discussions on power, solidarity, and transformation. Postcolonial feminist scholarship emphasises the need to dismantle oppressive systems, including knowledge production and colonial legacies. Yet, research rarely addresses the practical implications of this shift on smaller INGOs.
Drawing on SWIDN’s ongoing engagement in industry efforts towards solidarity discourses, this paper explores how organisations in the UK can combat global inequality without reinforcing harmful colonial structures. It proposes a practice rooted in individual reflexivity, in challenging coloniality through new ways of knowing and being, and establishing models of practice that enable reparative justice, aiming to replace the violence of existing development systems with effective pathways for repair and renewal. This presentation will bring a range of voices from practitioner members of SWIDN and its leadership.
Contribution short abstract:
This paper examines the complexities of “locally led” approaches, highlighting relationships with agendas like decolonisation, decentralisation, participation, supporting civil society, and changes to funding modalities. It argues that power lies in dynamic local systems, not individual actors.
Contribution long abstract:
This paper explores the complexities and ambiguities inherent in the concept of 'locally led' development approaches, examining how different agendas intersect with but do not fully encompass the varied uses of the term in theory and practice. Initiatives and discourses such as those on decolonisation, decentralisation, participation, supporting local civil society, and transferring funds to local actors highlight key aspects of these approaches, but may not encompass broader systems of power and decision-making. A recurring challenge is the ambiguity in defining 'local' actors, and the risks of privileging certain groups or organisations, notwithstanding their myriad motivations, knowledge, and interactions with broader systems.
The paper argues that power is not solely held by individual actors or organisations but exists within dynamic local systems involving state and non-state actors, across national, subnational, and community levels. Actor-focussed approaches to transferring funds and decision-making power risk overlooking this complexity, leading to unintended consequences such as gaming, NGOisation, or reinforcing existing power imbalances. The analysis highlights the need to consider local ecosystems of power holistically, recognising the roles and interactions of diverse 'local' actors, as well the context of their dynamic relationships with global systems and geopolitics.
Through distinctions between delivery and decision-making roles, as well as funding and service provision models, the paper illustrates the intricate networks of power and accountability within local systems. It emphasises that locally led development approaches could go beyond identifying ‘who is local’ to understanding and engaging with the complex systems in which ‘local actors’ operate.
Contribution short abstract:
This presentation aims to share some of the key challenges and opportunities arising from Plan International Bangladesh’s (PIB) efforts towards localization, with a particular emphasis on a feminist localization perspective.
Contribution long abstract:
Plan International Bangladesh (PIB) champions feminist localization by fostering equitable partnerships, shifting power dynamics, and ensuring meaningful inclusion of women-led, youth-led, and marginalized organizations. Through transformative practices, PIB embeds localization and decolonization into both development and humanitarian initiatives.
In development, PIB emphasizes co-creation, designing projects collaboratively with local partners to promote shared ownership and tailored solutions. Between 55% and 65% of funding directly supports local and national actors (LNAs), reflecting trust and accountability. Regular partner meetings and community feedback loops enhance transparency and inclusivity. While challenges include diverse localization definitions, resistance to power shifts, and complex compliance processes, PIB sees opportunities to strengthen partnerships with women- and youth-led organizations and embed feminist principles for equitable relationships.
In humanitarian efforts, particularly the Rohingya refugee response, PIB focuses on capacity building and knowledge sharing, as government policies restrict refugee-led initiatives. During COVID-19, decentralized decision-making empowered refugees, enabling program continuity despite a 75% reduction in humanitarian staff. Challenges include short-term funding, policy constraints, and balancing immediate needs with long-term goals. However, localized models rooted in community knowledge and solutions provide a sustainable way forward.
Rejecting sub-contracting and centralized decision-making, PIB prioritizes strategic partnerships, mutual accountability, and participatory approaches. By addressing power imbalances and promoting local leadership, PIB advances reparative development and decolonization. Its journey illustrates successes, challenges, and lessons learned, showcasing the transformative potential of feminist localization to drive meaningful change and sustainable outcomes.