- Convenors:
-
Michael Tribe
(University of Glasgow)
Mozammel Huq (University of Strathclyde)
Dina Nziku (University of the West of Scotland (UWS))
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- Format:
- Paper panel
- Stream:
- Decolonising knowledge, power & practice
Short Abstract
Papers for this panel will reflect the fact that the directly political element of colonialism has been superseded by ‘independence’ but that ‘neocolonialism’ persists. It is expected that papers will examine this persistence and analyse the means of achieving greater degrees of decolonisation.
Description
This panel is intended to build on achievements of the 2023 DSA Scotland mini conference, in which scholars and practitioners critically examined the legacies of colonialism in contemporary development discourse. While many former colonies have achieved formal independence, the structures and ideologies of colonial domination persist in subtler forms, which is commonly referred to as neocolonialism. The panel will seek to explore how these dynamics continue to shape global development policy, practice, and knowledge production.
In particular, the panel is expected to interrogate how power is distributed across global institutions, how agency is exercised or constrained by actors in the Global South, and to examine possibilities for reimagining development in ways that are more just, inclusive, and plural. Contributors are expected to examine the epistemic hierarchies that privilege Global North perspectives, the role of language and culture in shaping development narratives, and the potential for grassroots and indigenous alternatives to challenge dominant global paradigms.
By engaging with these questions, the panel will aim to deepen understanding of the persistence of neocolonial structures while also highlighting pathways toward meaningful decolonisation. The expectation is that it will emphasise the voices and experiences of those working to achieve autonomy, to assert local knowledge systems, and to build futures that reflect local priorities and values. The aim is for the panel to contribute to the broader conference theme by offering critical insights into how development can be reimagined through the lenses of power, agency, and transformative possibility in an uncertain world.
Accepted papers
Paper short abstract
This paper will review very recent experience with Official Development Assistance, updating a chapter to be published in an edited book during 2026. Deteriorating international security and the rightward political shift in the Global North has increasingly marginalised the Global South.
Paper long abstract
This paper will review very recent experience with Official Development Assistance, updating a chapter to be published in an edited book during 2026. The discussion will present illustrative data, providing evidence in terms of the level and composition of ODA, as well as examples of the impact that reductions in ODA has in recipient and donor countries. Deteriorating international security and the rightward political shift in the Global North have increasingly marginalised the Global South meaning that ODA is not by any means the only area where these changes have been detrimental to the socio-economic development of the Global South. Examples from international trade and finance, global health measures and responses to climate change will be presented as evidence.
Paper short abstract
This paper shows how colonial sugar cane production in Maui reshaped land and water systems, intensifying the 2023 forest fires. Plantation irrigation, land clearing, and the displacement of Indigenous governance produced fire-prone landscapes, amplifying wildfire risk under climate stress.
Paper long abstract
This paper examines how colonial development trajectories in Maui reshaped land and water systems, increasing the frequency and intensity of natural disasters, with particular attention to the legacy of sugar cane production. It argues that plantation-era infrastructure, epistemic erasure of Indigenous ecological knowledge, and settler-colonial political economy reconfigured ecosystems to prioritise extractive accumulation over ecological resilience. Irrigation works, stream diversions, wetland drainage, and land clearing for sugar cane monoculture transformed hydrological and vegetative regimes, producing dry, fire-prone landscapes that persist long after the decline of the plantations.
Rather than treating the 2023 Maui wildfires as an anomalous climate event or a failure of emergency response, the paper situates them within a longer history of colonial development that reorganised natural processes. Indigenous systems of watershed management and fire-adaptive landscapes were displaced by legal, scientific, and bureaucratic frameworks that defined land and water as productive inputs rather than relational ecologies. These transformations did not merely shape risk exposure but also altered how climate stress manifests materially on the ground.
Drawing on and extending existing scholarship on the production of vulnerability, the paper shows how development operates as a historical process that conditions disaster outcomes over time. By tracing the connections between sugar cane production, water governance, and contemporary wildfire risk, the analysis demonstrates how colonial infrastructures continue to structure environmental instability in the present. The Maui case contributes to decolonising development debates by showing that reducing disaster risk requires confronting the historical and institutional foundations of development models that amplify natural disasters.
Paper short abstract
Malaysian palm oil exports to Europe -- originated as colonial primary commodity -- has been framed as an environmental and health threat reflecting a core–periphery relationship through neocolonial forms of economic and discursive regulation and white supremacy ‘political ecology’ imaginaries.
Paper long abstract
The historical and contemporary development of Malaysian palm oil exports to Europe originated as a colonial primary commodity cultivated under British rule for western European markets. Palm oil has since become a widely used global ingredient and a competitor product. In recent years, Malaysian palm oil has been increasingly framed in Europe as an environmental and health threat, associated with tropical deforestation and sustainability concerns. We argue that this shift reflects the continued maintenance of a core–periphery relationship, through neocolonial forms of economic and discursive regulation in which European industries and states redefine the value and perception of palm oil as a perpetual primary commodity from the Global South that causes environmental and social harm. These processes are also based on white supremacy ‘political ecology’ imaginaries. We argue that these dynamics perpetuate unequal exchange between western European and Malaysian economic markets and actors. Based on fieldwork conducted in Malaysia, England, and Germany, we present our preliminary findings using a transdisciplinary approach combining artistic research, critical political ecology, global value chain analysis, and structural theories of unequal development.
Paper short abstract
The fascinating story of the Padma Bridge constructed by Bangladesh, challenging the funding withdrawal by WB. Reviews the lessons from this project and also from two other projects (Aswan Dam and Bokaro Steel plant) for which the original promised foreign funding failed to materialise as well.
Paper long abstract
This paper aims to review the lessons from three major challenging projects for which the foreign funding as originally expected failed to materialise: Padma Bridge of Bangladesh, Aswan Dam of Egypt and Bokaro Steel Plant of India. In particular, the governance issue as raised by the World Bank in the case of the Padma Bridge project of Bangladesh needs to be closely attended as this is often a major concern in the public sector projects in many developing countries. Also, the urgency to attend to macro-economic stability for faster economic development needs to be strongly emphasised, thus necessitating to attend to the two main gaps (the savings-investment gap and the foreign exchange gap) which have remained as major hurdles for economic development of most developing countries. So, the relevant developments as taking place in Third World countries will be closely reviewed. Indeed, there is a clear message: a developing country should not take it for granted that even if a project is economically sound, it will necessarily bring external funding. Hence the urgency to endeavour to improve its own financial capability and, in particular, make every attempt to raise its savings and also increase its foreign exchange earnings, thus ensuring its ability to close the savings-investment and the foreign exchange gaps, the two major gaps constraining faster economic growth. Indeed, without sound macro-economic management and good governance, a developing country will continue to experience difficulties, thus perpetuating its underdevelopment (see, e.g., A Clunies-Ross, et al, 2009; and M Huq, forthcoming).
Paper short abstract
Developing an ‘ideational performativity’ framework, this paper shows how mainstream economics performs and stabilizes contemporary economic imperialism by embedding transnational capital’s interests in its theories and calculative devices, illustrated through the case of New Development Economics.
Paper long abstract
Mainstream economics, through its considerable influence within corridors of power and its close association with the neoliberal zeitgeist, plays a key role in enabling contemporary economic imperialism. This article unpacks that idea through two main contributions: First, a novel analytical framework is introduced by bringing together performativity (a techno-cultural approach to study markets) and Marxian political economy. For salient ontological and epistemological reasons, a revivified version of Neo-Gramscianism rooted in critical realism is deployed in this synthesis, giving rise to what is termed ‘ideational performativity’. The developed framework offers the analytical capability to interrogate how, and to what extent, the assumptions embedded in economic theories and their attendant calculative devices are shaped by ideas advanced by the prevailing historical political-economic bloc, and how, in turn, these devices function to reproduce and stabilize that historical bloc.
Second, the framework is applied to explore the mutual constitution of economics imperialism (the disciplinary overreach of mainstream economics and its calculative devices) and economic imperialism (the material reproduction of global hierarchies) through a critical examination of New Development Economics (NDE) and its two constituent research agendas: new institutional economics of development divergence and poor economics of development. The article traces the ideational-performative effects of tenets of NDE back to the intersubjectivities (serving the interests of capital) and the ideological foundation underpinning them, highlighting how NDE’s calculative devices, couched in the positivist epistemology of economics, tend to entrench the interests of the prevailing transnational neoliberal bloc and function as technologies of imperial governance in periphery.
Paper short abstract
This paper reflects on the challenges of conducting decolonial research from within universities and INGOs in a settler-colonial context. Drawing on my PhD research in Aotearoa New Zealand, it examines how research ethics, consent, and institutional norms reproduce colonial power.
Paper long abstract
This paper examines the methodological tensions of researching coloniality from within the institutions it seeks to critique. Drawing on PhD research with international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) based in Aotearoa New Zealand, a settler-colonial context, it explores how colonial power operates not only through development practice, but through research governance, ethics, and institutional norms.
The research employed a mixed qualitative approach, including surveys, semi-structured interviews, and talanoa — a Pacific relational method of dialogue grounded in collective storytelling and listening. While these methods were intended to support critical, relational engagement, the research process was shaped by university ethics frameworks that required organisational consent prior to individual consent. This procedural ordering positioned INGOs as gatekeepers of participation, constraining relational accountability and limiting who could take part, under what conditions, and with what degree of openness.
More broadly, the research revealed resistance to methodological approaches that challenged dominant academic and sectoral norms, including expectations around neutrality, productivity, time, and acceptable forms of knowledge-making. These constraints highlight the difficulty of undertaking decolonial research while remaining embedded within universities and development organisations structured by colonial and managerial logics.
By foregrounding method as a site of power rather than a neutral technical choice, this paper contributes to debates on decolonising development research and challenging domination by the global North. It argues that intent alone is insufficient, and that greater critical attention must be paid to how institutional systems delimit the possibilities and limits of decolonial inquiry, particularly for researchers studying the sectors they inhabit.
Paper short abstract
Decolonial vocabularies are being appropriated by authoritarian regimes to legitimise power, securitised development and majoritarian nationalism. Using India as an illustrative case, this paper theorises such appropriation as epistemic violence that delegitimises critique and reproduces domination.
Paper long abstract
Decoloniality has been primarily concerned with challenging the domination of the Global South by Eurocentric knowledge regimes and institutions in the Global North. However, decolonisation itself has become a contested terrain of power. Recent political developments reveal that decolonial vocabularies are being appropriated by right-wing and authoritarian regimes in ways that undermine their emancipatory promise. This paper conceptualises such appropriation as a form of epistemic violence, through which decolonisation is re-signified to consolidate state power, delegitimise democratic critique, and reconfigure development discourse in line with majoritarian nationalism and national security logics.
Taking India as an illustrative case, the paper examines how state and state-aligned actors mobilise decolonial terminologies to recast development as a civilisational and security imperative. Drawing on critical discourse analysis of policy narratives, political speeches, public debates, and development interventions in indigenous and forested regions, it shows how resistance to extractive development is reframed as anti-national and obstructive to national interest, particularly in debates around large-scale mining and infrastructure projects. Rather than dismantling colonial logics of domination, this paradoxical form of “decoloniality from above” empties its emancipatory potential, marginalises subaltern epistemologies, and reproduces new hierarchies of knowledge, authority, and legitimacy within the postcolonial state.
Foregrounding the politics of epistemic capture, the paper offers a reflexive complication of decolonial frameworks, demonstrating how domination can be reproduced through decolonial language within the Global South.
It argues that a genuinely decolonial development politics requires not only the rejection of Eurocentric knowledge but also the refusal of state-centred, majoritarian forms of “decolonisation”.
Paper short abstract
The zero-sum fallacy—that a developed South costs the North—constrains global resilience. Decolonization requires lateral cooperation, not aid dependency. Using health sovereignty in Grenada as evidence, this paper shows how South-South coalitions adapt institutional strategies to reclaim agency.
Paper long abstract
The zero-sum fallacy—quietly entrenched in Northern development philosophy—misleadingly suggests that economic gains for the South come at the North's expense. This notion inverts reality: a developed South represents realized potential for addressing global existential threats, innovating futures, and bolstering collective resilience. Colonialism's wealth extraction and cultural domination deepened global divides, calcifying into neocolonialism—an insidious trap that continues to constrain Southern potential. Yet the North's dominance stems not from resource abundance (which the South possesses) but from institutional strength. As argued in Why Nations Fail, weak institutions remain the key constraint on Southern development.
In Grenada, institutional stagnation is stark: our Westminster constitution remains largely unchanged since British independence in 1974. Health systems reveal similar colonial persistence—we adopted Northern curative models unsuited to our resource realities. As Roberts et al. argue in Getting Health Reform Right, reform succeeds only when meeting population needs. Grenada's current system fails this metric. Suffocating colonial artifacts threaten health sovereignty. Sustainable reform requires transition from reactive curative care to proactive, community-based prevention aligned with Caribbean social structures.
Decolonization requires lateral cooperation, not aid dependency. The South need not reinvent institutional solutions—we must adapt proven strategies to our realities. Cuban primary care models, for instance, can be recalibrated for Caribbean contexts through regional coalitions that share knowledge and aggregate capacity. Practical mechanisms—think tanks, policy exchanges, institutional modernization—transform sovereignty from aspiration to achievement. An empowered South becomes strategic partner, not perpetual beneficiary, ensuring a multipolar, positive-sum global future.
Paper short abstract
The presentation recalls to the Declaration on the Establishment on a New International Economic Order and its critique as of an alternative non-Western world order, representing “sedimentation” of the European empires and secures the Westernised perspective on sustainability and development.
Paper long abstract
The presentation challenges the positivist notion of a linear progression of the global community from decolonisation to a post-colonial state, and the assumption of an inevitable transition to a post-post state that overcomes both the negative effects of colonialism and the ongoing trauma of persistent inequality. In doing so, it recalls to the Declaration on the Establishment on a New International Economic Order (NIEO) and its critique as of an alternative non-Western world order; that do not seem to have withstood the resistance of the Majority World. It is argued that the European Union’s projects of assistance to the Third World and to Africa, in particular, in the name of sustainable development represent a gap between the political discourse of equality, justice and interdependence and the repetitive dwelling of decolonisation in practice. This is the process that prevents overcoming the condition of dependence, the establishment of sovereignty, and supports the idea of metropolitan supremacy over the subaltern in the form of patronage. The presentation concludes that the European Development Aid policy currently represents “sedimentation” of the European empires (Dimier, 2014) and secures the Westernised perspective on sustainability and development, and upholds the geopolitical rationale behind the current Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).