ISS: 19th Development Dialogue - Reckoning with the past and imagining the futures of development

The keynote lecture will be given by Professor Uma Kothari, professor of Migration and Postcolonial Studies at the University of Manchester.

Opens externa, professor of Migration and Postcolonial Studies at the University of Manchester.

She will give a lecture entitled 'Towards decoloniality, solidarity and justice: Addressing the past for a more hopeful future'.

The field of development studies is not estranged from critiques of extractive and hegemonizing policies and practices – the power relations that reproduce structural inequalities around the world.

In the age of environmental crises, unprecedented migration and displacement, and questions around justice and equity, we believe that development research and praxis are undergoing a moment of reckoning as scholars and practitioners grapple with the limitations and shortcomings of dominant approaches to development.

The theme of DD19 speaks to the ongoing pertinent issues of the regime we currently live in, where ‘development’ is impacted by past mistakes as well as impacts contemporary attempts for justice.

Climate change, war, human rights violations, unequal resource distribution, and discrimination based on gender, sexuality, caste, class, race, nationality, religion, and numerous other dimensions that characterize our identities - who we are - are all part of the discussion. People are negatively and unevenly affected by these dimensions in each periphery of the world, with the most marginalized groups suffering the most. These inequalities have only been accentuated and made worse by the COVID-19 outbreak, which demonstrated the reflexive way specific discourses continue to dominate and define contemporary approaches to research and praxis.

Activism and scholarship from Brown and Black peoples enduring erasure and violences at the hands of these models demonstrate how compliance with such models and thinking perpetuates existing power imbalances, and further neglects the perspectives, knowledge, needs of marginalized groups/ communities. These sustained harms exacerbate historic and contemporary violences and injustice. 

Calling for a new reckoning

Calling for the reckoning is not new, but a longstanding demand from communities around the world who work to decolonize development by rethinking traditional development indicators and metrics and incorporating participatory and inclusive approaches that prioritize local knowledges and perspectives, social and environmental sustainability, to focus on shifting power dynamics so plural and diverse world(s) can exist together.

Thus, the idea of reckoning employed here is part of ongoing efforts of solidarity with these scholars and peoples’ work, particularly from the Global South, to decolonize the academy and the fundamental racist, sexist, and classist institutions and systems that perpetuate violent realities.

We find it relevant for this DD to bring attention to the debate in the academic/practitioner context in this moment and foster a space for us to talk to each other about our intersecting work, reflections, and plans for potential futures.