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The Palgrave Handbook of International Development pp 41–53Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Postcolonial Approaches to Development

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Abstract

This chapter works towards a notion of postcolonial and development theories as locked in negotiation one with another around the relative importance of poverty and inequality. Prioritising global inequality, broadly speaking, postcolonial theory has incited and responded to changes in development theory, arguing repeatedly for shifts in its foci (from a focus on development agents and agency to a focus on subalterns and subalternity), its constructs (in particular constructs of teleological or linear histories) and its disciplinary centres (from a methodological focus on political and economic geographies to a methodological focus on cultural geographies). Ultimately, the chapter concludes that this negotiation is not a contest but a co-operation: postcolonial theory and development theory are each concerned with both poverty and inequality, and they negotiate to fundamentally address the latter, whilst not ignoring the reality of the former.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, Univesity of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

    Pat Noxolo

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  1. Pat Noxolo
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Politics, University of York, Heslington, United Kingdom

    Jean Grugel

  2. Department of Geography, University of Sheffield, United Kingdom

    Daniel Hammett

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Noxolo, P. (2016). Postcolonial Approaches to Development. In: Grugel, J., Hammett, D. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of International Development. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-42724-3_3

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