Critical Development Studies

Lisa Björkman's book is a valuable addition to the field of urban studies and the disciplines of sociology and anthropology. The book critiques the pretensions of equity sold by globally empowered institutional epistemologies or knowledges backing the community/participation-driven programmes of resettlement of the urban poor in the name of urban renewal and infrastructure upgradation. It questions the stark binary made between the material world and the discursive world (language, representation) in an analysis of social inequality and casts them as being in a recursive relationship, ceaselessly producing each other. The claims made by the urban poor through certain discursive strategies, such as the use of terms like joona (original settler), are seen as materialising the 'reality out there' as much as the material documentary practices of claim-making. The empirical case concentrates on the 700-million-dollar Mumbai urban transport project (MUTP), which began in the year 2000 (for up to a decade) to improve transport infrastructure through road widening and increasing railway line speed by clearing the habitations. The MUTP, unlike the slum rehabilitation policy, had, on paper, at least one of the widest criteria for affectees to be eligible for rehabilitation, including even the tenants and came without any cutoff date of prior residency. Yet, this infrastructure project necessitated the violent relocation of up to three lakh residents from neighbourhoods located mainly on government and railway lands, to the severely infrastructure-deficient suburbs such as Kanjurmarg and Mahul. The book spatialises this process by concentrating on how this sociopolitical dynamic has played out in one such neighbourhood of Pratiksha Nagar, and within it, three spatial zones: the rehabilitated buildings, the Turbhe Mandala Transit Camp and the Patra Chawl, containing 159 huts. After the demolition of the transit camp in 2007, those residents who were deemed ineligible for the rehabilitation due to faulty documents resettled in the same neighbourhood

Using practical cases, explain why power and wealth are intertwined aspects of international relations. 2. Discuss the tenets of economic nationalist/realism, assessing its strengths and weaknesses. 3. Highlight the relevance and irrelevance of the doctrine of economic liberalist/internationalist. 4. Discuss the economic structuralist doctrine, showing its usefulness in understanding political economy at a global scale. 5. Using relevant examples, discuss the differences between Marxism and Liberalism in understanding global political economy. 6. Dependency theory contends that 'the economically underdeveloped condition of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) is caused by their exploitation by the Economically Developed Countries (EDCs)'. Critically discuss this contention, giving concrete examples. 7. Discuss the origins of both developed and underdeveloped countries with focus on the dependency theoretical view. 8. Analyze the economic elements that form the base of the North-South axis. 9. Identify the factors mainly offered for the existence of the economic gap between the North and the South.

Cet article de recherche vise à offrir un point de vue pragmatiste à la réflexion éthique sur les changements climatiques. Après un parcours de quelques difficultés propres aux perspectives prédominantes en éthique du climat, nous présentons notre approche de philosophie pratique d'inspiration pragmatiste. Nous soutenons que les travaux terrain en éthique des changements climatiques nécessitent un ancrage pragmatiste se détachant, au moins en partie, des éthiques climatiques classiques. Selon nous, l'éthique pragmatiste fournit un cadre d'analyse axiologique suffisamment souple pour bien intégrer les conditions réelles du monde, tout en menant la discussion morale sur le terrain de l'argumentation située. Nous précisons ensuite la pertinence de ce point de vue pragmatiste pour le domaine de l'adaptation aux changements climatiques. Nous discutons enfin de certaines spécificités et limites des pragmatismes en éthique environnementale.

This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of The Egalitarian Demand, a radical framework proposing the systematic transformation of global economic structures to achieve universal human wellbeing. Drawing on detailed economic modeling, sociological analysis, and philosophical foundations, we demonstrate that the resources, technology, and knowledge necessary to end human suffering permanently already exist. The barrier to universal wellbeing is not scarcity but deliberate maldistribution. We propose that capital's ultimate purpose should be to fund the systems that make capital itself unnecessary as a gatekeeper to life's essentials, effectively achieving complete decommodification of basic human needs.

Cite: Boroch, R. (2021). Military anthropology — specialisation frame. Wiedza Obron­na, 274(1), 63–72. https://doi.org/10.34752/2021-d274

This article examines the main research problems addressed within military anthropology and seeks to clarify its object of cognition as a distinct subfield. It contrasts two leading approaches to military anthropology, the American and the Russian, showing how each tradition conceptualises the relationship between culture, armed forces, and armed conflict. The article argues that military anthropology increasingly treats culture as a domain of struggle, competition, and warfare, focusing both on the organisational culture of the military and on wide‑ranging military–civilian relations and social consequences of war. Structurally, the text consists of three parts: a theoretical and historical overview of military anthropology, a presentation of the Russian tradition, and an outline of the emerging Polish tradition, where military anthropology functions as an auxiliary discipline within security studies and security anthropology.

As of early 2026, discussions on Ukraine’s prospective membership dominate international coverage of the European Union’s evolving borders. That is somewhat peculiar, given that the website of the European Commission lists1 as many as 10 countries as “candidates for membership.” With the exception of Türkiye— whose accession remains politically unlikely—the remaining candidates emerged from the disintegration of the former socialist bloc and exhibit substantially lower per capita incomes than any state previously admitted to the EU. The largest and poorest among them is war-torn Ukraine. This paper reviews the historical trajectory of the EU’s enlargements using data from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators. Drawing on conceptual tools from world systems analysis, it assesses the economic feasibility and political willingness of the EU to address the development challenges associated with further enlargement. The study also evaluates the likely forms of integration
that may emerge between the EU and its current candidate countries.

This book chapter examines instructions issued by the Basel-based trading firm Union Trading Company (UTC) to its European shopkeepers in the two British colonies of the Gold Coast and Nigeria in 1939, as set out in the pamphlet "Instructions for European Shopkeepers." The manual contains no explicit evidence of physical violence either exercised or experienced. Rather, closer reading reveals that it documents structural violence — manifest in the racist segregation between UTC shopkeepers, their indigenous male employees, and the clientele. The contribution addresses this asymmetric web of relationships within colonial trade and analyses the actor groups involved. The source is approached through a twofold interpretive framework: first, through structural analysis drawing on the "Racial Capitalism" approach, and second, through a micro-level perspective employing "Critical Race Theory." Both the economic and the social implications of segregatory violence thus become legible. Cassandra Mark-Thiesen and Sebastian De Pretto co-authored this contribution. By way of introduction, Sebastian De Pretto establishes the historical background of the UTC instructions with an overview of the Basel trading company's corporate history; Cassandra Mark-Thiesen then explains the source genre of colonial manuals and pursues the first macro-level interpretive approach of "Racial Capitalism." The reading of the source through "Critical Race Theory" is undertaken by Sebastian De Pretto. The conclusion was written jointly by both authors.

This study examines Philip Roth's The Human Stain through an interdisciplinary approach by using the psychoanalytical theory of ideology proposed by Slavoj Žižek in combination with Critical Race Theory (CRT). In particular, this study argues that post-racial liberalism acts as an ideological fantasy that repeatedly disavows and reproduces racial antagonism while sustaining the belief in meritocracy, equality, and neutrality. Using Žižek's notions of ideological fantasy, fetishistic disavowal, jouissance, and the Real, the study provides an insight into how the ideology allows subjects to "know very well" about racism while simultaneously believing that racism has been overcome in reality. The moments of Coleman Silk's racial passing, followed by his subsequent exposure to the truth, demonstrate those moments when the Real intervenes in the symbolic harmony of post-racial ideology and uncovers the persistent racism underneath the liberal discourse of universalism. At the same time, in light of CRT's theories of colorblind racism, interest convergence, racialized organizations, and intersectionality, the study shows how the hierarchical system of racism can continue to be maintained by institutions despite a democratic setup. Moreover, the paper reveals how denial structures make racism an invisible yet existing phenomenon for institutions like Athena College and for society as a whole. In integrating both psychoanalytic and critical race theory (CRT), this paper seeks to provide an analysis of The Human Stain that will take into consideration the intersection between ideology, subjectivity, and power, showing how post-racial discourse works not by erasing race but by reconfiguring it.

In the 1960s, the formerly colonized countries of Africa became independent. These newly independent countries of Africa and countries of Asia, which became independent after World War II, came together through their leaders in 1955 at Bandung, Indonesia, to form a movement that would not be aligned in the Cold War then raging between the First World, the industrialized, capitalist, and democratic countries of the West, and the Second World, the Communist countries. Later joined by the countries of Latin America, independent since the 19 th century, the term "Third World" would be applied to them. It was first used by the French economist and demographer Alfred Sauvy in 1952, who saw Third World (Tiers Monde) as a modern parallel to the Third Estate (Etat) of the French Revolution, the class of commoners after the aristocracy and the clergy.

The prolonged absence of a functioning master plan is not simply a failure of institutional capacity but a practice embedded in Bihar's sociopolitical and agrarian-rooted reality that informs landed elites' spatial practices in urban areas. Hence, urban planning operates less as a technocratic, rational process and more as a historically contingent and socially negotiated practice mediated through caste and bureaucratic networks. Drawing on land acquisition records, legislative debates, housing schemes and court judgments, the paper shows how land acquisition was prioritised while consistently deferring formalisation of binding planning frameworks.

Disputes between mining companies and surrounding communities over the access, control, distribution of natural resources and territory form an important part of the socio- environmental conflicts that extractive industries in Peru are executing. This research aims to visibilise the empowerment of community-based voices’ through real life stories and testimonies on the socio-environmental effects of mining concessions. This is discussed through the frameworks of decolonial thought, local participation and grassroots environmental justice, highlighting power analysis on grassroots NGOs when addressing social justice. The ethnographic research conducted, presents the importance of the intersection of identity and reconnection to one’s environment- a sense of place- and understanding how these factors are key to acknowledge the underlying cultural and historical roots of the conflict.

Autonomy, the right of self-government (à la sovereignty), had been inalienable to states since modernism. It is so-crafted and consolidated as strategy for stymieing interstate internecine frictions triggered often by the unbridled/aggressive interlopings characterising the medieval princes and principalities, which consequently plagued and unsettled inter-principality relations. Thus, later with modernism, granting a u t o n o m o u s s t a t e h o o d t o s e l fdeterminist/nationalist groups gained international acceptance/momentum after Serbian nationalist, Gavrilo Princip, assassinated the imperial Archduke Franz Ferdinand and wife. Ever since, especially after 1945 modern internationalism had significantly tamed interstate aggression through collectivised relations and constructive interconnectedness, fostering greater systemic control, peace, security and cooperation, which, in turn, enabled humanity to achieve mammoth growth and multifaceted development. Consequent upon the problem of growth by the end of that century, the world again began to experience new menaces, w h i c h e n d a n g e r e d h u m a n i t y i n unprecedented proportions/dimensions. Many states failed or had violently been contested and became international liabilities, and quite a number of them had harboured migratory rogues that commit crimes against humanity. Also, multifaceted/syndicated terrorism and criminality had preyed on the sacrosanctness of states' autonomy and systemic interconnectedness to perpetrate humanitarian horrors. Consequently, two new conceptual strategies crept into the lexicon of internationality-state-building and intervention, toward rejigging systemic security by redeeming distressed states from becoming 'international public bads.' They, though, helped to recoup and manage s y s t e m i c s t a b i l i t y, n e v e r t h e l e s s i n operationalism, had scathing implications for states' autonomy. This work dissected, justified and essentialised intervention and state-building while arguing that states' autonomy needs deconstruction to sustain internationalism and humanity.

Autonomy, the right of self-government (à la sovereignty), had been inalienable to states since modernism. It is so-crafted and consolidated as strategy for stymieing interstate internecine frictions triggered often by the unbridled/aggressive interlopings characterising the medieval princes and principalities, which consequently plagued and unsettled inter-principality relations. Thus, later with modernism, granting a u t o n o m o u s s t a t e h o o d t o s e l fdeterminist/nationalist groups gained international acceptance/momentum after Serbian nationalist, Gavrilo Princip, assassinated the imperial Archduke Franz Ferdinand and wife. Ever since, especially after 1945 modern internationalism had significantly tamed interstate aggression through collectivised relations and constructive interconnectedness, fostering greater systemic control, peace, security and cooperation, which, in turn, enabled humanity to achieve mammoth growth and multifaceted development. Consequent upon the problem of growth by the end of that century, the world again began to experience new menaces, w h i c h e n d a n g e r e d h u m a n i t y i n unprecedented proportions/dimensions. Many states failed or had violently been contested and became international liabilities, and quite a number of them had harboured migratory rogues that commit crimes against humanity. Also, multifaceted/syndicated terrorism and criminality had preyed on the sacrosanctness of states' autonomy and systemic interconnectedness to perpetrate humanitarian horrors. Consequently, two new conceptual strategies crept into the lexicon of internationality-state-building and intervention, toward rejigging systemic security by redeeming distressed states from becoming 'international public bads.' They, though, helped to recoup and manage s y s t e m i c s t a b i l i t y, n e v e r t h e l e s s i n operationalism, had scathing implications for states' autonomy. This work dissected, justified and essentialised intervention and state-building while arguing that states' autonomy needs deconstruction to sustain internationalism and humanity.

Contemporary India is showing increasing signs of ‘competitive’ authoritarian populism (Levitsky and Way, 2010). The mainstream political discourse in the country is dominated by the sectarian religious forces of Hindu nationalism or Hindutva, serving as the agency of a development narrative that promises to return India to its ‘greatness of yore’. In this paper, we examine the case of Noida, an upcoming satellite township adjacent to the capital New Delhi, to describe a process of spatial upheaval that is leading to continuous practices of ‘othering’. These processes are enabling the Hindutva forces to take root locally. In effect, we argue that local space-making has an intrinsic relationship with authoritarian populism, and it therefore needs to be at the analytical forefront.

Alors que les fondations philanthropiques sont généralement étudiées sous l’angle de leurs activités subventionnaires, cet article explore comment leurs activités d’investissement peuvent contribuer à redéfinir leur impact et leur rôle dans la société. En tant qu’investisseurs institutionnels, les fondations peuvent mettre en place diverses stratégies issues de la finance durable afin d’allier des objectifs sociaux et environnementaux à leurs objectifs proprement financiers. En s’appuyant sur les résultats d’une recherche qualitative conduite auprès de quatorze fondations basées au Québec, cet article poursuit un double objectif. Il s’agit d’abord d’identifier les stratégies privilégiées par les fondations québécoises actives dans le champ de la finance durable. Il s’agit ensuite de dégager les conditions qui favorisent leur transition d’une finance conventionnelle vers une finance plus durable.

This article examines how Milton Santos (1926–2001) understood Brazil as a "distorted country" — a nation whose self-image has been deformed by the historical tendency to adopt foreign modernizing models and to interpret national reality through imported ideas. Drawing on Santos's theoretical production alongside his "reflective" sources (newspaper articles, interviews, and public speeches), the study argues that his project of critical renewal in Geography is inseparable from his project of constructing a geographical interpretation of Brazil. Both are oriented toward producing what Santos called an effective discourse and a theory of Brazil.
The article is organized around three interconnected dimensions of this distortion. The first concerns the place of ideas: following the tradition of Brazilian Social Thought from Euclides da Cunha and Sérgio Buarque de Holanda to Roberto Schwarz, Santos identifies a recurring mimetic attitude in Brazilian intellectual life — what Cunha called "the blind toil of copyists" — and situates it within the "formation paradigm" as an interdisciplinary framework for interpreting the country. The second dimension addresses the materialization of distortion in geographic space through the concept of derived spaces, developed in dialogue with Max Sorre and Franz Fanon: the spatial forms produced by modernization in underdeveloped countries are themselves vehicles for the introduction of dominant modes of production, generating the bipolarized urban circuits and territorial inequalities that Santos analyzed throughout his career. The third dimension concerns the racial question: through the concepts of the "slanted gaze" and mutilated citizenship, Santos links the ethno-racial condition of Black Brazilians to the structural and cumulative logic of socio-spatial formation, arguing that there is no Black question outside of Brazilian social formation.
The article concludes by situating Santos's intellectual trajectory in Silviano Santiago's notion of the "in-between place" of Latin American thought — a space of restless, anthropophagic appropriation of foreign ideas in the service of an original and decolonized Geography. Santos's work is read as a situated Geography produced from the Global South, one that takes the slow people as the creative agents of a genuinely Brazilian modernity.

Conflict and forced migration threaten to reverse the decline of early marriage in the Middle East. In some Syrian refugee communities, protracted displacement and precarious livelihoods, together with pre-war traditions of early marriage, push families to arrange matches for their adolescent daughters, and sometimes sons. Drawing on thirteen ethnographic interviews with young Syrian women, mothers, mothers-in-law and grandmothers in Jordan, we develop a multi-perspective approach to the study of early marriage. A feminist outlook has informed our fieldwork and the way its results are presented: around a conversation with Syrian women of different ages and from different generational groups. While humanitarian reports often use women�s voices in a tokenistic way, we stay attentive to the complex nature of their stories and ambitions, contrasting them with insights from interviews with Jordanian academics, aid workers and policymakers. Our study adds nuance to existing humanitarian n...

This paper analyses Nigeria progress towards achieving each of the Millennium Development Goals, using the most recently updated data. In all, this study report that, the poverty prevalence is on the increase, while hunger level has drastically reduced. Nigeria does not have concrete evidence that the MDG-2 (universal primary education) will be achieved, it also failed to meet gender equality target on primary and secondary school enrolment in 2005 and yet to achieve it in 2010. Gender equality at all levels is not likely to be achieved either. Though progress is made on the MDG-4 & 5, but Nigeria is not likely to achieve the target. Nigeria has achieved MDG-6 of halting the trend of HIV/AIDS and other diseases and begins to reverse it; however much attention is needed in the North than is needed in the South. Progress has been made on MDG-7 to achieve the improved access to water, but it is unlikely 2015 target will be achieved. Access to improved sanitation has degenerated over the years. Overall, the little achievement on development is through increased life expectancy, adult literacy rate and gender equality while human development is still far below the average in Africa and sub-Sahara African countries

This essay sets out from the observation that, by and large, the Lacanian field has tended to celebrate Joan Copjec's "Sex and the Euthanasia of Reason" at the expense of rigorously engaging with it. Indeed, Copjec's explosive text has often been taken-wrongly-as warranting both an indiscriminate dismissal of the entire project of queer theory (especially where it contests psychoanalytic theorizations of sexual difference) and the frequent confusion of transphobic countertransference with psychoanalytic thinking. Moving against this tendency, "Sex: Trouble" disencumbers the queer-and trans-emancipatory kernel of Copjec's argument-that is, that sex serves no other purpose than to serve no purpose-from the dimorphic and sometimes "cisnormative" terms through which this radical kernel is at once elaborated and undermined. Setting "Sex and the Euthanasia of Reason" in dialogue with a number of queer and trans theorists, "Sex: Trouble" establishes Copjec's thought as an indispensable weapon in the struggle against the profusion of meanings that threaten to obliterate the negativity, the nothing, that sex is, and on which the freedom of queer and trans (read: all) subjects is staked.

In the following pages, I focus on previous ideas and insights that have appeared in the development of my theoretical work and that connect critical race theory, the decolonial turn, and the ontological turn with apocalyptic and time studies. In this work, I propose a decolonial analysis of the apocalyptic narrative and imaginary, understood here as a device for the production of truth and as a civilizing spirit, to reveal the ontological commitments it maintains with modernity and its linear and finite temporality in contrast to the ontologies that exhibit and enact the worlds of life in relation (Espinosa- Miñoso et al., 2022), which, in Abya Yala, confront the modern/colonial idea of the future “as a way forward” and as a “rupture of tradition

Un voyage politique, historique et humain au cœur du Nord profond américain.
Lorsque l’on parle des États-Unis, le Midwest est souvent perçu comme une zone calme, blanche et consensuelle. Deep North démonte ce cliché. À partir du Minnesota — Mni Sóta Makóče, « la terre où les eaux reflètent le ciel » en langue dakota — ce livre explore un territoire traversé par des migrations, des violences coloniales, des luttes sociales et des résistances contemporaines.
Publié dans la collection Erga Omnes de L’Atelier Glocal, Deep North propose une lecture engagée et documentée de l’histoire et du présent d’un État devenu, depuis 2025–2026, l’un des épicentres de la répression des immigrés et de la contestation sociale aux USA
De quoi parle ce livre ?
Deep North se lit comme un guide politique de territoire, mêlant analyse historique, récits migratoires, articles de presse traduits, entretiens et documents visuels.
Le livre explore notamment :
• Les migrations de colonisation européennes, en particulier scandinaves, et leur rôle dans la formation d’une culture coopérative, syndicale et farmer-labor au Minnesota
• La colonisation et la dépossession des peuples autochtones (Dakotas, Ojibwés), toujours au cœur des luttes contemporaines
• Les migrations racialisées et contraintes : Afro-Américains, Hmong du Laos, Somaliens, Latin@s
• Le rôle de l’État, de la police et de l’ICE dans la production d’une violence structurelle moderne
• Les résistances actuelles : mobilisations syndicales, artistiques, autochtones, communautaires et politiques
Le livre revient également sur les événements déclenchés par l’Opération Metro Surge et l’embrasement de Minneapolis, marqués par des exécutions extrajudiciaires et une mobilisation massive de la société locale.
Un livre collectif et transdisciplinaire
Écrit et traduit par des auteur·rices et traducteur·rices multiples, Deep North est le fruit d’un travail d’intelligence collective, mêlant journalisme, histoire sociale, analyse politique et récits situés.
Il s’inscrit dans la continuité du précédent ouvrage De quoi Minneapolis est-il le nom ?, tout en élargissant le regard à l’échelle régionale et historique.
Pourquoi lire Deep North ?
• Pour comprendre une autre Amérique, loin des clichés médiatiques
• Pour saisir les continuités entre colonisation, migrations et répression contemporaine
• Pour découvrir un laboratoire social et politique où s’entrecroisent héritages ouvriers, luttes autochtones et résistances migrantes
• Pour disposer d’un outil de compréhension critique des dynamiques américaines actuelles
À qui s’adresse ce livre ?
• Lectrices et lecteurs intéressés par les États-Unis contemporains
• Journalistes, étudiant·es, enseignant·es, militant·es
• Personnes travaillant sur les migrations, les luttes sociales, l’histoire coloniale
• Toute personne cherchant une lecture engagée, rigoureuse et accessible
Deep North n’est pas un guide touristique.
C’est une cartographie des conflits et des résistances dans l’un des territoires les plus méconnus — et les plus révélateurs — de l’Amérique d’aujourd’hui.

Reginald Rose's Twelve Angry Men (1954) is a thought-provoking play that centers on densely contentious themes such as innocence, guilt and fragility of justice. The centerpiece of this play rests on a dichotomy between the hegemonic voice of the majority and the marginalized voice of the minority. By adopting a post-colonial mode of inquiry, this paper will contend that the judicial case depicted in this play is emblematic of agency-stifling structures of cultural hegemony which render disenfranchised minorities devoid of conceptual space to speak and be heard. In other words, the play showcases how, to express it in Spivak's terms, the subaltern cannot speak. Moreover, having examined the state of subalternity in this play, this paper will call into question Spivak's belated theoretical tour de force on how the subaltern can speak.

The article examines the links between archaeology, nationalism, and (crypto-)colonialism using the example of Iran. The starting point is that archaeology has not only been a scientific enterprise but also a deeply political endeavour since its emergence. The central question is how archaeological knowledge has been instrumentalised in colonial and post-colonial contexts to construct national identities-often marginalising or ignoring cultural plurality. Particular attention is paid to the concept of crypto-colonialism, which describes the paradoxical power relations in formally independent but de facto partially subjugated states such as Iran. In the area of conflict between adaptation to Western standards and self-assertion through recourse to an idealised pre-Islamic past, an archaeological practice developed that actively supported state power. Case studies are used to analyse the role of archaeology as an instrument of knowledge and power. The aim is to show the entanglements of researchers and to provide impulses for a critical-reflexive, decolonising archaeology.

Recently, on the History Channel, artificial intelligence (AI) was singled out, with much wringing of hands, as one of the seven possible causes of the end of human life on Earth. I argue that the wringing of hands is quite inappropriate: the best thing that could happen to humans, and the rest of life of on planet Earth, would be for us to develop intelligent machines and then usher in our own extinction. British astrophysicist, Stephen Hawking, recently asked the following question on Yahoo Answers: "In a world that is in chaos politically, socially, and environmentally, how can the human race sustain another 100 years?" Some of the answers included: "Get rid of nuclear

Throughout Latin America, women’s leadership and protagonism seem to characterise the contemporary wave of territorial resistance to extractivist projects and their multiple dispossessions. This article examines eco-territorial feminist resistance, and experiences of re-existence, as alternatives to extractivism in contemporary Bolivia, where the twenty-year rule of the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) government, characterised by neo-extractivist policies, has recently come to an end. Through the cases of the Amazonian Tacana Indigenous peoples and peasants in the Tariquía protected area of southern Bolivia, we analyse women’s intensified efforts to strengthen territorial defense and re-existence, thereby providing a perspective on the plurality and ambivalences of perpetuating lived alternatives to extractivism. We argue that for many in these communities, the alternative to extractivism does not represent anything radically new or different, but rather protection and caring for existing ways of living and producing. Instead of perceiving the territories as either dispossessed objects of natural resource exploitation or romanticised sites of Indigenous struggles, we perceive them as transformative, complex, and disputed fields where community, territorial defense, feminism, and ecology meet to put a halt to the environmental and climate emergencies.

Fecha de recepción: 27-01-2020 Fecha de aceptación: 5-03-2020 RESUMEN A lo rural se lo ha concebido tradicionalmente como una amplia área terrestre donde reside el campo agropecuario y la población que sostiene estas actividades, es por esto que adolece hasta ahora de una pertinente construcción socio-espacial, que sigue anclada a la comunalidad dispersa habitacionalmente y desatendida en sus bienes básicos, ausente de políticas que cambien el estado de reproducción material, y se ponga en perspectiva la afirmación de la ruralidad como un espacio construido, más allá del asignado lugar de reserva agroalimentaria y de protección ambiental de los contextos locales-nacionales; este rural necesita ser predestinado como fuente de vida, opción productiva y habitacional amigable con su contexto natural a tono con los enfoques del desarrollo planetario, nacional y específicamente local, en el cual tenga incidencia la población nativa, concordante con la gobernanza estatal, más aun la necesaria territorial; por lo que el presente trabajo se acerca a determinar el estado situacional, y los alcances o limitaciones de las políticas o acciones de la estatalidad hacia la ruralidad como componente clave para el desarrollo estratégico y territorial en la provincia de Manabí. PALABRAS CLAVE: lo rural; dimensión espacial-territorial; opción de vida o sobrevivencia.

India has a unique and complex religious history, with faith and spirituality playing an important role in everyday life. Hinduism is the majority religion, and there are many minority religions. India also has a complicated class system and entrenched gender structures. Disability is another important identity. Many of these factors determine people’s experiences of social inclusion or exclusion. This paper explores how these intersecting identities influence the experience of inequality and marginalisation, with a particular focus on people with disabilities from minority religious backgrounds. A participatory qualitative methodology was employed in Chennai, to gather case studies that describe in-depth experiences of participants. Our findings show that many factors that make up a person’s identity intersect in India and impact how someone is included or excluded by society, with religious minority affiliation, caste, disability status, and gender all having the potential to add ...

"Development Discourse and Global History vividly follows the avatars of the development discourse from colonialism to the present, from the 'civilizing mission' to the SDGs and the newest subfields such as migration and development. It admirably deploys Foucauldian theory and methodology, demonstrating why its author has become the most persistent and insightful analyst of development from poststructuralist perspectives. With this collection of essays not only does Ziai bring the critical analysis of development up to date, he enlightens us on previously understudied aspects of it, principally the change and transformation it has undergone since its inception. By showing us the inconsistencies and contradictions of the discourse, and not only its negative effects and progressive appropriations, he provides us with a new platform for arguing why the concept of development needs to be abandoned, perhaps in favor of simpler, more honest notions, less encumbered by colonialist histories and Eurocentric categories. In doing so, finally, he renews the promise of critical theory as a crucial element in the toolkit for constructing other possible worlds." Arturo Escobar, Kenan Professor of Anthropology, University of North Carolina

"In 1978 Edward Said published Orientalism. Almost 20 years later, in 1995, Arturo Escobar published Encountering Development. Both works established a benchmark in Foucauldian critical discursive analysis of how the West represents 'the Other' (the Orient, the underdeveloped) in the international relations' realm. In 2016, about 20 years later, Ziai takes the baton and publishes a work that carries on their critical perspective until the most influential development discourses today. […] Overall, I shall conclude that his book is a great contribution to critical development studies and that Ziai achieves his goal: the reader will find abundant, solid, coherent, empirically based arguments which show that 'development' isn't a self-evident, neutral concept, but an exemplary case of a knowledge-power discursive formation."

During the period between the Oslo Accords (1993-1995) and October 2023, international actors promoted neoliberal development in Palestine, framing women's entrepreneurship as a pathway to empowerment and economic growth. However, these programs operated within a security-development nexus that prioritized Israeli interests, pacifying Palestinian women rather than addressing structural oppression. This article examines how entrepreneurship initiatives in East Jerusalem and Gaza-led by non-governmental organizations such as Jest, Mati, and Gaza Sky Geeks-functioned as tools of neoliberal counterinsurgency, diverting women from collective resistance against Israeli settler colonialism. It argues that such programs individualized survival under occupation, reinforcing resilience narratives while obscuring Israel's systemic violence. By comparing these two distinct yet interconnected contexts, the analysis reveals how empowerment discourse depoliticized Palestinian struggles, normalizing dispossession under the guise of economic freedom. The study challenges prevailing assumptions about women's agency in conflict zones, demonstrating how neoliberal feminism aligned with settler-colonial control. Following Israel's escalation of the genocide in Gaza after October 7, 2023, this research underscores the urgent need to rethink reconstruction paradigms that equate entrepreneurship with liberation.

This article explores the transition from criminalization to formalization in managing artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) across six Sub-Saharan African countries. Through a comparative policy analysis of regulatory frameworks, institutional capacities, and implementation outcomes, the study identifies the mechanisms shaping effective ASM formalization. Findings reveal that while legal reforms exist across the region, persistent informality stems from complex licensing systems, weak decentralization, limited support services, and inconsistent enforcement. The paper distills policy lessons for Zambia, recommending a more integrated and service-oriented governance approach. By aligning with regional best practices, Zambia can close the gap between legal intent and practical outcomes in ASM governance.