April Biccum
Dr April Biccum is a Lecturer in the School of Politics and International Relations in the ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences.
My research brings postcolonial theory into the study of International Relations with a focus on political communication and political mobilization in the study of Empire and Global Citizenship. I am carving out a unique interdisciplinary space. My two major research projects sit in a nexus which make contributions to IR, Political Communication, Social Movements and global civil society, postcolonial and cultural studies, critical development, global governance and the knowledge economy.
Specifically I have two empirical research projects: a conceptual history of the words empire and imperialism for the post-war period in the wake of the American Empire Debate; and the theory, practices and conceptualization of Global Citizenship through a mapping out of activity and policy on the part of civil society, states and International Organizations.
I am also one of the founding members of a project to raise the profile of Interpretivist methods at the Australian National University
http://politicsir.cass.anu.edu.au/research/projects/interpretation-method-critique
My research brings postcolonial theory into the study of International Relations with a focus on political communication and political mobilization in the study of Empire and Global Citizenship. I am carving out a unique interdisciplinary space. My two major research projects sit in a nexus which make contributions to IR, Political Communication, Social Movements and global civil society, postcolonial and cultural studies, critical development, global governance and the knowledge economy.
Specifically I have two empirical research projects: a conceptual history of the words empire and imperialism for the post-war period in the wake of the American Empire Debate; and the theory, practices and conceptualization of Global Citizenship through a mapping out of activity and policy on the part of civil society, states and International Organizations.
I am also one of the founding members of a project to raise the profile of Interpretivist methods at the Australian National University
http://politicsir.cass.anu.edu.au/research/projects/interpretation-method-critique
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Papers by April Biccum
discourse of Development and postcolonial theory. To open up a space for this kind of engagement, the article proposes first that, while there is no singularity of project within the field of Postcolonial Studies, there is a productive set of debates; and second that the necessity of questioning Development as an idea springs out of these debates around the nature and existence of Postcoloniality itself. It attempts to show how the critiques which have currency within postcolonial theory can be used to deconstruct Development and expose the mechanisms and tropes of power which Development as a discourse has in common with colonial discourse and modernity as a project. The scope of this article is to lay the groundwork for a continued engagement of Postcolonial with Political Studies, and in particular with the discourse of Development.
new and interesting ways. Political activism is becoming popular, particularly through the expansion of a new kind of development advocacy made highly visible through celebrity involvement. Theorists of globalisation celebrate the democratisation of civil society made possible by new information and communications technology; critical theorists will note the various ways in which ICT ambivalently makes the contradictions in global capitalism more obvious and has become the means by which globalisation is contested. Some metropolitan governments have sought to capitalise on this new knowledge
economy by making knowledge for development part of their strategies to produce ‘global citizens’ necessary for the global economy. This paper examines the linkages between celebrity and government-funded development advocacy in Australia, which comprise the introduction of free market principles to form a marketing campaign for neoliberal globalisation.
development advocacy (such as Make Poverty History and Live8) that, prior to the global financial crisis, had the production of ‘global citizens’ as their aim.
The essay then illustrates the way in which, in official communication, the
bicentenary for the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act was utilized as a vehicle for
development communication, a means of advertising the UK Labour government
development agenda, which had as its aim the production among domestic
citizenry of a global citizen who advocates for development under neoliberal
terms
occurred in tension with international drivers to use education to further
global economic competitiveness and governments’ desire to promote their own foreign aid spending in a climate of falling legitimacy. This phenomenon of state funding for global education might be considered an elaboration of network politics, but this article argues that it must equally be read, via Gramsci, as a hegemonic contest in the struggle for subject production appropriate to the global knowledge economy.