Entry:
I want to address the paradoxical nature of development work. Namely, working to assist marginalized individuals and communities to participate in the same neoliberal, capitalist global systems that create and maintain the structures that they are oppressed by. Take microcredit loans, for example. In traditional development discourses, they are heralded as an innovative, gender-savvy solution for low-income business owners. However, using a transnational feminist lens, one can make the connections between microcredit loan schemes and the maintenance of international neoliberal institutions like the World Bank and The International Monetary Fund. We must work to address these issues from within a transnational feminist framework, wherein neoliberal, capitalist systems are decentered.
Rationale:
A large percentage of the material I have studied in my undergrad has revolved around the ‘buzzwords’ of development – international development, sustainable development, development along the lines of gender and sexuality, etc. Studying transnational feminisms have lent me a new perspective on the neoliberal nature of development work, and has forced me to reassess much of what I have been learning in order to contextualize it within an anti-racist, decolonial framework. In order to participate and facilitate meaningful community development, the work must be done from a place beyond the neoliberal, colonial, and capitalist structures that currently dominate the many branches of ‘development’.
Keywords: development, neoliberalism, capitalism
Author: deroo
Thanks for your post, deroo. I think this is a really important discussion to have. I had never considered micro-loans in this way until recent discussions in class and reading your post here. Micro-loans are heralded by people in the West as an ethical, effective way to support development in developing countries. But like you say, this perpetuates the individualistic and market-based structures that have contributed to this economic oppression in the first place.
In the past few years I’ve also been curious about how ‘ethical’ work can be done in the field of international development. Obviously, this type of development must not recreate a white/Western saviour model, and your post here made me consider that it must also challenge…