Decolonizing Development: Colonial Power and the Maya

by Joel Wainwright

Winner of the 2010 James M. Blaut Award in recognition of innovative scholarship in cultural and political ecology (Honors of the CAPE specialty group (Cultural and Political Ecology))

Decolonizing Development investigates the ways colonialism shaped the modern world by analyzing the relationship between colonialism and development as forms of power.

Based on novel interpretations of postcolonial and Marxist theory and applied to original research data Amply supplemented with maps and illustrations An intriguing and invaluable resource for scholars of postcolonialism, development, geography, and the Maya

330 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 15, 2007

Reviews

[Doc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although this book is written from all sorts of post- perspectives (postcolonialism, post-structuralism, post-Marxism, postmodernism), it's remarkably clear and grounded in historical and ethnographic detail. This last bit is ironic, because the author (a geographer) explicitly critiques anthropology and the ethnographic tradition, yet it's obvious to me that his work with the Maya movement helped him frame his argument and provided data ... just as in a good ethnographic study.

I'm not yet certain how I feel about his arguments, but it's a great intro to contemporary (radical) geographic theories of space and territory, as well as an attempt to think through decolonizing and critiquing development. It's avowedly not "anti-development," which he describes as a fallacy, but seek to move *beyond* development.

[Sam Orndorff · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent introduction to decolonial geography. This book is very readable and well researched.