Learning Disobedience: Decolonizing Development Studies

by Amber Murrey, Patricia Daley

‘This is a must-read for current struggles for dignity and pluriversal, decolonized solidarity. The authors invite us to abolish development, not as simple rejection, but as a life-affirming pathway into liberation and freedom beyond coloniality’ Rosalba Icaza, Professor, Erasmus University of Rotterdam ‘Murrey and Daley take no prisoners in their sharp decolonial analysis’ Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, author of Beyond the Coloniality of Internationalism ‘The book we’ve all been waiting for to divest from development studies. It engages the abolitionist imperative as intelligible and doable; as a labour of love, solidarity and abundance’ Olivia Umurerwa Rutazibwa, Assistant Professor, London School of Economics and Political Science This is a book about teaching with disobedient pedagogies from the heart of empire. The authors show how educators, activists and students are cultivating anti-racist decolonial practices, leading with a radical call to eradicate development studies, and counterbalancing this with new projects to decolonize development, particularly in African geographies. Building on the works of other decolonial trailblazers, the authors show how colonial legacies continue to shape the ways in which land, well-being, progress and development are conceived of and practiced. How do we, through our classroom and activist practices, work collaboratively to create the radical imaginaries and practical scaffolding we need for decolonizing development? Being intentionally disobedient in the classroom is central to decolonizing development studies. Amber Murrey is an Associate Professor at the University of Oxford and a Fellow at Mansfield College, Oxford. Amber is the editor of A Certain Amount of The Life, Politics and Legacies of Thomas Sankara .
Patricia Daley is Professor of the Human Geography of Africa and The Helen Morag Fellow in Geography at Jesus College, Oxford. She co-edited, with Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, The Routledge Handbook on South-South Relations .

Genres: Economics

264 pages, Paperback

Published August 20, 2023

Reviews

[Sammi Dé · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of essays that explores alternative approaches to development in proposing an abolition of Development studies as a whole.

The authors recognise Development as deeply embedded in stagist, Western understandings of modernity and growth (Rostow/ Truman), and thus as “consenting to” capitalism and the colonial matrix of power. They explain how the continuation of Development studies in its current form inevitably perpetuates colonialism, denoting a “colonisation of the future” where agents are limited to a specific Western pedagogy when envisioning liberated futures.

Through the frame “learning disobedience”, they thus call for an active unlearning of Western Developmentalism/ a dis-alignment with the prevailing capitalist logics of the field, and urge readers to imagine a pluriversal future (cognitive pluralism) where problematic ideas of ‘universality’ no longer exist.

I read the book because of its emphasis on pedagogy- it provided me with a useful framework of pedagogical disobedience that was well justified; the authors also avoided being purely critical- they offered insights into alternative futures (ubuntu; degrowth; ‘reworlding’) that place their theoretical approaches in the real world.

Despite this I felt that some of the essays strayed somewhat away from the underlying principle of the book (though still had merit in themselves) and this made it feel a bit textbook-like at times

[Em'S · Rating 5 out of 5]

Need more books on decolonising/criticsing development