Theorizing Postdevelopment

The paper seeks to define and situate postdevelopment (PD) theory within the social sciences by discussing its relation to other theoretical approaches. It concludes that PD can be seen to a rather limited extent as a development theory, but rather as a sociology of knowledge of this discipline and a critique of its foundation. PD shares the critique of capitalism with Marxism but also has a more negative view of industrial modernity, its relation to nature, economic growth and productivity. For some, PD is characterized by a spirituality alien to western modernity, although this does not seem to be necessary to subscribe to the approach. Although PD’s critique is intimately related to ecofeminist thinking (and ecofeminist authors), many of its male protagonists seem unaware of this proximity. PD is clearly a postcolonial (or decolonial) critique of colonial and neocolonial relations of power which can be found also in knowledge production, in particular in the division between the ‘developed’ Self (Europe and European settler colonies and other societies emulating them) and the ‘backward’ Other. And PD, at the least sceptical PD, is based on a post-anarchist perspective of ontological equality, oriented towards self-determination in the pluriverse and rearguard theories.