Abstract
This chapter works towards a notion of postcolonial and development theories as locked in negotiation one with another around the relative importance of poverty and inequality. Prioritising global inequality, broadly speaking, postcolonial theory has incited and responded to changes in development theory, arguing repeatedly for shifts in its foci (from a focus on development agents and agency to a focus on subalterns and subalternity), its constructs (in particular constructs of teleological or linear histories) and its disciplinary centres (from a methodological focus on political and economic geographies to a methodological focus on cultural geographies). Ultimately, the chapter concludes that this negotiation is not a contest but a co-operation: postcolonial theory and development theory are each concerned with both poverty and inequality, and they negotiate to fundamentally address the latter, whilst not ignoring the reality of the former.
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Noxolo, P. (2016). Postcolonial Approaches to Development. In: Grugel, J., Hammett, D. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of International Development. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-42724-3_3
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