Disguising Race: The Sanitisation of Discourses of Development - Dr. Kothari
Dr. Uma Kothari "Disguising Race: The Sanitisation of Discourses of Development."
Dr. Uma Kothari, Senior Lecturer in the Institute for Development Policy and Management at the University of Manchester.
Abstract: This paper identifies some of the silences about 'race' in international development that mask its complicity with broader historical and contemporary racial projects. Significantly, this concealment is founded upon the assumption that development takes place in non-racialized spaces and outside of racialized histories. The paper is concerned with how 'race' is disguised and development discourses sanitized through the use of specialized terminology and criteria whereby
race-neutral language continues to distinguish between the different capabilities, characteristics and attributes of Others.
Through this cleansing of development terminology, notions of 'race' are submerged and the development gaze is diverted from considering how racial differentiations might shape our understandings of key concerns of development, namely the dynamics of poverty
and exclusion. Furthermore, however, when a development ethos is framed around a language
of charity, empathy, humanitarianism and justice, and the role of developers is seen primarily to alleviate poverty, it might appear irrefutable that motives are wholly noble. This assumption of noble intention goes a long way in silencing the critical appraisal of development interventions and obscuring racialized relations of power while delimiting attempts to theorize concepts of 'race' in development praxis. This does not mean that questions of diversity and difference are altogether neglected in development, but through a philanthropic frame, ideas about 'race' become subsumed within supposedly more palatable discourses of, for example, 'culture' and 'ethnicity'.
Series Sponsors: The 2006-2007 Speaker Series is sponsored by the Department of Political Science, with the support of the following:
Centre for Constitutional Studies, Peace & Postconflict Studies Program; Canada Research Chair (Political Economy and Social Governance); Canada Research Chair (Social Theory and Social Policy); Augustana Faculty; Faculty of Education; the Middle East and African
Studies(MEAS) program; University of Alberta International Centre; the Master's of Arts Integrated Studies (MAIS); Athabasca University; and the Canadian Association of Cultural Studies.
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Event URL:
http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/polisci/SpeakersSeries_0607.cfm
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