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This chapter adopts a post-development framework in combination with a spatial lens exploring how actors in two localities in the South-East and North-East in the post-colonial setting of Benin (West Africa) interact in mediating the policy of education decentralisation. Doing so throws into sharp relief the multiple complexities of local practices and how these impact the processes of exclusion/inclusion, mitigating the achievement of equity and decolonisation. The findings point to how paradoxically, decentralisation processes, seeking to broaden participation, result in strengthening central and municipal government entities, thereby subjugating parents' voices. Simultaneously, this chapter nuances inclusion from a spatial lens, such as the influence of NGOs in one fieldsite and the power of the central administration in the other. In light of uneven power relations in enacting Benin's decentralisation policy and the insignificance of the local specificities, this book chapter concludes that inclusion remains a challenge to deal with beyond global governance policies.

A persistent and recurring narrative is that capitalism has penetrated ever wider and deeper into all aspects of daily life across the globe. Recently, however, this has started to be challenged by an emergent post‐development body of thought that has displayed the shallowness of commodification in a number of global regions. The aim of this paper is to further contribute to this emergent critique of capitalist hegemony by evaluating the degree to which capitalism has managed to permeate everyday life in the Commonwealth of Independent States.

The findings of a 2001 survey of household economic practices in eight CIS are analysed, namely Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kirgizstan, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine.

This study reveals a shallow permeation of capitalist practices in the CIS and how an array of non‐capitalist economic practices remain a core integral component of these economies and heavily relied on by households to secure a livelihood.

This snapshot survey only displays that capitalism is far from hegemonic. It does not show whether there is movement towards greater reliance on the capitalist sphere.

This paper provides further evidence from the CIS to support the emergent post‐development critique of capitalist hegemony and opens up the future of work in this region to alternative possibilities beyond commodification.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate critically the meta‐narrative that capitalism is becoming totalising and hegemonic. Grounded in an emerging corpus of post‐development thought that has deconstructed this discourse in relation to western economies and the majority (third) world, the purpose of this paper is to further contribute to this burgeoning critique by analysing the degree to which capitalism has penetrated a post‐socialist society, namely Ukraine.

To analyse the penetration of capitalism, a survey is reported of the work practices of 600 households in a array of localities in Ukraine, conducted during 2005/2006 using face‐to‐face interviews.

Analysing the practices used by households to secure their livelihoods, the finding is that capitalism is far from hegemonic. Even when the formal economy is relied on either as their most important or second most important source of livelihood, it is nearly always combined with some other economic activity. A diverse portfolio of work practices is thus the norm rather than the exception with over 90 per cent of households relying on sources other than the formal market sphere as either their most important or second most important source of livelihood.

Displaying the shallow penetration of capitalism in this array of localities in Ukraine, this paper reveals the need for a re‐representation of the realities of work in such post‐socialist societies so as to open up the feasibility of, and possibilities for, alternative futures for work.

This paper reports the first evaluation of the extent to which capitalism has penetrated work practices in post‐socialist Ukraine.

Recently, the recurring narrative that capitalism is stretching its tentacles ever moe widely and deeply into every crevice of daily life across the globe has been challenged in the context of Western economies and the Third World by an emerging post‐development corpus of thought. The aim here is to extend this critique of market hegemony by investigating the so‐called “transition” economies of East‐Central Europe.

The paper analyses the extent to which market practices penetrated the “transition” economies of East‐Central Europe in the years following the collapse of the socialist bloc, first through a review of the post‐development literature and then by examining the nature of work and trajectories of the “transition” economies.

Analysis highlights not only the shallow permeation of market practices but also the multiplicity of development trajectories being pursued at both the household and societal levels.

The outcome is to provide additional evidence from the post‐socialist East‐Central European bloc to support the critique of market hegemony and open up the future to alternative possibilities beyond marketisation.

The purpose of this paper is to unpack the conflation between the silence and purported passivity of the Third World NGOs (TNGOs). Explaining the invisibility of their voices in the critical and post-development perspectives, it locates the inquiry in the context of the action of these TNGOs.

The paper follows the phronetic research approach, which involves a case study of a locally developed Indian NGO. It uses phronetic inquiry along with Ashis Nandy’s notion of “silent coping” as the conceptual framework. To explain the purported passivity of TNGOs in the texts under global circulation, the paper uses Walter Mignolo’s discussion on “texts in circulation”.

The uncertain nature of action – that it begets further action possibilities; precludes the prospect of visualizing such action spaces in the context of their generation. This emergent nature of local action spaces makes it difficult to capture them within the dominating global discursive structures, thereby creating local spaces of agency for the TNGO actors. Selective appropriation of artefacts and texts from the global circulation and the creation of alternate stake structures at the local level support the realization of such action spaces. Further, such local artefacts and texts do not travel into texts circulating globally, thereby rendering the TNGOs invisible and silent in the reading of global texts and leading to the TNGOs being framed as passive.

This paper locates the voices and acts of the TNGOs and highlights the mechanisms that enable them to silently cope with structures of discursive domination, thereby contributing to post-development studies and post-colonial organizational analysis.

Three distinctive domains of inquiry in comparative and international education (CIE) point to epistemic fault lines that simultaneously enable and disable the possibilities for social transformation in the cultural ecologies that demarcate, but also entangle, the so-called Global South and the North. Historically, these domains of inquiry – language/multilingualism, education, and development – engage arenas in which ideas about wellbeing, social arrangements, and the politics of knowledge (and of power) are constantly constructed, contested, and renegotiated. This analysis pinpoints some of the discursive technologies, which guarantee that active scholarly innovations and differentiation proceed in ways that ultimately leave intact the territorialized regionalizations of development differences. It reflects on ongoing fieldwork from the South to highlight three spheres of social control, and struggle, illustrative of the coloniality of difference and the expanding institutionalization of learning (as schooling) in an era of global interventionism. These loci – the sources of knowledge traditions, the sites of its enactment, and the power of knowledge transactions – represent overlapping activation points through which education interventions both stimulate and stultify social transformations. Specifically, the sources, sites, and power of knowledge offer empirical and discursive tools for historiographic reconsideration of the role of linguistic diversity and education in social change processes, and, crucially, for shifting critical focus from merely the occidentality of contemporary education traditions to the universalism of its social imaginaries. In this critical reading of new understandings of language(s) as invention, therefore, lies analytic opportunities for rethinking epistemic dilemmas in linking education and “development” in CIE scholarship.

The Republic of Palau in the Micronesian region of the Pacific illuminates the complexities of how the political geography of development is shaped through diplomacy, defense and migration policy. The Compact of Free Association (COFA) between Palau and the US has been a topic of debate and for some resistance.

Through discursive analysis of grey literature and post-development and political geography frameworks, this paper analyzes the way in which development, through unconventional pathways, is used to exert power by Palau’s largest donor, the US.

The donor–recipient, government-to-government framework fails to explore the ways in development is used as power through military operations, zonal capitalism, redefined citizenship and tourism as new aid modalities. These graduated sovereignties in Palau show that political geography is taking shape through new pathways of development, which has resulted in more actors, institutions and discourses.

With limited research on the region of Micronesia and particularly the politics of development, this paper contributes important analysis to the lead up to the COFA renewal negotiations between the US and Palau in 2024.

Tangible and intangible aspects of living heritage shape the identity of communities whose daily experience is integrated into heritage cultural spaces. Interference in this intricately woven, historically rich context may have significant sociocultural and material consequences for the people inhabiting it. Using the example of the ancient Theban Necropolis and “modern” Gurna, the paper looks at the loss of contemporary cultural heritage in favor of Pharaonic antiquities to question the model of heritage management and development practiced through violence in Egypt.

Written from a decolonial perspective, the paper is positioned within the post-development school of thought. It applies subjectivist epistemology to argue for pluriversality.

Focusing on the historical context of the community of Gurnawis, the paper highlights power inequalities among heritage stakeholders and discusses the violence of coloniality that challenges the freedom of human experiences and representations.

Decolonial in nature, the paper has a futuristic horizon. It calls for decolonization of the discourse of development, which remains marred by the Western understanding of “civilizational advancement” seen as modernization, industrialization and economic growth. It further argues for imagining alternatives to the current social realities, which would account for the diversity of human experiences and consider a pluriverse of meanings.

The paper applies a decolonial perspective to the study of heritage to demonstrate the impact of colonial rationality on the theory and practice of the discipline of archaeology, as well as its consequences for heritage management in Egypt. Speaking from the standpoint of the marginalized population of Gurna, the paper further reveals the damage done by the colonial discourse of development to those who dare to create and live their own reality.

This paper proposes a way of reflexing on how we think within critical disaster studies. It focuses on the biases and unthought dimensions of two concepts – resilience and development – and reflects on the relationship between theory and practice in critical disaster studies.

Premised on the idea of epistemic reflexivity developed by Pierre Bourdieu, and drawing on previous research, this theoretical article analyses two conceptual biases and shortcomings of disaster studies: how resilience builds on certain agency; and how development assumes certain political imagination.

The article argues that critical disaster scholars must reflect on their own intellectual practice, including the origin of concepts and what they do. This is exemplified by a description of how the idea of resistance is intimately connected to that of resilience, and by showing that we must go beyond the capitalist realism that typically underlies development and risk creation. The theoretical advancement of our field can provide ways of thinking about the premises of many of our concepts.

The paper offers an invitation for disaster researchers to engage with critical thought and meta-theoretical reflexions. To think profoundly about our concepts is a necessary first step to developing critical scholarship. Epistemic reflexivity in critical disaster studies therefore provides an interesting avenue by which to liberate the field from overly technocratic approaches and develop its own criticality.