In the realm of听, the 鈥榳hite saviour鈥� trope has long been a subject of听. This phenomenon, often rooted in colonialist attitudes, positions Western individuals or entities as benevolent rescuers of non-Western communities, usually without acknowledging or addressing systemic multidimensional inequalities, colonial/racial privilege, and local agency of indigenous communities. The white saviour complex has not only perpetuated听听but has also听听the efforts and voices of those it claims to help.

As artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a global force to potentially , we see a new manifestation of the white saviour industrial complex within emerging global AI governance.

Global governance and the (colonial) race towards AI supremacy

The race towards AI supremacy has increasingly mirrored colonial-era power dynamics, with  and  striving to establish dominance in global AI technology and its governance. In this contemporary digital race, wealthier nations, primarily from the Global North, leverage their significant resources and technological advancements to dictate the terms of AI development and deployment. This pursuit often marginalises and sidelines the contributions and needs of the Global Majority, perpetuating  of exploitation and inequality.

The development of AI systems is inextricably linked to the continuities of historical injustices, constituting a  There are global economic and political power imbalances in AI production, with value being extracted from the  in the Majority world to benefit Western technology companies. This perpetuates an 鈥榠nternational division of digital labour鈥� that concentrates the most stable, well-paid AI jobs in the West, while exporting the most precarious, low-paid work to the Majority world.

The competitive drive for AI supremacy is not just about technological innovation but also about control 

Additionally, AI development is often shaped by Western values and knowledge, marginalising non-Western alternatives and limiting possibilities for decolonising AI 鈥� a reflection of a broader pattern of 鈥榟egemonic knowledge production鈥� within the 鈥樷��.

As the old adage goes 鈥渢here is nothing new under the sun鈥�, from the , research on , to, the epistemic challenges in global AI governance are reflective of historical structural inequities. Much of the research and policy development in many academic fields has historically been conducted by scholars and institutions based in the Global North. This dominance has shaped the research agenda, methodologies, and policy recommendations in ways that  with the needs and perspectives of the Global Majority.

Scholars from the Global North often have more resources, better funding, and greater access to academic networks, which allows them to  many fields. Likewise, the ethical, legal, social, and policy (ELSP) research on AI development and deployment is often led by Western academics who prioritise issues, solutions, and policies that resonate with Western perspectives. Consequently, Western academics also  other contexts, needs, and overall create a  that does not reflect the socioeconomic realities and lived experiences of the Global Majority, or risk perpetuating existing forms of .

Navigating the white saviour complex in global AI governance

Much like traditional international development initiatives, AI governance often involves Western-developed solutions being implemented in non-Western contexts, with imposed solutions through a 鈥榗opy and paste鈥� approach to Western 鈥榞olden standards鈥�, with several significant consequences. For example, Western nations often export their governance models as 鈥榞olden standards鈥�, assuming that these frameworks will be universally applicable. However, this approach neglects the unique social, political, and economic landscapes of non-Western countries. For instance,  may not be suitable for countries with different governance structures or developmental priorities.

These solutions often designed for Western innovation ecosystems do not consider non-Western local nuances, needs, or cultural contexts. As a result, they are often ineffective or   rather than fostering self-sufficiency, which can lead to a loss of agency and autonomy, perpetuating cycles of dependency and underdevelopment, with devastating .

Furthermore, the imposition of Western AI governance frameworks can reinforce a cycle of dependency, where non-Western countries rely on external expertise and solutions rather than developing their own capacities. This dynamic can stifle local innovation and self-sufficiency, leading to long-term detrimental effects on local governance and technological development.

While there are increased calls for a decolonial informed approach (DIA) to , from  and , in many global AI forums and discussions,  Western technical experts and policymakers dominate the conversation, often marginalising those who are most affected by AI technologies. This exclusion mirrors  of disenfranchisement and reinforces geopolitical power imbalances.

The ethical considerations surrounding AI governance, such as data privacy, bias mitigation, and transparency, may be inadequately addressed when Western frameworks are applied without . For example, data privacy laws that work in Western contexts may not consider the cultural attitudes towards privacy in non-Western societies, leading to ethical dilemmas and . While these frameworks are important and often abide to Western versions of 鈥榙emocracy鈥� and 鈥榬ule of law鈥�,  reveal that this emerging ethical imperialism may not fully encompass the lived experience, diverse values, and ethical considerations of different cultures in our global society. Imposing a singular ethical perspective can be seen as a form of ethical imperialism, where Western norms are prioritised over non-Western local traditions and beliefs.

, including AI systems, are not value neutral, they are developed by individuals and organisations that bring their own values, beliefs, and biases into the . For instance, if the majority of AI researchers come from a particular cultural or socioeconomic background, their perspectives will likely dominate the development process, leading to  that reflect their worldviews. This can result in algorithms that prioritise certain types of data or decision-making processes that align with those values, while neglecting others. These embedded values can influence how technologies are designed, implemented, and utilised, potentially perpetuating existing power dynamics and intersectional inequalities.

Another concern is that many  organisations that are increasingly funding access to digital public goods (DPG) , digital public infrastructure (DPI), and AI related policies still maintain an inherent colonial culture where as  writes 鈥淪uddenly, we find ourselves in a world where the act of calling out racism is more offensive than racism itself.鈥�

From ,  and the inequality associated with , we must critically address undertones of injustice to ensure that AI advancements contribute to equitable digital development rather than reinforcing historical injustices and systemic power imbalances of .

The South African context: an insidious manifestation of the white saviour trope

In South Africa, the white saviour trope has subtle nuances, but with very harmful effects. The country鈥檚 history of apartheid has left , with a privileged minority often holding significant power and influence, particularly . Today, this dynamic is evident in how privileged minorities are supported to position themselves as the 鈥榲oices of African people鈥� and 鈥榓dvocating African values鈥� at the global stage on discussions related to frontier technologies and the overall digital economy.

An unsurprising phenomena since, according to the , 鈥淭he dualism that stems from the legacy of demographic and spatial exclusion in South Africa is reflected in the digital economy landscape, and a large share of South Africans remain disconnected from the opportunities it has created.鈥�

Certain privileged individuals and groups assume the role of leaders representing broader Indigenous local communities often legitimised by  with Indigenous subordinates. These 鈥楢frican voices鈥� may not genuinely reflect the diverse perspectives and needs of the Indigenous majority. Instead, their viewpoints often align more closely with their own interests of , the , or of the Western institutions they are affiliated with.

These self-appointed spokespersons backed by generous funding often act as intermediaries between local communities and international entities. However, their legitimacy and commitment to true diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are often questionable as they benefit from the status quo of being palatable to international donors. As , they have limited motivation to challenge systemic issues and the overall status quo in practice when situations that call for allyship, ethics, and decolonisation (which these individuals publicly advocate for) end in cognitive dissonance and default to protecting .

By ignoring , maintaining colonial practices in IDA, and encouraging privileged minorities to dominate the narrative on the socio-technical disruptions associated with new technologies for the Global Majority, we risk perpetuating  which hinders genuine progress towards real equity, epistemic justice, and risk perpetuating scenarios where the voices of the marginalized and real victims remain unheard.

Moving towards truly responsible global AI governance

To counter the white saviour industrial complex in global AI governance, a shift towards more inclusive and equitable practices is necessary, that places positionality and reflexivity at the centre of global AI governance and overall ELSP research on the digital economy. This shift could be based upon the following approaches.

Inclusive representation is paramount, voices from the Global Majority and marginalised communities should be included in global AI governance discussions. This means creating platforms and opportunities including resource allocation for diverse perspectives to be heard and considered.

Context-specific solutions should be considered. AI solutions should be tailored to local contexts, ethical, legal, social, cultural, and economic factors should be considered through engaging with local experts and communities, to understand their unique needs and challenges. Local experts should also be supported with the capacity to create home-grown solutions as well as contribute to technical discussions at the global stage.

Moreover, funding to boost collaborative frameworks must be prioritised. Developing collaborative governance frameworks that involve multiple stakeholders, including governments, civil society, and the private sector, can help create more balanced and effective policies. These frameworks require concerted funding and should prioritise bottom-up co-creation and mutually beneficial partnerships, rather than top-down imposition.

Ethical pluralism is key. Recognising and respecting the plurality of ethical perspectives is essential. Global AI governance should be flexible enough to incorporate different ethical frameworks and values, allowing for a more nuanced and comprehensive approach to AI ethics.

Finally, there is a need to decolonise research and policy. In both AI governance and development economics, it is important to decolonise research and policy-making processes. This involves including reflexivity on researcher positionality, valuing indigenous knowledge systems, promoting local research initiatives, and ensuring that policy recommendations are grounded in local realities, including through thought leadership of indigenous technical experts representing their communities.

The white saviour industrial complex in global AI governance reflects broader historical and systemic issues. As AI continues to shape our world, it is imperative that we address these issues head-on. We can move towards a more just and equitable global AI governance landscape by reflecting on the atrociousness of the past to ensure our collective efforts to foster inclusivity in the digital age respect local contexts, embrace ethical pluralism, reflexivity, and a decolonial informed approach鈥攁n exercise which will not only enhance the effectiveness of truly global AI solutions for good but also empower communities worldwide to shape their own technological futures.

 is a pioneering policy entrepreneur. As founder and executive director of the  (DepHUB), she is the first indigenous African woman to establish an independent think tank in South Africa. Shamira was a 2023-2024 Policy Leader Fellow at the EUI Florence School of Transnational Governance. She is an active member of many global expert working groups. Shamira has published a wide range of knowledge products that focus on diverse areas such as measuring the data-driven digital economy, sustainable digital transformation, and the multidimensional aspects of crafting human-centred responsible transnational AI governance, that benefits the Global Majority.

This post was first published on .

Drawing realised by artist Pawel Kuczy艅ski for Serena Natile’s book

I came to the study of fintech as a feminist socio-legal scholar researching the gender dynamics of South-South migration. While doing fieldwork in Kenya for my PhD in 2012, I came across M-Pesa, a mobile money service used by locals as an instrument for transferring money from urban to rural areas. From the start of my research in 2011 to the completion of my PhD in 2016, ongoing studies on M-Pesa were mainly celebratory. It was acclaimed as an innovative instrument for poverty reduction, development, and gender equality and was enthusiastically supported by donors and international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), as well as by tech entrepreneurs and corporate philanthropy. Its success story was so uncontested that I decided to change my research question to focus on the gender dynamics of digital financial inclusion, rather than on my initial interest, migration.

The key narrative of M-Pesa鈥檚 success in terms of gender equality was, and still is, that it facilitates women鈥檚 access to financial services, providing them with a variety of opportunities to improve their own livelihoods and those of their families, their communities, and ultimately their countries. In the specific case of M-Pesa, a basic-mobile-phone-enabled money transfer service is considered more accessible and available than transferring money via mainstream financial institutions such as banks, and more reliable and secure than informal finance channels such as moneylenders or the handling of cash via rotating credit and savings associations (ROSCAs). This claim is based on three assumptions: first, that women have less access to financial services than men have; second, that women would use their access to finance to support not only themselves but also their families and communities; and third, that digital financial services are better than informal financial channels because they overcome the limits of cash, ensuring traceability and security. These assumptions motivated advocacy and investment in digital financial inclusion projects and the creation of ad hoc programmes and institutions, all strongly focused on the question of how digital technology can be used to facilitate women鈥檚 access to financial services.

During the time of my fieldwork in Kenya, empirical research on M-Pesa was very common. (FSD) Kenya, an institution funded by Western donors and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to contribute to Kenya鈥檚 financial development and address constraints to financial inclusion, was actively collaborating with local and international researchers and producing numerous studies on the uses and potential of mobile money for women. As I discuss in my , M-Pesa, unlike some development projects, was characterised by not a lack but an overproduction of data. However, none of the studies contextualised the story of M-Pesa within the broader historical and contemporary gendered structures and power relations that define and regulate the global economy and the international development project.

The individual and groups (chamas) of women using M-Pesa that I interviewed were all accustomed to being asked questions about how they benefited from mobile money. A general answer that was always reported in M-Pesa success stories was that mobile money allowed them to manage money more efficiently and to juggle different tasks such as housework and micro-entrepreneurship. For this reason, the increasing number of women using M-Pesa as a more accessible financial service was presented as a success story in terms of gender equality. However, on asking the same women different questions about their everyday lives it became clear that the equation of access to M-Pesa with gender equality was a lot more complex than it appeared. To use any financial service such as M-Pesa requires money in the first place, and women鈥檚 main concern was about not managing money but having money to manage. They wanted a regular and stable source of income, for instance via secure employment, to be able to pay for food and water, school fees, housing, healthcare, electricity and all other basic services, particularly in the absence of public social infrastructure and state support. This is the main reason why informal financial institutions such as ROSCAs remained essential in women鈥檚 everyday lives, even as the use of M-Pesa spread. In ROSCAs women put together resources to support their livelihoods based on a system of trust, solidarity and reciprocal accountability. Women鈥檚 strong awareness of global and local structural injustices urges them to create grassroots mechanisms to satisfy their immediate needs while continuing to protest and strike for their rights.

Beatrice Karore is the founder of (Grassroots Women) Initiative, and a community mobiliser and human rights defender in Mathare, Nairobi, Kenya. 

While M-Pesa did not replace ROSCAs, it was integrated into grassroots practices; for instance mobile money is used to facilitate small payments and store money in the M-Pesa e-wallet, despite the fact that mobile money is not designed or regulated for use as a savings account. The integration of a digital financial service such as M-Pesa into informal practices can be seen as a doorway to expanding capitalist logics into spaces previously outside the purview of capitalist markets, making such spaces vulnerable to value-extraction via fees and data. The women in my focus groups were well aware of these dynamics but had no power to change them, and often have no choice but to accept them or attempt to play the market鈥檚 game. Various products and services built on the M-Pesa platform target fundamental needs such as access to water, healthcare, electricity and education, providing credit-based flexible arrangements that allow small, irregular repayments. These products and services are funded via complex institutional and financial arrangements that involve public and private institutions including governments, donors, international institutions, the private sector, and corporate philanthropy. The arrangements are grounded in market logics and claim to create incentives for the private sector while contributing to social development. However, such initiatives do not improve access to increasingly privatised and marketised resources and services, and they make access to key services conditional on financial inclusion, creating further gendered problems such as indebtedness and generational vulnerability.

The gendered disadvantage in financial inclusion is perpetrated by the uncontested assumption that access to financial services leads to gender equality. This results in policies and institutions focusing on how to include the excluded rather than addressing the more important and complex question of why financial inclusion is gendered as well as racialised and based on class, socioeconomic and migration status, coloniality, and geopolitical location. In my research I consider this an essential question if we are to understand whether and to what extent new digital financial inclusion services such as M-Pesa can contribute to gender equality. Interrogating how unequal gender relations are embedded in processes of financial exclusion and narratives of inclusion involves using gender as an analytical and methodological tool to understand where inequalities lie in the global economic and legal order. Examining coloniality in this context, as the long-standing patterns of power that emerge in the context of colonialism (Mendoza, 2016), is not just a conceptual choice but is driven by the need to understand the gendered dynamics of financial inclusion and exclusion and why and how women have become the target of financial inclusion policies.

Colonialism created a situation which subjected people of the Global South to Western domination via the occupation of their land, extraction of their natural resources, and exploitation of their labour. Indigenous people found their norms and institutions erased or filtered (e.g. via the non-repugnancy clause: the requirement that colonial law be in keeping with the law of the colonisers鈥� home country) in the interest of Western economic interests and ideologies, and this is evident if we use gender as an analytical framework. As the Kenyan scholar Achola Pala Okeyo (1977) explains, while men and women under colonialism shared a similar subordinate structural position in relation to the dominant culture, colonial rules had differential impacts on them, shaping gender relations. The colonisers鈥� commodification of land and introduction of property law undermined more collective forms of ownership in favour of patriarchal relations that saw men as the household heads and holders of land titles (Manji 2006, Maathai 2008). The monetarisation of economic relations and introduction of the wage economy targeted men as paid workers (albeit in discriminatory and exploitative colonial settings) and the family breadwinners, relegating women to the position of secondary unpaid workers (Boserup 1970). This contributed to the framing of women as responsible for unpaid household and community labour, dependent on men for money and hence excluded from financial services. This also explains why women in formerly colonised countries are so predominant in informal employment and informal finance, because while excluded from formal economic institutions they had to be able to survive in a capitalist monetarised system built on that exclusion.

The end of colonialism did not lead to the fair redistribution of resources and opportunities that the women fighting colonial power had hoped for. Nationally, many local elite rulers did not dismantle colonial gendered structures but used them for their own power and purposes. For instance according to Kenyan feminist scholars, the government used ideas related to 鈥楢fricanisation鈥� (a concept critiqued by Fanon (1961) as distinct from decolonisation) to discriminate against women (Nzomo 1993, Oduol and Kabira 1995, Otieno 1998, Maathai 2010). Despite women having played a key role in the struggle for independence from colonial rule, they were 鈥榙omesticated鈥� (Rogers 1980, Mies 1986), denied political power and access to wealth. For instance the second Kenyan President, Daniel arap Moi, encouraged women to join the Maendeleo ya Wanawake Organisation (MYWO, 鈥楶rogress for Women鈥� in Swahili) which was founded during the colonial era by a group of Western administrators and their wives who sought to improve the status of Kenyan women according to dominant Western values with the purpose of educating them to become good mothers and housewives (Oduol and Kabira 1995).

Women in formerly colonised countries found themselves at the lower end of the power distribution both nationally and internationally. The demands of anticolonial campaigns in the 1950s鈥�1970s from the Non-Aligned Movement, the (NIEO), and particularly of the invisible women鈥檚 grassroots movements (Basu, 1995) for a just international system based on reparation and redistribution were dismissed in favour of an order aimed at protecting Western economic interests and ideology. In this international order, and in the development narrative underpinning it, women in formerly colonised countries have been portrayed progressively as victims, as recipients of aid, and as icons of change invested with the responsibility for developing their communities and countries. Following Ester Boserup鈥檚 1970 report on women鈥檚 exclusion from economic development, first women鈥檚 inclusion () and later gender equality () became central in international development discourse. Despite this, the voices of women from formerly colonised countries remained excluded from official international fora, a space dominated by white Western men, and were often subordinated to Western women in alternative fora such as the (Oyewumi 1997, 2003). This meant that in practice they had no power to resist international policies such as the neoliberal structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) of the 1980s鈥�90s that pushed them to the lower end of the global income distribution.

, Hofburg Palace, Vienna, Austria, 1969

The negative impact of SAPs on women has been widely documented by feminist scholars (see for instance Elson 1989, 1991). Compulsory privatisation and reduced government spending on social services increased the burden of women鈥檚 unpaid labour. In the context of the SAPs the internationalisation of microcredit 鈥� small collateral-free loans to collectively-liable groups of women to start income-generating activities 鈥� became a common gender equality policy that replaced state funding and was perfectly compatible with neoliberal ideas of marketisation and entrepreneurship. However, in reality microcredit rarely allowed women to start a remunerative business that could change their socioeconomic status, as the micro loans only allowed micro-entrepreneurship, with which local markets were already saturated and for which there was limited demand. Very often microcredit loans were used to pay for essential resources and services that became inaccessible for many women at the lower end of the income distribution following the adoption of neoliberal policies. In other words, microcredit was offered as a market-based solution for exclusions caused first by colonialism and later by development, while taking advantage of established colonial infrastructure and power relations.

Private-sector-enabled digital financial services such as M-Pesa are no different. Fintech is presented as a solution to exclusions created by colonialism and development interventions, but is itself a product of coloniality. Fintech adds an additional layer of inequality to financial exclusion: technology. is embedded in unequal relations of power and wealth, with Western states and corporations having the resources to define the trajectory and purpose of technological development. In addition to issues created by microcredit such as over-indebtedness and gendered stigma and abuse (Goetz 1996, Rahman 1999, Kabeer 2001, Mayoux 2002), digital finance creates new possibilities for exploitation and extraction, (e.g. via fees and data), expanding the number of actors from digital providers to various private-sector actors who profit from creating new little-regulated mobile money products and services. For these reasons the argument I develop in is that fintech does not contribute to gender equality because it does not address any of the causes of gendered financial exclusion but rather enhances unequal power relations. Promoting the narrative that digital financial inclusion contributes to gender equality, creates problems that need highlighting.

First, this narrative does not recognise digital financial services as a product of global asymmetries of wealth and power that are embedded in and reproduce gendered inequalities. These asymmetries are evident at different levels of the system: M-Pesa was institutionalised via a public-private partnership between the aid branch of a former colonial government (the UK Department for International Development, now assimilated into the Foreign Office) and the UK-based multinational corporation Vodafone, which was enabled to expand and acquire African telecoms by the SAP鈥檚 requirement for privatisation of national industries; the intellectual property of M-Pesa was registered in the names of Vodafone and the UK-based tech company Sagentia, rather than that of the local provider Safaricom; the development of the M-Pesa platform has been left unregulated for years in order not to hinder technological innovation, resulting in the proliferation of extractive products and services built on its platform; and the M-Pesa platform is privately owned, with profits made by Safaricom, Vodafone and international shareholders. Specific gender-equality projects are funded via corporate philanthropy rather than investing the profits created by M-Pesa in public social infrastructure and support to address gendered disadvantage.

Second, the claim that digital finance contributes to gender equality removes attention from the actual causes of gendered financial exclusion and the need for serious local and international redistributive interventions. These would include regulating international trade, investments and finance in the interest of people rather than profit; establishing an international and national taxation system that funds universal social security; ensuring workers鈥� rights and living wages and salaries; and cancelling the external debt imposed on countries of the Global South with SAPs, allowing them public resources for welfare rather than forcing them to rely on conditional aid, philanthropy and exploitative investments. Such measures should prevent Western countries and corporations taking advantage of the global economy (e.g. through the use of cheap labour, materials and markets) with no contribution to the wellbeing of the global population.

Third, the logic of opportunity created by fintech results in an unequal distribution of benefits and risks between digital financial providers and users, with important implications for gender equality. The digital financial inclusion-gender equality nexus is based on the idea that women need to take advantage of the opportunities created by digital finance to improve their and others鈥� livelihoods; however, as feminist political economy and the concept of social reproduction teach us, this generates a further layer of responsibility for women: the responsibility for transforming opportunity into success without any support in the form of income, social security or social infrastructure; while for the providers, including all the actors involved in the fintech business, digital finance represents a secure source of profit via fees and data.

This analysis has shown that 鈥榙ecolonising fintech鈥� should be a contextual purposive action rather than a cosmetic claim. It requires historicising the analysis of the fintech infrastructure and its institutional arrangements with a clear commitment to building grassroots power to create anti-colonial futures, aiming to end socioeconomic injustice via a radical redistribution of wealth and power.

is a feminist scholar based at Warwick Law School, University of Warwick. Her research engages with socio-legal inquiry, international political economy analysis, and feminist methodologies to examine issues of coloniality, social reproduction, and maldistribution and, more broadly, the relationship between law and social (in)justice.

This post is part of the mini-blog series Decolonising for Whom? Recentring grassroots struggles and voices in the 鈥榙ecolonising fintech鈥� narrative and the ongoing blog series Decolonizing Economics.

References:

Basu A. (1995) The Challenge of Local Feminisms: Women鈥檚 Movements in Global Perspective. Boulder, San Francisco and Oxford: Westview Press.

Boserup E. (1970) Women鈥檚 Role in Economic Development. London: Allen and Unwin.

Elson D. (1989) The Impact of Structural Adjustments on Women: Concepts and Issues in B Onimode (ed) The IMF, The World Bank and the African Debt, Volume 2: The Social and Political Impact. London: Zed Press.

Elson D. (1991) 鈥楽tructural Adjustment: Its Effect on Women鈥� in T Wallace and C March (eds) Changing Perceptions: Writings on Gender and Development. Oxford: Oxfam.

Fanon F. (1961) The Wreched of the Earth, London: Penguin Books.

Goetz A. M. (1996) Who Takes Credit? Gender, Power and Control over Loan Use in Rural Credit Programs in Bangladesh. World Development 24(1), 45-63.

Kabeer N (2001) Conflicts over Credit: Re-evaluating the Empowerment Potential of Loans to Women in Rural Bangladesh. World Development 29(1), 63-84.

Maathai, W. (2008) Unbowed: One Woman鈥檚 Story. London: Arrow Books.

Maathai W. (2010) The Challenge of Africa. London: Arrow Books.

Manji, A. (2006) The Politics of Land Reform in Africa. London: Zed Books.

Mayoux L. (2002) Women鈥檚 Empowerment or Feminisation of Debt? Towards a New Agenda in African Microfinance. London: One World Action.

Mendoza (2016), 鈥楥oloniality of Gender and Power: From Postcoloniality to Decoloniality, in The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Theory, Oxford: OUP.

Mies M. (1986) Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Division of Labour. London: Zed Books.

Nzomo, J. (1993) The Kenya鈥檚 Women Movement in a Changing Political Context, in S. Khasiani and E. Njiro (eds) The Women鈥檚 Movement in Kenya. Nairobi: Association of African Women for Research and Development.

Oduol W. and Kabira W. (1995) 鈥楾he Mother of Warriors and Her Daughters: The Women鈥檚 Movement in Kenya鈥�, in A Basu (ed), The Challenge of Local Feminisms: Women鈥檚 Movements in Global Perspective. Boulder, San Francisco, Oxford: Westview Press.

Okeyo, Achola Pala (1977) 鈥楧efinitions of Women and Development: An African Perspective鈥� Signs. Journal of women in culture and society 3(1).

Otieno W. W. (1998) Mau Mau鈥檚 Daughter: A Life History. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers.

Oyewumi O. (1997) The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Oyewumi O. (ed) (2003), African Women and Feminism: Reflecting on the Politics of Sisterhood. Trenton: Africa World Press.

Rahman, A. (1999) Women and Microcredit in Rural Bangladesh. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Rogers B. (1980) The Domestication of Women: Discrimination in Developing Societies, London: Kogan Page.

Response to

In the latest issue of the London Review of Books under the title of 鈥淩ed Power: Indigenous Political Strategies,鈥� Thomas Meaney has written a review of three recent award-winning books by historians of Native North America: Pekka H盲m盲l盲inen鈥檚 Indigenous Continent; Ned Blackhawk鈥檚 The Rediscovery of America; and Nick Estes Our History is the Future. In some ways, the review is impressively learned. Meaney uses the occasion to canvass a generations-spanning array of scholarship on the history of Native North America and engages figures, events, and historiographic questions of which only a very small body of Native and non-native scholars on these topics are even aware.

Marks of erudition aside, Meaney is out to weave together a broader narrative that extends beyond the historical bona fides of these books. The key moment in setting up this narrative comes after Meaney has raised his readers鈥� hopes by opening with a quite historically literate summary of European settler expansionism and Indigenous peoples鈥� responses to it. In the paragraph that then really begins the substance of his review, Meaney pivots: 鈥渂ut recent roadmaps of the historiography either sidestep material questions or mistake a colonized mindset for progressivist one.鈥� This is where Meaney divides the three books under review into three categories of political and historical errors: H盲m盲l盲inen鈥檚 revisionist history overstretches the notion of 鈥渆mpire鈥� in his account of 鈥淚ndigenous power鈥� by labeling the Lakota (and in earlier work, the Comanche) as such. (I agree with this critique, so I leave it aside in this review). Blackhawk represents a trend of scholars of Native history and federal Indian law who 鈥渉ave so thoroughly internalized constitutional ideology that they seem not to notice how their cause has been instrumentalized by the most fanatically libertarian segment of American society.鈥� And finally, 鈥渁 nominally [!] left-wing Native scholarship鈥� that romanticizes Indigenous experiences, engaging in a politics of authenticity. The latter is how Meaney represents the work of Lakota scholar Nick Estes.

After establishing these categories, Meaney argues that these various limitations are 鈥渁ll the more regrettable because the 20th century offered examples of Indigenous co-operation with the left, cases contemporary political theorists have examined with more care than their historian peers.鈥� This is a strange thing to assert at the outset, given that there was no recognizable anticolonial 鈥渓eft鈥� in the US settler colony that Native nations could possibly have 鈥渃ooperated鈥� with in the 19th century. The consensus on the necessity and inevitability of land dispossession and structural predation cut across almost all categories of white society, including almost all of those on the far left of the political spectrum. Moreover, this included, as many others have noted, some key figures in the history of African-American political thought such as Douglas and Du Bois. What these historians鈥攑articularly Blackhawk and Estes鈥攁sk us to do is to suspend some assumptions about what constitutes the commitments of 鈥渢he left鈥� at all, given the deep investments of American republicanism and many later iterations of US leftism (let alone the liberalism of the Democratic Party) in colonial dispossession or just racialized indifference.

A Disappointing, Eurocentric Left Reading

I felt compelled to write this response to Meaney not only because I suspect that I am perhaps one of the unnamed 鈥渃ontemporary political theorists鈥� he compares favorably to our 鈥渉istorian peers 鈥� (he has a section based on material clearly from my book, Remapping Sovereignty), but also, more importantly, because I find the review to be deeply symptomatic of the troubling ways that (usually white, usually white male, always global north, usually nominally leftist) scholars and activists continue to talk down to Native thinkers and movements in ways that reconfirm their own sense of how to make proper political judgments 鈥渇rom the left.鈥� It is as if Meaney has read this work (and, as I mentioned, he really has read quite a lot of it) while letting all the categories through which he sees the political and social world remain totally unchanged and unchallenged by the claims of the work itself.

Again, I find this to be all-too symptomatic. This is an orientation that seems to pop up across many other discourses in the western left, where the failure to actually internalize the lessons of Third World and Fourth World Marxisms and progressive movements shows up again and again in the almost comical provincialism of western debates. While the Palestine liberation movement has activated the most capacious transnational solidarity protests we have seen connecting core and periphery since the 1970s and while Israel obliterates the people of Gaza and their remaining social and environmental infrastructure, many of my western colleagues鈥攁gain, even those on the nominal left or progressive wing of the Democratic Party鈥攚ring their hands and lecture Hamas and the PFLP on the right ways to resist colonial occupation. Perhaps discourse on the failures of 鈥渢he left鈥� in the core could be redirected constructively towards unequivocally lending support to the most important and expansive expression of left internationalist movement in recent years? And the same generosity and solidarity could be extended to anti-colonial movements here where I sit in the region of (Great Lakes, in Anishinaabe language) and across Turtle Island (the so-called United States and Canada).

Here, like those engaged in a series of narrow debates about fascism, 鈥渆co-modernism鈥� vs. 鈥渄egrowth鈥� approaches to the climate crisis, about race and class, and other topics that bear little relation to the realities of a global working class majority subject to the hierarchies of capitalist accumulation on a world scale, Meaney is among a set of (again, usually white, usually white male) analysts who 鈥渄o the work鈥� (as the phrase goes). Still, they cannot seem to confront the ways that the dynamics of white supremacy, settler colonialism, and imperialism fundamentally scramble the received historical coordinates of a phantasmagorically self-propelling European Marxism. This is a tradition so cut off from the rest of the world by its immersion in its own crises that it simply ignores the strongest pockets of resistance to neoliberalism, from present-day Kenya to Palestine. So, its historiographic and interpretive sensibilities remain skewed towards an almost laughably insular form of Eurocentric critique. In tandem with this, their expressions of solidarity and internationalism (even within the core vis-a-vis colonized Indigenous nations) remain tendentiously limited by their own self-cultivated horizons. The periphery鈥攚hether in or outside the geographic core鈥攕tays evermore interpretively and politically, well, peripheral.

Taking Power and History (more) Seriously in (US Settler) Colonialism

To get back to the text more narrowly, let me start with Meaney鈥檚 take on Ned Blackhawk鈥檚 book. It is strange that Meaney indicts Blackhawk for the sin of his 鈥渓iberal legalist orientation鈥� and at the same time condemns other scholarship, to his mind more suitably 鈥渓eft wing,鈥� as resisting self-criticism in the form of 鈥渉istoricising native experience鈥� itself. But this misses the point of both kinds of scholarship. A key claim of Blackhawk鈥檚 unparalleled work is that 鈥渘ative experience itself鈥� is mediated by the complex task of navigating US political and legal structures, which in turn have evolved in ways that counter and channel Native agency. Meaney may not like that focus, but it hardly can be said to sidestep 鈥渕aterial questions.鈥�

In Meaney鈥檚 characterization of Ned Blackhawk鈥檚 panoramic history of Native North America, which spans from the 15th century to the present day, he argues that Blackhawk boxes himself in to the ideological confines of US liberal constitutionalism鈥攖hat he 鈥渆nds up embracing the co-optive limits of the US constitutional order.鈥� As an historical claim, Meaney is at his strongest in suggesting that Blackhawk could spend more time talking about the economic dimensions of expansion (land speculation, settler land- and resource rushes, etc.) that often outran US state-formation. But the contemporary political and legal implications that Meaney reads into this are strange at best, first of all, because Blackhawk nowhere endorses any kind of US constitutional fetishism (to use Aziz Rana鈥檚 term), let alone could he be accused of an untutored embrace of a superficially 鈥渓iberal鈥� interpretation of the constitution. (Meaney never mentions the possibility of progressive, popular, or even decolonial accounts of constitutionalism, which would seem more relevant here than liberal constitutionalism per se.)

Blackhawk鈥攁nd in my experience the vast majority of other scholars of federal Indian law and history鈥攁re better aware than anyone of the deep ironies and frustrations that haunt the work they do within and against the courts and institutions of the conquerors. Likewise, when Meaney goes on to describe (unidentified) 鈥淣ative scholars鈥� who reacted with at least momentary appreciation of uber-conservative Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch鈥檚 pro-Native decision in McGirt v. Oklahoma (2020), he suggests that they are endorsing positions that prop up conservative originalism (of a libertarian variety, in Gorsuch鈥檚 case). This is a strange interpretation, as it seems to insinuate that the fault lies with Native peoples and scholars for attempting to navigate a constitutional structure that is itself created through settler-colonial practices. Why does it follow that they would need to endorse the principles underlying Gorsuch鈥檚 decision in any other cases鈥攐r that they are implicitly and inadvertently doing so in writing approvingly of his decision in McGirt?

The answer is that they would not and do not need to go there, because it is just not the case that scholars鈥� and activists鈥� navigation of the bizarre child of American colonialism that is federal Indian law are required to sort those engagements into a prefabricated bucket of 鈥減rogressive鈥� vs 鈥渃onservative鈥� criteria for political judgment. Moreover, in isolating responses to Gorsuch鈥檚 decision in McGirt, Meaney has failed spectacularly to pay attention to another key case that shows he is just empirically wrong about any supposed alignment鈥攄iscursive or otherwise鈥攂etween right libertarian forces and 鈥淚ndigenous originalists.鈥� As the Cherokee journalist Rebecca Nagle and her team have brilliantly chronicled in great depth on the , the forces behind a challenge to the Indian Child Welfare Act in Haaland v. Brackeen made up a 鈥渨ho鈥檚 who鈥� of right-wing legal firms, dark money-infused foundations, and casino and oil interests with reactionary libertarian leanings. They wanted to dismantle tribal sovereignty because tribes have gotten a small piece of the pie, which they do in order to overcome colonial dependency relations, grow social infrastructure, and ensure the welfare of their citizens by investing in these industries. In navigating the contradictions of colonial-capitalism through these and other routes, Indigenous movements securing tribal land bases (from reform-oriented to more radical and revolutionary) are opponents of the reactionary right the vast majority of the time. Contrary to Meaney鈥檚 interpolation of the 鈥渓eft,鈥� the right is very clear about who they hope(d) to be the easy victims of racial capitalist dispossession.

Patronizing Epistemic Demands on Indigenous Societies

As already suggested, the strangeness of Meaney鈥檚 assessment relates to the fact that an adequate analysis of the politics of settler colonialism (and frankly many other modes of racial and colonial domination) often demands that theorists coming from a broadly western leftist set of normative political assumptions actively recalibrate what counts as a 鈥減rogressive鈥� or 鈥渞eactionary鈥� political activity given the context. For example, tribal citizenship requirements might include restrictive membership inherited from colonial blood quantum regimes. Meaney is disturbed as a good leftist that 鈥渘o other group in America is so fixated on blood percentages as Native Americans,鈥� clearly indicating that this 鈥渇ixation鈥� locks in forms of ethnonationalist and racist exclusion in tribal politics. Referring to Robert Nichols鈥� 2020 Theft is Property!, he insists that we pay attention to 鈥渁ctual Native hierarchies and ways of doing business.鈥漌hile these issues are complicated and fraught and worthy of analysis, it is odd at best鈥攑atronizing at worst鈥攖o say that a colonial regime of racialization that has worked to dispossess Indigenous peoples of land by blood quantum should then be framed as a 鈥渇ixation鈥� of Native peoples themselves. Moreover, Nichols does not set out to somehow represent contemporary Indigenous politics per se, but is quite straightforward that his project tracks a mode of 鈥淚ndigenous structural critique.鈥�

Given the historical conditions in which they find themselves as a result of colonial domination, many groups do have to navigate how to define membership鈥攁nd the answers often do turn to colonially conditioned historical reference points such as the Dawes Rolls and other such documents. To be sure, these are real and difficult issues here and they are debated intensely, but they are so existential because self-defense against colonial pillaging of Indigenous resources is still necessary in a lot of arenas. Take only the damage done and resources grabbed away from actual Native peoples by white 鈥淧retendians鈥� in academia and other professional fields who claim falsely that they are Indigenous, let alone the phenomenon of entire 鈥渞ace-shifting鈥� 鈥渘ations鈥� of white people claiming Indigenous status in Canada and the US northeast for themselves. The 鈥渇ixation鈥� lies first and foremost with the colonial gaze itself, not the efforts of Native communities to grapple with impossible colonial situations. It is to turn the world upside-down to attribute this pathology in a rhetorically almost sui generis fashion to Native peoples鈥� themselves and to ignore the (many!) efforts that do exist to grapple with such issues in Indigenous communities and in scholarly writing among Indigenous studies scholars.

Ironically, Meaney鈥檚 patronizing demand for as much airing of dirty community laundry as possible in the name of exposing the 鈥渘orm鈥� among Native peoples is as good of an example as I can think of as to why airing dirty community laundry can be so fraught and is so deeply debated in the literature in Indigenous studies. Namely, what if airing those fractures ends up in responses like Meaney鈥檚 from white liberals and radicals chastising Native peoples for acting like ordinary human beings dealing with the impossibilities of oppression? As ever, Audra Simpson鈥檚 paradigm-shifting work on 鈥渞efusal鈥� as a practice of Indigenous sovereignty and ethnographic method is on the money here. For, Meaney writes as if these authors are unaware of the many everyday realities of Native politics, or that the authors do not themselves engage issues with contemporary tribal politics, or that there are not other works that do take on these issues. Why not just turn to those other thinkers rather than criticizing historians whose writing is really focused on other areas of research? (For example, Meaney mentions the practice of 鈥渄isenrolling鈥� tribal citizens to protect scarce benefits. David Wilkins and Shelly Hulse Wilkins co-authored a book on the important topic. Instead of taking these authors to task for failing the litmus test of representativeness, perhaps he should engage with the Wilkins鈥� and other scholars who do write extensively about these and other issues of contemporary tribal governance? A dizzying number of other works could be mentioned here, especially notable among which is the absence of Indigenous feminists writing from Sarah Deer, Joanne Barker, Mishuana Goeman, Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik, Stark Audra Simpson, Jodi Byrd, Melanie Yazzie, and too many others to name here.)

Misreading Red Power and other Anticolonial Lefts

This brings us back to Meaney鈥檚 original framing, in which he describes 鈥渆xamples of Indigenous cooperation with the left鈥� that are not as center stage in these three books. Meaney鈥檚 own run-down of these encounters is very good for the most part, and worth reading. Yet surprisingly (or perhaps not so much by this far into reading), Meaney finds Nick Estes鈥� Our History is the Future wanting as an expression of a left Indigenous politics. Meaney argues that Estes engages in too much romanticization of Lakota history by way of his interweaving of Lakota philosophies in the book. Meaney鈥檚 dismissal of this as one of Estes鈥� interpretive anchors is a bit like dismissing a non-Native leftist for talking about labor by returning to Marx rather than discussing actual labor movements. We can recognize the difference between those two interpretive moves easily enough in those cases, but there is something about non-Native responses to the politics of indigeneity that make this recognition of the gap between structural analysis or aspirational principles and 鈥渞eal politics鈥� incredibly difficult to contend with for those like Meaney.

Indeed, the ideas Estes runs with are not meant to imply that these philosophies perfectly correspond to on-the-ground practice or are that they are even normative with respect to Indigenous peoples, but that they have and do inspire actual Indigenous movement principles. This is why it is so off the mark that Meaney accuses Estes of 鈥渨ishful presentism,鈥� as if it were in any way in doubt that Indigenous peoples鈥� philosophies and practices have been at the forefront of defining an anticolonial form of environmental justice politics across the globe. This of course does not mean that any-and-all Indigenous movements are ipso facto anti-capitalist or environmentalist, but, again, we would never even entertain the proposal of such a standard with respect to various iterations of the non-Native labor movement. It would already be well-understood by anyone reading this that the labor movement as it actually exists in places like the United States is riven with conflict and ideologically deeply divided. The principles and values of kinship and relationality that Estes describes have deep historical roots, but they have also been reworked in historical time by Estes and other Lakota scholar-activists as active contributors to those traditions. What Estes is describing is not, as Meaney inveighs, an attempt to place Lakota (let alone Indigenous) historical consciousness outside of history, but instead to reckon with what that history could one day come to mean through the expression of political agency grounded on these normative foundations. Yes, those normative foundations are controversial, but so are all and any.

It is also striking that the arguments Estes makes have much in common with Third World Marxisms such as the Guineau-Bissauian agronomist and revolutionary Amilcar Cabral鈥檚 idea that an anticolonial 鈥渞eturn to the source鈥� could renew colonized historical agency and help to recapture the national forces of production from imperial degradation. Contra Meaney鈥檚 insinuation, it has never been 鈥渁nti-materialist鈥� in such traditions of anticolonial Marxism to consider the specific and concrete circumstances of a people鈥檚 history, including their myths and social and cultural formation as source of inspiration and mobilization. Walter Rodney, a revolutionary hero if there ever was one, understood this as well in his own engagements with the Rastafari movement in the dungles of Kingston, Jamaica. But the context of an already anti-colonial Marxism and left is shoved aside here in favor of an encounter between Indigenous peoples and a 鈥渓eft鈥� already mainly locked into white provincialism. Perhaps it is the fault of such a 鈥渓eft,鈥� not Native movements, that those encounters have been so glancing?

Decolonizing Emancipation

Meaney culminates his essay in the following way, worth quoting at length:

Why suggest the Lakota were self-sufficient, peaceable buffalo hunters in the Black Hills for a thousand years, when they stalked buffalo for less than a century and were so thoroughly connected to international trade that, on entering the homes of their chiefs, visitors found New England carpets, French soap, African coffee, Haitian sugar and knives from Sheffield? What does it mean that the Oneida Nation still celebrates its supporting role in the American Revolution and reveres George Washington, or that a Mohawk man wears a laminated copy of the Fort Laramie Treaty around his neck? Are these signs of freedom or captivity? Nothing could be more patronising to Indigenous peoples than to deny the cost of their survival or pretend that their consciousness exists outside modern time, on a reservation outside history.

But the authors in question pretend nothing of the sort about Indigenous consciousness nor its supposed lack of historically mediated character. (Does Meaney know that the same Estes who wrote the book under review is the co-author of a book on bordertown violence against Native peoples鈥攖hat most elementary violence of settler-colonial modernity鈥檚 traces of history?). It is patronizing to reduce the modes of Indigenous politics, including the many, many articulations of the meanings of treaties and alliances among different Indigenous nations (among themselves and with Euro-american powers) to whether these are signs of 鈥渇reedom or captivity.鈥� That is, to pretend as if they do not know those costs intimately. But it is this kind ofquestion鈥攚hat I read mostly as a demand to get in line鈥攖hat evacuates Indigenous peoples鈥� varied struggles against settler colonialism of their historical qualities as experienced in colonial modernity, effectively submitting them to a kind of ready-made litmus test of the standards of nominally left politics. Indeed, I find it patronizing in the extreme to fail in the most basic endeavor of trying to understand these modes of politics in their specificity as ways of rethinking what counts as emancipation given the forms of structural power they articulate.

If Meaney has arrogated to himself the implied power to diagnose what counts as the emancipatory (and, therefore, regressive/reactionary) substance in Indigenous politics, I would instead turn the question around: What counts as liberatory in the western left when it is western historical agency鈥攏ot those of the global majority in the global south and souths in the north鈥攖hat arrogantly stands in for the motive forces of political emancipation? I submit that what remains is a provincialism consigned to deep irrelevance in the face of today鈥檚 pressing needs for anti-imperial and anticolonial solidarities, even when attempting clumsily to escape its own self-referential cage.

David Myer Temin is Associate Professor of Political Science and faculty in the Native American Studies Program, University of Michigan–Ann Arbor.

Photo: Graffiti during the occupation of Alcatraz by Red Power activists. Author: .

The Gaza crisis has underscored the deep fractures of domestic politics in Western Europe, the US and Australia. It is as much a domestic political crisis as a conflict in the Middle East.

What is the nature of this crisis? Well, it is not one but multiple crises that are condensed around the Gaza war. Now condensation is an interesting concept 鈥� first used by Freud to show how a single idea or dream stands for multiple associations and ideas. We can think of the Gaza crisis as a political condensation of several multiple and intersecting crises and their  different temporalities. It condenses a series of fracture points: the crisis of representation, an increasingly authoritarian response to the political conflict, the unravelling of the international liberal order and the politics of race and class. It reinforces a shift to what the Marxist political theorist Nicos Poulantzas termed authoritarian statism which is the intensification of authoritarian tendencies within ostensibly democratic institutions and processes.

First, it is now fashionable to apply the term decolonisation to global politics but this decolonization is always seen as 鈥榦ut there鈥� and distinct from the politics of class. Instead, I want to argue the Gaza crisis has brought decolonisation back home to the streets of London, Paris, Berlin, Sydney and New York. It is often forgotten that many of those on the streets are demanding not just a ceasefire in Gaza but a political voice that is marginalised.  And let’s not forget that this plays out in the register of both class and race.  Many 鈥� but by no means all – of those in the streets are the new migrant working class and Gaza is an expression of their political discontent. The social theorist 鈥� Stuart Hall 鈥� famously said that race is the medium through which class is lived and in the Gaza crisis we see an intersection of class and race. It is return of the political time of colonial politics but this time in the metropolis of the old colonies. This class and domestic dimension is often forgotten in the sanitised version of decolonisation that circulates within academia. Again, the Gaza crisis condenses existing political fractures.

It has also led to an increasingly authoritarian turn in restricting dissent. Perhaps the most disturbing is the attempt to ban marches and demonstrations. Recently Rishi Sunak talked about 鈥榤ob rule鈥� and the need to protect parliament and MPs.  He was supported by Keir Starmer the labour leader. In New South Wales Premier Chris Minns proposed banning rallies. These attempts to criminalise protest and we have seen this over climate protests is a further disturbing indicator of the growing authoritarian drift 鈥� authoritarian statism 鈥� in liberal democracies. Even more problematic is the fact that these references to law and order and 鈥榤ob rule鈥� have an underlying racial component. A point that Stuart Hall noted in his analysis of the emergence of Thatcherism in the UK in the early 1970s. This time it is paying out in the register of security and the defence of the 鈥榃est鈥�.  

Many observers have noted how paramilitary techniques used in Hong Kong and Northern Ireland are not being deployed in London just as the US police force increasingly uses counter-insurgency policing techniques in Michigan or New York. This again is the new face of the emerging authoritarian statism that now finds expression in political conflict over the Gaza crisis.

The third fracture is perhaps the most striking and it is the way centre-left parties 鈥� and that includes the Democrats in the US 鈥� have been sharply divided over the Gaza crisis. Biden 鈥� and a considerable number of elected democrats 鈥� have been isolated from many grassroots activists. Perhaps the most striking example of this was when his own White House staffers protested against his stand on Gaza. More recently a large number of abstention votes for Biden in the Michigan primary underscored the fact that the party is increasingly disconnected from its electoral constituency. In the UK, in the Rochdale by-election, the win by George Galloway 鈥� a social conservative who dabbles in conspiracy theories 鈥� exposed the deep dissatisfaction with labour by its migrant working-class base. Now, of course, there is much written on the way the British Labour Party lost its 鈥榳hite working class鈥� but Rochedale shows that it is also losing the migrant working class 鈥� often located in the service sector. This is a deeper crisis within the party that has seen the political disincorporation of its class constituencies.

As parties have become increasingly enmeshed within the state they have lost the connection to their societal bases 鈥� or what political scientist like to call their representative functions. We have seen that with third-way politics in Australia, the UK and the US. In Australia, the primary vote for the party has been declining over several elections. What is new though is that these parties are increasingly locked into a kind of militarised global economic and political inter imperial rivalry between the US and China. Note here the AUKUS agreement that the Australian Labour signed on to or Starmer’s enthusiastic support for US policies on Gaza 鈥� that is now causing even greater alienation amongst the electoral coalition, such as the migrant working class that supported these parties. The Gaza conflict condenses the increasing contradiction between these parties’ support for security and defence policies and their electoral coalition. These 鈥榟ollowed out鈥� parties have no way of mediating these conflicts which as a result resort to authoritarian statist modes of decision making and curbing dissent.

Finally, much of the liberal international order that emerged in the 1990s is now collapsing.  The language around human rights, humanitarian intervention or even the global rule of law has now been dealt a death sentence by Gaza. But what is equally clear is there is now a new conservative order that is emerging 鈥� where human rights concerns are secondary even in the rhetorical mode that it functioned in the long 1990s. There is a more authoritarian order that is emerging where the far right not just in the global north but in China, India and Turkey is increasingly fusing ethnonationalist politics and policies that benefit key sectors of capital 鈥� be it state or private.  Centre left and centrist parties must operate on this conservative and authoritarian terrain. Gaza more than anything has condensed the domestic politics of the crisis of the liberal international order.

The Gaza conflict is then a portent of our future authoritarian politics.

Kanishka Jayasuriya is听 Professor of Politics and International Studies at Murdoch University, Perth , Western Australia.

I am writing this short commentary to bear witness of the ethnic cleansing that is going on since 7 October. As I write this short text, over 13000 including 5000 children have been killed by Israel in Palestine (Gaza and the West Bank), many thousand people are missing under the rubbles and as many have been displaced from their homes. Twelve-hundred people have been reported to have been killed in Israel by Hamas, and over 200 people have been abducted by Hamas.

It is important to historicise the current genocide which many observers and Palestinians themselves have called the second Nakba. The People of Palestine have survived and continuously resisted seven decades of occupation and violations of their basic rights. Their genocide has taken many forms: occupation, waves of land and sea grabs, dispossession, expropriation, displacement, assassinations, sexual violence. The genocide we are witnessing did not start today. This violence has been going on for 41 days鈥nd 75 years. And it has continued because of the many green lights, or lack of reactions to the countless acts of violence that the Israeli apartheid state has inflicted for decades. But most importantly, the spree of violence started with hate speeches and with the slow and insidious dehumanisation of Palestinians through the routinisation of their deaths. A social death. Countless, faceless scores of fatalities, wounded, jailed, and displaced civilians have over the decades been buried under seconds-long reporting at the radio or on TV, paragraph-long accounting of loss of lives in newspapers.

If we have learnt one thing from the genocide in Rwanda, it is that every genocide, every project of ethnic cleansing starts with the dehumanisation of the target social groups. Social death is the first step to a group鈥檚 physical annihilation. The concept of 鈥榮ocial death鈥� was first coined by Horace Orlando Patterson  in 1985, and it is no coincidence that Patterson鈥檚 book is a comparative study of . Nine years after that book, the Rwanda genocide took place, but it did not start in 1994, it started long before, when the Belgian colonisers started measuring skulls and ethnicising them, and later when the Hutu-dominated government started by calling the target Tutsi groups 鈥業nyenzi鈥� or 鈥榗ockroaches鈥� to signify that they lacked humanity, that they believed them not to be worthy of life. Later, after reading Gilbert Gatore鈥檚 The Past Ahead, Jean Hatzfeld鈥檚 Season of Machetes, Boubacar Boris Diop鈥� s Murambi, the Book of Bones and Scholastique Mukasonga鈥檚 Cockroaches, we promised with the International Tribunal Court for Rwanda, and the Gacaca courts that 鈥榥ever again鈥�, would we let such atrocities be committed, at least 鈥榥ot in our names鈥�.

But I want us to understand that what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank of Palestine is (and always was) the next step by the Israeli state in the project of murder of Palestinians. It is but the next step of a carefully planned and executed land and sea grab by social death under the cover of the right of self-defence. When has self-defence ever meant the systematic ethnic cleansing of civilians? When has one group鈥檚 right to existence meant a death sentence for another social group?

I want us to be clear on the fact that the current militarised genocide is a political issue, is a feminist issue, is a reproductive justice issue, is an economic issue, is an environmental justice issue, is an agrarian justice issue, is an ethical issue, is a sovereignty issue.

It is a war on Palestine鈥檚 societal and social reproduction.

In a 2011 article, SOAS feminist political economist Shirin Rai and her co-authors describe such condition of loss, without any future plan for replenishment that might remedy it as . The use of forbidden and brutal weapons of mass destruction, including white phosphorus on civilianpopulations, the destruction of hospitals and vital infrastructures such as roads, water tanks, electricity, and means of transportation, the pollution of natural resources, and livestock and the poisoning of crops is a clear indication of the intent to dispossess permanently Palestinians across age, religion, and class status of their means of production.

The objective of the settler colonial state of Israel is clear: it is the depletion of those engaged in social reproduction through starving the labour force to prevent them from meeting their necessary calorie intake, through burning social infrastructures so their basic needs for food and energy, housing, health and safety, hygiene (including sanitary pads for women and girls, and care services for the sick and the pregnant),  are unmet. The objective is also carried out through destroying and poisoning nature, through destroying universities and mosques and places of community assembly. Israel is attempting to kill the Palestinian spirit and hijack the reproduction of their social cultural capital  鈥� Palestinians are reputed to be the World鈥檚 most 鈥�.

The ultimate goal of Israel 鈥� and the Western powers that support this settler colonial and Apartheid state 鈥� is to render impossible the social and societal reproduction of Palestinians, and eventually to lead them to their physical death. This is but one of the many faces of fascism and racist, settler colonialist capitalism. We must neither be silent nor think it is happening in a remote faraway land. At the same time, we are calling for an absolute ceasefire, the return of Israeli and Palestinian hostages, we should also seek reparations for the loss of lives and damage to nature as well as a complete reform of the current international governance architecture. We cannot trust our future to powers we don鈥檛 trust as they have shown us whose interests they represent, and whose lives matter to them.

What Israel is committing in Palestine should be a  and across the world. What is happening to Palestine, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, will determine  our common future, the fruits of our anti-colonial struggles, and our ultimate sovereignty.

Therefore, I would like to conclude by sharing this powerful message in the form of a  on 1 November 2023:

Voices of the world

Say it loud

Say it clear

鈥榃e shan鈥檛 tolerate

Another genocide on our planet

There鈥檙e no 鈥榠fs鈥� and 鈥榖uts鈥�

There鈥檚 no balance between genocidaires & victims

There is no equivalence between Occupiers and occupied.

Ceasefire immediately

End settler colonialism!鈥�

Rama Salla Dieng is a Senegalese writer, academic and activist. She is currently a Lecturer in African and International Development at the Centre of African Studies, University of Edinburgh. Rama is also a feminist activist who has collaborated with several feminist organisations on agrarian change, gender and development, and social reproduction. Rama has written this text in a personal capacity.

Photo: Protest for the Palestinians of Gaza against the brutal attack by Israel in January 2009, Melbourne ().

Some important texts and petitions:

.

This excerpt was originally posted on .

Read the text in French: Pourquoi la Palestine est une question f茅ministe et anticoloniale

Read the text in Arabic: 賱賲丕匕丕 鬲毓鬲亘乇 賮賱爻胤賷賳 賯囟賷丞 賳爻賵賷丞 賵賲賳丕賴囟丞听賱賱丕爻鬲毓賲丕乇責

Read the text in Spanish: Por qu茅 Palestina es una cuesti贸n feminista y听anticolonial

Read the text in Portuguese: Por que a Palestina 茅 uma quest茫o feminista e anticolonial

By Claudius Gr盲bner-Radkowitsch and Birte Strunk

The degrowth movement is a radical attempt to challenge our current economic system, arguing that its excessive focus on economic growth will ultimately harm people and planet. It has recently gained increasing attention, not only because it has found its way into mainstream political debates (see, for example, the at the European Parliament), but also because related research projects have won prestigious international funding awards (see, for example, ). However, as you may have noticed, these events are mainly taking place in the Global North. The concept as such was also originally developed in the Global North. At the same time, the movement is strongly committed to the idea of global justice and a decolonization of relations between the Global North and South.

This begs the question: What is the role of the Global South in the contemporary degrowth discourse? To what extent does the discourse take into account Southern perspectives? Does it think that the South should also degrow, or is Northern degrowth mainly seen as a self-prescription? And to what extent does the degrowth community reflect on the implications of Northern degrowth for the Global South? To answer these questions, we have taken stock of . But before we go into the details of what we found and what we make of it, let us briefly outline what degrowth is all about.

What degrowth is about

Degrowth is both an academic field of study and an activist movement. While it has gained traction largely because of the growing relevance of global climate crises, part of its origins lie in a field that historically had a different focus: namely in culturalist critiques of modernity, questioning Western narratives of progress, development and growth. 

Given its internal heterogeneity, the field is not easy to characterize. Internal debates about the precise meaning of the term “degrowth” – see, for example, this paper on “” and these – do not make this task any easier. Nevertheless, we may be on the safe side if we define degrowth as a scholarly and activist movement that is highly critical of the alleged dependence of global capitalism on economic growth and that aims at a radical transformation towards a more socially just and ecologically sustainable world economy, primarily by breaking the growth dependency of the current system.

Degrowth scholars regularly and rightly point out that many intellectual inspirations and key concepts originated with thinkers from the Global South, but the concept of degrowth as such is a Northern invention of the late 2000s, most commonly associated, in its inception, with the French philosopher Serge Latouche and his subsequent followers. Despite its intellectual origin in the North, the current degrowth discourse understands itself as a global project, explicitly concerned with addressing global injustice. This perspective is evidenced not only by the regular lip service paid to the decolonization of the South, but also by the many references in the literature to post-development contributions. But how exactly do degrowth scholars take into account the Global South?

What role does the Global South play in the academic degrowth discourse? A topical focus on synergies

In a , we conducted a systematic (quantitative and qualitative) review of the academic degrowth literature on the Global South. We wanted to find out: How do degrowth scholars themselves think and write about the relation between degrowth and the South? We identified 52 key publications on the topic, published between 2009 and 2022. The vast majority of these were written by authors affiliated with institutions in the Global North (more information on the methodology used can be found in the and the corresponding ).

Analyzing these publications with respect to the question “How does degrowth relate to the Global South?鈥� suggests the presence of two main narratives: one on synergies between degrowth and the South, and one on challenges. Publications following the synergies narrative emphasize the commonalities between Southern and Northern perspectives on degrowth. Papers following the challenges narrative remain mostly sympathetic to degrowth, but focus on challenges that emerge from thinking about degrowth and the Global South. Interestingly, more than two-thirds of the core papers follow the overall synergies narrative.

Going into further detail, we identified three sub-narratives for each of the two main narratives:

In practice, these sub-narratives were often mixed within single publications. For example, a paper classified following an overall challenges narrative might start with the observation that Southern movements and degrowth can be potential allies (i.e. a synergy argument), but that there is a danger of neocolonial agenda-setting that degrowth needs to deal with to a greater extent (see e.g. or paper).

Interestingly, more than two-thirds of the core papers follow the overall synergies narrative. Among these, the most common argument is that degrowth ideas originate in Southern thinking and can be inspired by Southern practices (see Figure 1). Postcolonial and post-development arguments are also regularly referred to, especially in the more recent papers, and the hope is expressed that if countries in the Global North were to implement degrowth policies, this would be an important step towards the decolonization of countries in the Global South.

This process of decolonizing the South through the implementation of degrowth policies in the North may be hindered, however, by structural dependencies between the South and the North, such as asymmetric trade relations, financial dependencies, or simply power hierarchies in the context of international organizations. This argument is the most frequent challenge mentioned in the current literature, yet we found more articles that raise this issue (e.g. or ) than articles that discuss potential solutions to it (e.g. ).

The twin problem of structural dependencies

In fact, these structural interdependencies play a complex role in the degrowth literature: Within the current institutional framework, they are both a motivation for and a potential obstacle to degrowth. On the one hand, the current distribution of economic activities is often to the detriment of countries in the South. The global division of labor tends to exacerbate inequalities and facilitates the externalization of social and environmental costs to countries in the global South (see, for example, ). Indeed, for many degrowth scholars this grim state of affairs is one of the main reasons why they subscribe to the degrowth program in the first place.

On the other hand, however, there is a flip side to this story that lies at the heart of the 鈥渢win problem鈥�: many people in the South are now dependent on the money flows that come from the North as payment for these products, just as they are often dependent on the provision of credit and remittances, the import of products and services for which countries in the South lack either the technological capacity or the patents, or access to currencies issued by countries in the global North.

These dependencies complicate the program of decolonizing the Global South by implementing degrowth in the Global North: attempting to eliminate unequal exchange relations by implementing degrowth in the North could, at least in the short term, create even greater calamities, at least without simultaneously addressing the structural problems at the global level. Thus, while degrowth scholars rightly argue that the existence of exploitative relationships to the detriment of the South should not be used as a fundamental argument against degrowth as such, the question of how exactly to overcome these dependencies in practice is an important one that degrowth scholars have not yet addressed sufficiently.

What is the right level to address the twin problem?

The twin problem relates to a rather fundamental question, not only for degrowth, but for all movements that aim to fundamentally change our socio-economic system: what is the appropriate political strategy to initiate the desired changes, and who are the relevant actors? Traditionally, degrowth shares with many initiatives from the post-development camp an appreciation of bottom-up and interstitial strategies, and a certain skepticism about top-down and state-centered approaches. And while the discourse on political strategy in the degrowth community as a whole has broadened, contributions around bottom-up resistance are currently much more elaborated than contributions around higher-level policy making, especially when it comes to the topic of “Degrowth and the Global South”. However, structural dependencies cannot be easily addressed 鈥� or even understood 鈥� with a sole focus on the local. In our article, we therefore suggest that degrowth scholars could benefit from taking a closer look at the contributions of other radical research programs, especially when it comes to the analytical understanding of the mechanisms underlying structural dependencies.

Inspirations on how to tackle the twin problem

The first contribution that comes to mind in this context is the work of the Marxist political economist Samir Amin on delinking (see also this blog post on Samir Amin’s continuing relevance), which is precisely about how Southern countries can become less dependent on global institutions and Northern countries. Delinking is not about autarky or deglobalization, but about strategies for Southern countries to become more autonomous and independent. This includes, but is not limited to, delineating their own development models (which may or may not include elements of Western development models), reorganizing their production systems, and building South-South cooperation that will allow them to become less dependent on global markets and financial flows (for more details, see, for example, ).

Beyond the issue of delinking, there are a number of strategies for addressing structural dependencies that heterodox economists and critical development scholars have been working on, such as the substitution of North-South trade relations with South-South trade relations (e.g. ), technology transfer to the South combined with sophisticated infant industry protection (e.g, ), the immediate consideration of an unequal distribution of technological capabilities (e.g., ) and persistent historical dependencies (e.g., ), the critical assessment of financial hierarchies (e.g., or ), or the implementation of “civilized trade institutions” on a global scale (e.g., ).

There is an important commonality in all these debates, and we believe that it is a commonality that degrowth scholars share with other radical scholars 鈥� even with those who might themselves be very skeptical of degrowth as such. Namely, the conviction that structures matter. Degrowth and other radical scholars might thus be united in their perspective that, in order to improve living conditions globally, institutional changes in both the North and the South are necessary. The network of global interdependencies makes unilateral change virtually impossible, and it is a great misfortune that the dominant paradigm in economics is particularly ill-suited to identify and critically discuss these structuralist dependencies (for more details see ).

Outlook

In all, we found a range of responses to the question that we asked in the beginning: How does degrowth, as a mainly Northern discourse, relate to the South? We showed that many degrowth contributions highlight the synergies between degrowth thinking and radical thought and action in the South. Moreover, degrowth in the North is often seen as a necessary step to decolonize economies in the Global South, since the current structures of growth-based global capitalism are largely beneficial to the North and detrimental to the South. Nonetheless, as some degrowth contributions have also started to point out: it is precisely because of these structures, that Northern degrowth might not have the desired effects of promoting global justice, at least in the short-term and at least not without radical institutional reforms of international systems of trade, finance, politics and law. How such radical institutional reforms might look like concretely, however, has not been discussed very concretely within the degrowth literature we reviewed. In our , we thus bring together a range of topics and methodologies from other fields of heterodox economics or global studies, which might yield fruitful perspectives if included into a degrowth research program. Only then, we argue, can degrowth effectively address both sides of the twin problem of structural dependency.

Birte Strunk is a PhD candidate in economics at the New School in New York City. Having previously studied economics and philosophy in Maastricht, London, and Vienna, she currently pursues research at the intersection of ecological economics and labor economics, with a focus on inequality and work hours. As part of her PhD, she spent a semester as a visiting research fellow at Harvard University, and she also currently pursues a Masters in philosophy at Fernuniversit盲t Hagen next to her PhD.  She has published on feminist ecological economics, degrowth and philosophy of (plural) economics.

Claudius Gr盲bner-Radkowitsch is Assistant Professor of Pluralist Economics at the Europa-Universit盲t Flensburg (Germany) and Research Associate at the Institute for the Comprehensive Analysis of the Economy (ICAE) of the Johannes Kepler University Linz (Austria). He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Bremen and has worked on comparative development dynamics in the European Union, the socio-economic implications of green transformations, the determinants and implications of technological change and economic complexity, as well as on the sociological and philosophical foundations of pluralism in the social sciences, including the relation between pluralism and decoloniality. Claudius鈥� X handle is @ClaudiusGrabner

Photo: Mike Langridge.

The great cultural theorist Stuart Hall called Frantz Fanon鈥檚 The Wretched of the Earth 鈥榯he bible of decolonisation鈥� as it encapsulated the urge for freedom across the colonial world (). Fanon illuminates how racism represented an organising principle for capitalist classes by systematically devaluing the lives of the majority of the world鈥檚 population. 鈥楩or centuries the capitalists have behaved like real war criminals in the underdeveloped world,鈥� he wrote. 鈥楧eportation, massacres, forced labour, and slavery were the primary methods used by capitalism to increase its gold and diamond reserves, and establish its wealth and power鈥� ().

One of the reasons for Fanon鈥檚 popularity among those who want to decolonise development is that he argued that post-colonial countries should forge their own paths to development rather than attempting to follow already developed countries. 鈥楾he Third World must not be content to define itself in relation to values which preceded it,鈥� he warned. 鈥橭n the contrary, the underdeveloped countries must endeavour to focus on their very own values as well as methods and style specific to them.鈥�

Not only did Fanon explain the horrors inflicted by colonialism upon native populations; crucially, he also conceived of real human development as a process rooted in a collective labouring class (comprising workers and poor peasants) transcending capitalist brutality.

However these two elements of his thought 鈥� the critical identification of the violence of colonialism, and a real human developmental alternative to it 鈥� have often been disconnected by thinkers influential to the decolonial movement. This represents a dangerous misinterpretation of Fanon. It obscures his vision of a decolonised world and the social forces able to construct it.

鈥楲ittle indication鈥�

The  to decolonise development and development studies draws upon a variety of prior intellectual movements, especially from cultural and post-colonial studies. It uncovers the violent and ideological processes by which Indigenous voices were and still are marginalised by Northern powers. It challenges the ideology and practice of economic growth based catch-up development (where poorer countries squeeze their populations to raise the resources to become like richer countries). It reveals and counters the racism within universities and other key institutions. It calls, increasingly, for  to redress the damage wrought by slavery.

All these elements are foreshadowed in Fanon鈥檚 work 鈥� but he provided much more than this. However, some influential thinkers elevate Fanon鈥檚 critique of colonial capitalism, whilst demoting and misinterpreting his Marxist socialism. By doing so, they are providing a one-sided, lifeless portrayal of Fanon鈥檚 purpose. For example, in Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction, Robert Young misinterprets Fanon鈥檚 politics by equating them with violent Maoism, whilst ignoring his vision of post-colonial socialist development: 鈥榃hat is noticeable about the FLN and Fanon鈥檚 position is that it is predicated on an espousal of the virtues and necessity of violence, with little indication of what the free society that was to follow liberation was to be like鈥� ().

In his Culture and Imperialism, the great Palestinian activist-scholar Edward Said argues that Fanon fails to offer 鈥榓 prescription for making a transition after decolonisation to a period … [of] a new political order鈥� ().

Why are these writers so quick to disassociate Fanon鈥檚 critique of colonialism from his advocacy of anti-colonial socialist development? The answer may have to do with the fact they were more conservative than Fanon. Said, for example, draws on Fanon as part of his broader argument for (non-socialist) Palestinian nation-building, while Young is writing primarily for academic purposes.

In fact, Fanon鈥檚 advocacy of a 鈥榥ew humanism鈥� was central to his analysis of the historical moment of decolonisation. It combines the longer tradition of socialism from below 鈥� combatting and transcending capitalist exploitation through labouring class struggle and eventual control over the means of production 鈥� with a radical and highly original vision of a post-racial, post-patriarchal, post-alienated world.

Fanon鈥檚 new humanism

Frantz Fanon wrote The Wretched of the Earth, first published in French in 1961, in a race against time, while he was dying from leukaemia. He died, tragically young, shortly after its publication. There was another reason for his urgency. The Algerian revolution against French rule stood at the gates of victory. However, with great perspicacity Fanon saw the dangers 鈥� of renewed elite, albeit now African, rule 鈥� that potentially lay ahead for the Algerian people and other soon-to-be liberated colonised peoples.

Fanon was inspired by Marx, but he was also disillusioned with the way Marxism had become stultified under the influence of Stalinism. The French Parti Communiste (PCF) approach to the Algerian revolution was national chauvinist rather than revolutionary communist. It characterised much of the revolution as acts of individual terrorists, supporting the French prime minster Guy Mollet鈥檚 1956 bill giving the government 鈥榮pecial powers鈥� in Algeria. These included a massive call up of reservists and the suspension of civil liberties in Algeria. More generally it  by workers in the first world over anti-imperialist workers movements in the emergent 鈥榯hird world鈥�.

In part because of the PCF鈥檚 reactionary Marxism, and like many revolutionaries before him, Fanon adapted, or in his words 鈥榮tretched鈥�, Marxism. He wrote The Wretched of the Earth to address the character of exploitation and oppression under capitalist colonialism in Algeria, the possibilities of a socialist revolution and the kinds of new humanist development that could flow from it. The book contains a dual critique 鈥� of the French colonial regime and of emerging post-colonial African elites 鈥� including obliquely, of the increasingly conservative military leadership of the Front de Lib茅ration Nationale.

The European masses must first of all decide to wake up, put on their thinking caps and stop playing the irresponsible game of Sleeping BeautyFrantz Fanon

For Fanon, a revolution 鈥� by the masses for the masses 鈥� had a triple role: to generate a thoroughgoing decolonisation, to transcend attempts by nationalist elites to capture the revolution and to enable the masses to realise their capacity to establish an historically novel form of democratic development. He hoped that this revolutionary force would unleash the cooperative spirit necessary for the emergence of a new humanism. Without it, he predicted that decolonisation would descend into a situation of renewed elite rule which he characterised as 鈥榓 sort of little greedy caste, avid and voracious, with the mind of a huckster, only too glad to accept the dividends that the former colonial power hands out to it. This get-rich-quick middle class shows itself incapable of great ideas or of inventiveness. It remembers what it has read in European textbooks and imperceptibly it becomes not even the replica of Europe, but its caricature.鈥�

Fanon鈥檚 identification of the peasantry as agents of revolutionary change was formed over the course of the Algerian revolution. From 1954, great numbers of the Algerian poor pitted themselves against a French colonial settler state for which the murder of civilians and the use of torture in concentration camps was . While they fought valiantly, they bore heavy losses. By late 1957 the French army had defeated the FLN in urban warfare, portrayed by the Italian filmmaker Gillo Pontecorvo鈥檚 The Battle of Algiers.

It was in this context 鈥� of the defeat of the urban working-class sections of the Algerian revolution 鈥� that University of Illinois professor Lou Turner argues Fanon 鈥榯urned to the peasantry鈥� (). In part because of his advocacy of peasant revolution, Fanon has been associated by writers like Robert Young with Maoism 鈥� but this is a profoundly inaccurate interpretation.

He wrote Wretched just as news of Mao鈥檚 murderous great leap forward was filtering out of China and much of it is  of Maoist-style policies. His argument that the 鈥榥otion of catching up must not be used as a pretext to brutalize man, to tear him from himself and his inner consciousness, to break him, to kill him鈥� can be interpreted as being directed as much against Mao鈥檚 regime as it was against the increasingly conservative Arab Nationalist elites, including the FLN.

Indeed it was the FLN leadership, not Fanon,  with Mao, receiving weapons from the People鈥檚 Republic of China via anti-working class Arab Nationalist regimes such as Gamal Abdel Nasser鈥檚 Egypt. Fanon鈥檚 advocacy of the peasantry as a mass revolutionary subject was qualitatively different from Mao鈥檚 which conceived of them as supporters of the revolutionary guerrilla army but not revolutionaries themselves. Furthermore, contrary to Mao, Fanon advocated an alliance between the Algerian peasantry and western workers.

Unlike many revolutionaries then and now, Fanon鈥檚 was not a male-orientated vision of social change. He argued that Algerian women were 鈥榝ighting two colonialisms鈥� 鈥� of Muslim and Western patriarchy. Furthermore, he advocated that women 鈥榮hall be given equal importance to men, not in the articles of the constitution, but in daily life, at the factory, in the schools, and in assemblies鈥�.

For the disinherited and by the disinherited

Part of this emancipatory dynamic would be a radically new form of development, distinct from emerging forms of top-down Arab and African socialism and nationalism. 鈥業f the national government wants to be national it must govern by the people and for the people, for the disinherited and by the disinherited.鈥� Resource nationalisation 鈥榤ust not take on the aspect of rigid state control鈥� as in the then-Soviet bloc and emergent independent African states. Rather, to 鈥榥ationalize the tertiary sector means organizing democratically the cooperatives for buying and selling. It means decentralizing these cooperatives by involving the masses in the management of public affairs.鈥� Yet this could be only the start. 鈥橳he choice of a socialist regime, a regime entirely devoted to the people, based on the principle that man is the most precious asset, will allow us to progress faster in greater harmony, consequently ruling out the possibility of a caricature of society where a privileged few hold the reins of political and economic power without a thought for the nation as a whole.鈥�

Fanon noted how post-Nazi Germany continued to apologise for the Nazi genocide and agreed to pay significant reparations to Israel. He advocated a similar programme of reparations, rather than aid, from former colonial countries to post-colonial countries to begin redressing the damage they had caused.

Also read Elikia M鈥檅okolo, 鈥溾��,&苍产蝉辫;Le Monde diplomatique, April 1998.Fanon expounded a labouring class socialist internationalism which, unlike Maoism, included a key role for the European working classes. 鈥楾his colossal task, which consists of reintroducing man into the world, man in his totality, will be achieved with the crucial help of the European masses who would do well to confess that they have often rallied behind the position of our common masters on colonial issues. In order to do this, the European masses must first of all decide to wake up, put on their thinking caps and stop playing the irresponsible game of Sleeping Beauty.鈥�

Fanon鈥檚 new humanist development was based on a decentralised cooperative conception of the economy, rather than one based on private property or state-direction. It looked to a future of human relations free from the burdens of racism, patriarchy and capitalist exploitation. But for such a society to emerge he advocated a revolution by the masses which was sufficiently powerful to simultaneously eliminate colonial rule and bring to bear a new humanist subject of development.

Fanon wrote The Wretched of the Earth as a warning that the Algerian revolution itself was fated to follow other recently decolonised African societies, characterised by the emergence of oppressive states managed by newly independent nationalist elites. Indeed, his warnings about the politically narrow vision of the emergent post-colonial elites were amply confirmed. Upon independence in March 1962, French settlers fled Algeria abandoning their farms and factories. For three years workers managed many of these urban factories and farms. In June 1965 the conservative military wing of the FLN under Houari Boum茅di猫ne staged a coup, putting paid to attempts at socialist economic transformation.

Today, the increased interest in, and attempts to decolonise, development reflect the gross inequalities of the contemporary moment, the increasingly widespread realisation of how these are rooted in capitalism鈥檚 deep history and a growing movement for a more equitable world. While Frantz Fanon is one of the key figures invoked in this movement, it is important to emphasise that his critique of capitalist colonialism was part and parcel of his advocacy of a new humanist form of development 鈥� a vision and a democratising strategy based on workers鈥� and peasants鈥� mass collective action against capitalist exploitation. Otherwise we risk undermining the kinds of transformative social struggles required to make racism, patriarchy and class exploitation relics of history.

Photo: Frantz Fanon at a press conference during a writers鈥� conference in Tunis, 1959.

Benjamin Selwyn听is a professor of international relations and international development at the University of Sussex, Brighton, UK. His publications include The Struggle for Development (Polity Press: 2017).

Ben Selwyn鈥檚 article 鈥�De/Recolonising Development: Fanon, Rostow, and the Violence of Social Change鈥櫶�is available open access/free of charge at:听

This article was first published in .

A new calendar year ushers in the usual array of tropes on Africa. They include why the continent is failing, what it should be doing better and why it has so much resilience in dealing with its own frailty. Overwhelmingly, Western institutions (NGOs, credit rating agencies, etc.) repeat tired mantras of the international 铿乶ancial institutions, ignoring the insights of African scholar activists and the historical backdrop to the continent鈥檚 contemporary crises. Neglect of such analysis leads to the failure to understand why and how different African countries are in the mess that they are and why the mess has structural continuities and conjunctural discontinuities. The antidote to Western-centric analysis is the superb collection of essays in a special issue of Africa Development, a journal of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), which emerged from the Post-Colonialisms Today project. The range and insight of the collection is difficult to capture in a short review, but there are two continuous themes among contributors: the importance of revisiting the historical past and the signi铿乧ance of sovereignty, or the absence of it.

The collection challenges 鈥渢he continued hegemony of neoliberalism in policymaking in Africa鈥� (Hormeku-Ajei et al. , 4). The introduction notes the amnesia about how early post-independence leaders tried to secure the 鈥渘ewly-won freedom of their countries through policies that were designed 鈥� to promote autonomous development processes anchored on the demands and needs of a home market鈥� (1). Nyerere, for example, rebuked the IFIs when they accused him of failure, noting that at independence 85% of Tanzania was illiterate and they had just two trained engineers and 12 medical doctors 鈥� after 43 years of British colonial rule. Under Nyerere, Tanzania ensured 91% literacy, that all children were in school and that per capita income grew dramatically. After reluctantly accepting IFI diktats, key social and economic indices plummeted. In discrediting the first 20 years of autonomous and autochthonous African post-independence development policy and strategy, the IFIs provided a narrative to justify what became the ruinous years of structural adjustment. While the heart of the neoliberal project is to discredit African strategy and practice, this collection highlights that the idea of African post-independence failure was manufactured and 鈥渄eliberately misleading鈥� (2).

The 铿乺st 20 years of post-independence Africa had promise and were in铿倁ential in trying to reverse the colonial inheritance: African, mostly radical, leaders were often successful, even if for a brief period of time, in addressing political and economic fragmentation (especially reliance on primary commodity exports). The authors of this collection explore how several African leaders recognised their country鈥檚 subordinate position in the global system and understood the importance of assembling African agency to address and change that relationship. A unifying theme in the collection is that 鈥淸d]ecolonisation across Africa brought about historical changes; it was a moment of solidarity, optimism, and radical rethinking of political and economic systems鈥� (Salem , 160). Contemporary rearticulation of colonial relationships has reproduced the problem of earlier independence leaders, who sought to reduce dependence upon former colonial powers by promoting nation building, industrialisation, economic and agricultural diversi铿乧ation, pan-Africanism, and the development of a new economic order. 

Jimi Adesina examines the pan-African agenda, reviewing variations and similarities of Senghor, Nyerere, and Nkrumah in their approaches to socialism, pan-African unity, nationhood, economic development, epistemology and democracy. In their different ways, the three African leaders each tried to develop, coordinate, and mobilise the full range of domestic resources to reduce dependence on external interests and maintain sovereignty. Adesina emphasizes the crucial Nyerere leitmotif 鈥渦nity鈥� (49) and obstacles to it, including the variable capacity across the continent to challenge imperialism. He highlights the importance of not reifying African leaders, the 鈥渄iversity of postcolonial imaginations鈥� (52), and that, quoting Nyerere, 鈥渢he sin of despair would be the most unforgivable鈥� (54). But so too would be an optimism that is not grounded in analysis of existing radical social forces and the power of imperialism. Unless imperialism is understood and challenged, new agendas for pan-Africanism, sovereign national projects, and policy autonomy will wither on the proverbial vine.

Kareem Megahed and Omar Ghannam review Nasser鈥檚 attempt to industrialise Egypt鈥檚 economy as a way of challenging imperial interests. They argue that, while new incumbents of the Nasserist state often used words like 鈥榮ocialism鈥� and 鈥榩lanning鈥�, they 鈥渄id not actually, as is commonly believed, implement a central planning nor a socialist approach鈥� (67). Nasser鈥檚 land reform and new tenancy laws transformed large sections of rural Egypt while leaving the property, rights, power, and influence of old feudal elites intact. Megahed and Ghannam provide a useful re铿俥ction on the external and internal limitations of Nasser鈥檚 postcolonial project, noting the inherited restricted industrial base and the need for increased investment. Their biggest critique is that Nasser 鈥渁ttempted to give workers a measure of economic freedom and progress without giving them the political means to protect these very gains鈥� (89). One of the reasons why the project fell apart, despite gains in productivity and improvement in the well-being of the poor, 鈥渨as the lagging of democratic workers鈥� representation, which allowed the project to be hijacked鈥� by imperial powers (92). 

Akua Britwum draws attention to the under-researched importance of agricultural transformation in challenging uneven incorporation into global capitalism and plotting a strategy for sovereignty. She explores this topic through the cases of Ghana and Tanzania, reminding readers of the key strategic potential of the state in production, distribution and employment creation. Britwum draws important connections to contemporary African development constraints, noting how the absence of sovereignty continues and is evident in the 鈥渇ailure to fully de-link national economies from the global capitalist political economy that had positioned African countries as primary producers鈥� (128). This means that dependence on 鈥渆arnings from cash crop exports to 铿乶ance development expenditure鈥� (128) remains, limiting any in铿倁ence the state might be able to exert over productive resources. Britwum is scathing about the failure of independence to reduce patriarchy and the development plans鈥� failure to recognise that gendered strati铿乧ation is 鈥渋nimical to national development鈥� (133). However, she makes clear that there are positive lessons for development planning from the Ghanaian and Tanzanian experiences, such as 鈥渢heir sturdy ideological focus that led them to prioritise domestic needs鈥�; the state鈥檚 role as a 鈥減rincipal economic actor鈥�; and their focus on agriculture (130). Nkrumah and Nyerere鈥檚 imperatives of African socialism provided an important, although not long lasting, 鈥渋deological grounding in the imperative for African socialism鈥� (131).

Cha铿乲 Ben Rouine reminds us of before neoliberalism, when countries鈥� central banks helped mobilise resources to facilitate post-independence agrarian reforms and industrial strategy. Ben Rouine highlights the historical success of Tunisia鈥檚 central bank in mobilising, controlling, and channeling credit to the needs of the national economy. He notes how the 1960s was a period when the state tried to develop a vision of decolonisation and self-centred development, though it ultimately floundered due to 鈥渢rust in external 铿乶ancial support, an overly centralised bureaucracy鈥� that did not understand the speci铿乧ity of Tunisian agriculture, and 鈥渁 vision of development too focused on the West鈥� (156). Tunisia鈥檚 limited but important attempt at greater autonomy from the world capitalist system ended after structural adjustment began in 1986 and neoliberalism destroyed central bank independence.

The volume is tied together by Sara Salem鈥檚 contribution on radical regionalism, feminism, sovereignty and the pan-African project. She argues that sovereignty in the immediate post-independence period was seen as a regional, pan-African, internationalist project of decolonisation.  Salem highlights the role that African feminists had in shaping policy that challenged colonial structures of global capital, including policies of industrialisation and nationalisation to promote independent development. She shows the important role that 鈥渞egionalism鈥� played in this, which for Salem refers to 鈥渢he Third Worldist belief in various decolonised regions coming together to confront colonial capitalism鈥� and is part of emerging pan-Africanism (160鈥�161). Salem鈥檚 analysis pushes contemporary pan-Africanism to explore 鈥渞adical regionalism鈥� and feminist contributions to 鈥渃onceptualise agency and sovereignty and incorporate gender into debates around African independence鈥� (162). 

The lessons in this collection apply to understanding the constraints and opportunities for meaningful African sovereignty in the twenty-铿乺st century. They are salutary and somewhat depressing, re铿俥cting on the ways in which attempts at autonomous postcolonial development were knocked back by the forces of imperialism. Yet they also provide the tools for understanding and confronting contemporary imperialism, reminding us of the need to interrogate the mantras of the IFIs and the triad of the US, EU and Japan. 

Ray Bush is Professor Emeritus of African Studies and Development Politics at the University of Leeds and Briefings and Debates Editor of the Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE).

* A more detailed version of this review is available as: Bush, R. (2023). ‘Africa Development’, Review of African Political Economy, 50(175), pp. 138-142. DOI: 10.1080/03056244.2023.2240674.

** Post-Colonialisms Today (PCT) is a research and advocacy project housed at and led by African activist-intellectuals recovering progressive policies from early post-independence Africa, and mobilizing them through a feminist lens to address contemporary challenges.  PCT released a special issue in the Africa Development journal () in 2022.

Photo of Nyerere’s statue in Dodoma by .

Academia has always been political. On some occasions, it has been appropriated and deployed to meet political ends while in other occasions it has modelled itself to challenge politicisation. In their study of curriculum framework governing economics teaching in Brazilian higher education, Guizzo, et al (2021: 258) show how the idea of a pluralist education system is under threat from a 鈥渟trong disciplinary, institutional and wider political pressures with both domestic and global roots鈥�. Indeed, the threats towards education systems in the global South often have global as well as local origins. These days, the threat of epistemicides – that is the killing of a people鈥檚 knowledge – has displaced and suffocated academic spaces in the global South (de Sousa Santos 2016; Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2018). This killing has taken both subtle and unsubtle forms. One way this has happened has been through dominant and domineering western oriented knowledge production institutions and systems which disregard approaches and writings from the global South.

In this discussion, however, I will use the case of the University of Zimbabwe to show how domestic roots have also contributed towards the suffocation of academic spaces. I argue in this piece that epistemicides work together with epistuicides (see Kufakurinani 2022) – a process where a people kill their own knowledge systems. The twin evils of epistuicides and epistemicides have suffocated knowledge production in the global south. Indeed, the problem of a dominant western centric gaze has been a subject of examination by decolonial thinkers. Mainstream journals in many disciplines have been known to promote certain perspectives and specific research approaches at the expense of others.  It is in this context that there has been a huge global movement to decolonise and decentre knowledge systems and knowledge production in many disciplines. Admittedly, decolonisation has become a buzz word over the years to the point of losing meaning. For me, decolonisation is simply about elevating alternative and at times rare voices and perspectives, particularly those from the global south. These voices and perspectives may be parallel or even contradictory to dominant perspectives and voices.

I trained as an economic historian at the University of Zimbabwe starting my undergraduate in 2001 and completing my PhD in 2015. Then the discipline was little known in the country even though a whole department was dedicated to the discipline since the mid-1980s. I was to later head this department from December 2016 to August 2019. The teaching and research in Economic History (EH) in the country were very close to mainstream history, the main difference being that unlike pure history, EH emphasised economic and social processes from the past while history went beyond to include personalities, politics and institutions, among other thematic areas. The courses from both departments ie. the department of History and the EH department were also similar. For example, where in the former there was a regional course on the History of West Africa, in the latter there was the Economic History of West Africa. From 2017, when I was chairperson, a university wide curriculum review was embarked on. Economic history took this opportunity to reformulate itself and this included introducing courses that spoke more to economic processes which were also thematic rather than regional. For example, we introduced courses on natural resources and development, gender in economic history and also introduced students to basic economics which was absent in the earlier curriculum. In addition, the new programme also had a whole year of industrial attachment that allowed students to get exposure to industry. The modules in the discipline increasingly spoke to discourses on sustainable economic development. We also extended our international networks embarking on MOUs with Lund University in Sweden and Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Isreal. From this period the discipline became popular among students. See student intakes below:

Source: Ushehwedu Kufakurinani 鈥�A Promising Start and Frustrating End: The Rise and Fall of the Economic History Department, University of Zimbabwe鈥�, History in Africa, p. 1-12 (2022).

In 2020, under the guise of the so-called Education 5.0, changes were imposed by the University administration which included a new curriculum review (barely 4 years after we had taken another) and the merging of the Economic History Department and History Department to become the Department of History, Heritage and Knowledge Systems. Education 5.0, it was argued, added innovation and industrialisation to the usual functions of a university namely teaching, research and community engagement. I have always argued that this was splitting hairs. Innovation and industrialisation ought to simply have been given more emphasis as part of teaching, research and community engagement as no innovation and industrialisation could take place outside teaching, research and community engagement. The curriculum review process was cast in stone and literary a top-down approach. In many ways it mirrored the undemocratic political environment of the country. The Degree in Economic History, for example, was renamed BA Heritage and Economic History despite putting up a strong case for a degree in Economic History and Sustainable Development. The student intakes dropped tremendously (see above) and so did the confidence in the new discipline.

Conclusion: Let鈥檚 think epistuicides! Decoloniality in the global south

There were several other reforms which included merging and dissolution of programmes, disciplines and departments right across the university. What was common about these changes was that these were largely imposed on lecturers and students by university administration and had little buy-in from staff members. The result has been chaos in some instances and loss of moral. This, of course, has not been helped by the inflationary economic environment that has eroded the salaries of employees.as I have articulated in my article (2022), 鈥淎 Promising Start and Frustrating End: The Rise and Fall of the Economic History Department, University of Zimbabwe鈥� the University of Zimbabwe and how the institution has been run in the recent years is a classic case of epistuicide. Instead of elevating the rare voices and perspectives, it has suffocated and dismembered them. It is these internal dynamics that as scholars and activists of decoloniality we should also increasingly acknowledge and engage with.

The decolonial movement focuses largely at dismantling the dominant western gaze. The source of the problem is thus seen as exogenous 鈥� a force out there coming to suffocate systems and processes in the global south. However, if we are to take my initial definition of decolonisation as a process that seeks to elevate alternative and rare voices and perspectives, particularly those from the global south, then decolonisation is also about dealing with internal systems and processes, if they too have a negative bearing on efforts at elevating alternative voices and perspectives. Often, and rarely acknowledged in the framework of decolonial thinking, is that African institutions have also been at the centre of suffocating creativity and knowledge production in their spaces.

References

de Sousa Santos, Boaventura (2016) 鈥淓pistemologies of the South and the future鈥�, From the European South, 1, 17-29

Guizzo, Danielle, Andrew Mearman & Sebastian Berger (2021) 鈥楾AMA鈥� economics under siege in Brazil: the threats of curriculum governance reform, Review of International Political Economy, 28:1, 258-281, DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1670716.

Kufakurinani, U. (2022). A Promising Start and Frustrating End: The Rise and Fall of the Economic History Department, University of Zimbabwe. History in Africa, 1-12. doi:10.1017/hia.2021.20.

Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Sabelo. (2018). Epistemic Freedom in Africa: Deprovincialization and Decolonization. 10.4324/9780429492204.

Ushehwedu Kufakurinani is Research Fellow at King鈥檚 College London and University of Johannesburg, and Research Associate at University of Johannesburg and Great Zimbabwe University. He tweets at .

By Lyn Ossome and

In this interview, Rama Salla Dieng shares her thoughts on methods, feminist political economy, land questions in the Global South, radically reclaiming parenting as a political terrain of subversion and resistance, commitments to decolonisation while located in the western academy, radical acts of self-care, and African feminism.

Lyn: Can you briefly introduce yourself, Rama?

Rama: I am an African feminist academic, and writer interested in contributing to thinking and being part of positive social transformation within and most importantly beyond the academy.

Lyn: in feminist agrarian studies (with a focus on Senegal) emphasises a . Why feminist political economy, especially in thinking through land questions in the global south?

Rama: (this is a very long response) As a feminist academic, I believe it is important to pay a special attention to what is important to our research participants, from the choice of our research topic and questions to the methodology and the findings. Regarding methodology, heterodox political economists and critical development and agrarian studies scholars have been attentive to local and global processes of social, political and economic transformation (听2001,听,听听听;听听听,听听).听Focusing on the study of Africa, the late have pointed out three problems replete in the theorisation of African political economies and socialities: generalistic and oversimplified (re)presentations of the continent鈥檚 multiple ensembles; shift from unidirectionality and linearity of African trajectories to the realisation that the reality is always a more gradual shift; and the admission of the centrality of political agency. Methodologically, these scholars have used comparative work and mixed research tools to disrupt mainstream approaches to analysing economic change. The works of heterodox political economists and come to mind. On comparative inquiry, I think of 鈥檚 analysis of large and middle-class farmers in the Senegalese Groundnut Basin or 鈥檚 comparative political economy analysis of Vietnam and Tanzania

Critical race, postcolonial, post-modernist and decolonial scholars have enriched feminist and critical scholarship by convincingly arguing that race, class and gender are not given: they are social relations. Critical feminist, postcolonial and decolonial scholars have contributed to acknowledging the limited analyses of mainstream economic models whose narrow understanding of 鈥榯he economic鈥� fail to capture their embeddedness in gendered, classed and racialised values and norms. The recognition of this has been late and partial (, ). Not only did critical feminist and critical agrarian scholars contribute theoretically and empirically to the recognition of the gendered, classed and racialised dynamics of economic transformation, they did so while acutely pointing to the entanglements of local and global dynamics of change.  Critical feminist and critical agrarian scholars have often used this theoretical approach to examine development processes with the view to assess its gaps and key steps to make it more inclusive for the most vulnerable in society. These scholars and Collectives working on Africa and the Global South such as yourself, Dzodzi Tsikata, Bina Agarwal, Rosimina Ali, Awino Okech, Marjorie Mbilinyi, Mary Kinyanjui, Srila Roy, Alessandra Mezzadri, Maria Mies, Nancy Folbre, Sara Salem, Naila Kabeer, Jayati Ghosh, Chandra Mohanty, Oy猫r贸nk岷固� Oy臎w霉m铆, Amina Mama, Andrea Cornwall, Nancy Kachingwe, Yolande Bouka, Maureen Mackintosh, Hibist Kassa, Ruth Nyambura, Elena Baglioni, Lourdes Benaria, Genevieve Le Baron, Wendy Harcourt, Elisabeth Pr眉gl, Odile Mackett, Busi Sibeko, Susan Newman, the Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN), the Nawi Afrifem Macroeconomics Collective, or the SOAS Feminist Economist Network (to name a few) have critiqued mainstream discourses on African and Global South political economies. 

They critique mainstream analyses of the political economy of development which have often proposed blanket policy solutions that mostly failed to centre and address the specific needs of women at the margins whose labour has been made cheap. Alongside this is the recognition that heterodox approaches that centre intersectionality in analysing the intersecting dynamics of gender, class, nationality, ability and race (among other social determinants) can together provide a more accurate picture of uneven development processes and outcomes in postcolonial economies. Critical in this exercise is acknowledging 鈥榮ituatedness鈥� and the differences that time and space make in analysing in diverse geographies of economic transformations. Recently, I have enjoyed reading  ,  , , and for instance as I believe you centre this in your analyses.

I have tried to centre this methodological imperative in a 2018 collective book on . I hope our forthcoming bilingual special issue on contributes to furthering this methodological imperative with relevant empirical illustrations. In this special issue for instance, my article argues that invisibilised 鈥榗are chains鈥� that overly burden women, and communities of solidarities, play a crucial role in the social reproduction of horticultural workers, most specifically migrant workers, and provide a subsidy to agrarian capital. Therefore, care chains enable capital to exploit labour and accumulate profits. Yet, capitalist development does not always translate to better wages and more inclusive laws and policies for horticultural wage workers and providers of caring labour who are adversely incorporated in these political economies. I hope to contribute to furthering these questions emerging from my PhD research and subsequent   in my monograph.

Lyn: In 2020, at the height of the pandemic, you curated an important interview series called 鈥� conversations with African feminists that covered a broad range of topics. What was your central concern in initiating these dialogues, and what insights most surprised you about them?

I think an alternative title for this travelling interviews series published in English and French on ROAPE.net, Africa Is A country, Progressive International, Seneplus (a Senegalese online journal), and the blog of the Centre of African Series (Edinburgh), could have been: .  This title pays tribute to the work of feminists such as , ,  (among others). The main objective was to be in dialogue with other African feminists from the continent and the diaspora and to honour and document together our dreams, struggles and transformation projects. The goal was also to celebrate African feminists鈥� ways of knowing, loving and being while mapping current registers of feminist activism online and offline, on the continent and in the diaspora. We did that while also centring African feminists鈥� aspirations, joy and self-care. It mattered that these conversations were made accessible to all online, and not published behind a paywall. I believe this is political. I learned so much!

Lyn: You recently co-edited the volume, , whose multiple themes include radically reclaiming parenting as a political terrain of subversion and resistance. Could you reflect on these two ideas?

Rama: First, it is important to highlight that most of the authors in the volume share their feminist parenting praxis, philosophy and trajectory, which is influenced by their own rich, multicultural, and diverse histories and current location and politics. Thus, producing theories that contest and resist heteropatriarchal constructions of 鈥榖eing a family鈥�, and aiming to decolonise and queer such construct by bringing back in collective and non-conformist ways of doing parenting is in itself subversive. The authors of the book do this by paying close attention to cross-cultural differences, similarities, and possibilities of other-parenting beyond the hegemony of patriarchal models. These parents offer an intersectional analysis of their parenting and analyse the impact of class, race, sexuality, gender, culture, nationality, migrant status, and location on their feminist parenting practice. The parents in this book believe that societal change starts at home but extends far beyond it: parenting is an eminently political act, as is social reproduction. And the has further ascertained this by bringing to the fore what was : with the current and the regeneration of life as and some current feminist political economists have shown.

The process leading to the publication of this book has been a formidable learning experience and has offered critical insights on politics and power in knowledge production in the context of an international feminist collaboration.

Lyn: The idea of decolonisation is central in contemporary debates on liberation. Two questions i) How does your location in the western academy and intellectual vantage point of the global south shape this question for you? ii) Your work and numerous contributions both on/offline reflect a deep commitment to Pan-African feminist organising and feminist solidarity. Could you speak about the nature of this necessity for you?

As a Lecturer of African Studies and International Development at the University of Edinburgh, UK whose parents and most of siblings live in Senegal, keeping links with my intellectual networks in Africa is very important to me.  That is why I am very pleased to be affiliated with the Mandela School of Public Governance, University of Cape Town, South Africa.

When it comes to decolonisation, this location offers many possibilities but also comes with self-awareness about my privileges, and questions about how to produce knowledge and who this knowledge serves and is accessible to. The idea of decolonisation is and is certainly as Kathryn Toure recently reminded us in her summary of the last African Studies of Africa Conference (held in Cape Town in April 2022). My all-time favourite quote on Decolonisation is by Nigerian feminist for whom producing theory in cross or multi-cultural context poses several questions: these are  鈥榯he question of provenance (where is the theory coming from?); the question of subjectivity (who authorises it?); the question of positionality (which specific locations and standing [social, political, and intellectual] does it legitimise?鈥�. These are apt questions that feminist scholars such as , , and journals/initiatives such as , , , or ,  share constant reflections on , and warn us against extractive and racist dynamics in scholarship on Africa.

Therefore, it is very crucial for me in teaching and researching social and economic transformations to pay specific attention to questions of 鈥渉ow we know鈥� about 鈥渙thers鈥� (who are these others?), how do we disseminate what we know, and how we also teach and train students in African Studies and International Development. These are some of main questions  my University of Edinburgh colleague Ann Zuntz and I ask in this for instance, and to which colleagues such as , , , and made a very remarkable at an event I co-organised on Decolonising Development for the launch of the eponym Development Studies Association (DSA UK) Study Group.

I believe it is crucial to be honest about who our audiences (or publics) are when we produce knowledge in African and Development Studies. This should not be an afterthought. Therefore, whenever possible, I try to be a facilitator, or a mediator interested in co-producing 鈥榢nowledge with鈥� , or creating a table for other early-careers scholars like me. This was a case at the European conference of African studies when I hosted a double panel on African feminisms, that was the case for our 2019 Dakar Symposium on Agrarian Change, Food Security, Migration and Sustainable Development which led to a , and this also guided our panel on at the forthcoming International Association of Feminist Economics conference in Geneva at the end of June. Multilingualism and translation are key to any serious decolonial project in my opinion to reach the primary / or more diverse audiences rather than often already privileged social categories. This was the motivation behind the translation of our Talking back interview series into a in French published by Presence Africaine in 2021. And this reminds me of something you said when Fran莽oise Moudouthe and I Lyn: 鈥榠t is in the locations where one spends most of their time that education takes place. The academy is a miniscule part of those locations. Meaning that even as we challenge the curricula within the academy, we must pay attention to the voices, practices and struggles beyond it (or cynically, marginal to it).鈥�

Lyn: What radical acts of self-care do you practice? I am thinking here too, of something that preoccupies me more lately – of care in a world that is pervasively ableist and narrow in its constructions of what care needs are for different people.

In Senegal and in most African cultures, the self is inclusive of the community one belongs to (or one was invited to). So for me self-care happens both at an individual and at a collective level. At the individual level, as an introvert I enjoy spending time alone, reading or gardening, or with loved ones, in nature or near the sea. Sometimes I love inviting people into our home and to gather around a meal (I love cooking my own food). I also enjoy connecting with others in person or on social media (but I need to take long breaks away from the online space to recharge). Collectively, I enjoy being part of collaborative projects that serve a bigger purpose in my academic and personal communities. I have a chronic illness and recently found out that I am neurodivergent so I have developed some useful routines and coping mechanisms such as meditation, journaling and writing.

Lyn: I would like to end on a somewhat philosophical note: what do consider to be the most important question(s) confronting African feminism at present?

I think any definitive response to this very large question risks being incomplete, or worse, sound pedantic because it is a question only African feminists can collectively respond to (maybe time to revisit that Jessica Horn historicises so beautifully ?) . However, from the many interviews I have had with African feminists over the past two years, I believe the questions of freedom and liberation for all, the right to be and to thrive, self and collective care, decolonisation (as in: freedom to think about/ and own the meaning and the means of organising, dreaming and loving),  are some that are quite important. There are certainly many others, but these are some that I believe are crucial. This is illustrated by two things you responded to me in 2019 when I asked you this question in relation to African feminist research.  You first said that 鈥榯here is actually nothing of importance that feminist academics are not already critically engaging and interrogating鈥� but that there was a need that 鈥榳hatever questions we prioritise, must emerge organically from below鈥�. You also said that it was so crucial for Black and queer women to 鈥榮tand in their power鈥� because: 鈥榳e cannot keep fighting simply in order to survive. Our struggles are meaningless and certainly not revolutionary if they don鈥檛 also offer us the serious possibility to thrive as human beings鈥�. I think this is beautiful, so please allow me to leave our readers with these two quotes of yours. Thank you Lyn.

Lyn Ossome is Associate Professor of Political Studies at the Political Studies Dept, School of Social Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa.

is Lecturer in African Studies and International Development at the Centre of African Studies, School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh, UK  and is affiliated with the Mandela School of Public Governance, University of Cape Town, South Africa.