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Masterarbeit
Burkina Faso Under the Presidency of Thomas Sankara – A Post-Developmental State ?
(2023-05)
Thomas Sankara, one of the most celebrated African idols, was president of Burkina Faso from 1983 until his assassination in 1987. The politics he realized with his government were vanguard in more than one regard: The country’s feminist politics queried patriarchy by promoting equal rights and duties for women and men in several different domains; along with the country’s citizens, migrants could participate in policy-making and thereby shape politics; redistribution was made a political goal aspiring to overcome ...
Dissertation
Reporting Power
(2024)
An eclectic genealogy (Foucault, 1977) that reconstructs the previous understanding and emergence of a ‘taken for granted’ global practice: the practice of suspicious activity reporting. A governance practice whereby financial institutions worldwide document and report the conduct of consumers deemed suspicious. At the center of this practice is a material artefact, a multipage fillable form called the Suspicious Activity Report. Following Actor-Network Theory (Latour, 1987), the form also serves as the centerpiece ...
Dissertation
Community-Based Associations and Rural Development in Rwanda: A Local Perspective on the Contribution of Social Capital to Human Capabilities
(2022)
The post-World War II political discourse around development has stimulated academic debates in recent decades. While some of these debates simply aim to transform the development mainstream, many others among the post-colonial thinkers are more critical of and even reject mainstream development ideologies. Despite the valuable academic debates, most development practitioners seem to have remained unresponsive to some of the allegations. Their concept is incorporated in much of the contemporary political narratives ...
Working paper
Re-reading Amartya Sen from the Andes: Exploring the Ethical contributions of Indigenous Philosophies
(2015)
Over the last decade, the calls for Buen Vivir (BV)/ Sumak Kawsay (SK) that have emerged from the Andes have prompted a revival of interest in the indigenous philosophies of the region and their contributions to alternative development thinking. Both in academic and policy discussions, there is an emphasis on recovering Indigenous forms of knowledge to devise alternative paths to development. Yet, given the conceptual ambiguity of discussions of development, these efforts often appear to have ‘blended’ with more ...
Working paper
Layers of Post-Development: De- and reconstructions in a world in which many worlds exist
(2021-02)
Post-Development as a critique of ‘development’ is almost as fuzzy and amoeba-shaped as the concept, discourse and practice it has long proclaimed as failed (Ziai 2015). While alternatives to ‘development’ have been called for, it remains unclear as to ‘alternatives to what?’ and ‘what kind of alternatives’ are in demand and by whom. The approach of this paper is to understand Post- Development as a set of theories, strategies and visions that all depart from a similar critique of ‘development’ as imperial and hegemonic ...
Working paper
In Search for a Decolonizing Actor: Contradictions Between Brazilian State Policies and Social Emancipation of Quilombolas
(2018)
This paper explores the articulations between the present social struggles of Quilombolas (Maroons’ descendants of those who escaped enslavement), state policies, coloniality and global inequality. Two case studies illustrate how the infiltration of global mining and overexploitation of eucalyptus have diminished natural resources in the region and encroached upon the land rights of black communities. This paper first provides a comprehensive review of the policy changes that paved the way for the recognition of the ...
Working paper
Bridging the postcolonial political-economy divide. Towards a Theoretical Framework.
(2020-04)
Points of contact between the postcolonial studies’ field of research and international political economy (IPE) are rare. On the one hand, one can note a reluctance in postcolonial scholarship to open up for economic analysis. On the other hand, IPE literature has been somewhat resistant to take up the postcolonial critique. This paper offers an interdisciplinary approach by merging the two discrete disciplines on poststructuralist grounds, suggesting principles for a postcolonial-political economy approach and ...
Working paper
Ambivalences of decentralized renewable energies – Towards self-determination or reproduction of postcolonial power relations?
(2023-06)
The United Nations proclaimed the years between 2014 and 2024 to be the Decade of Sustainable Energy for All, and the SDG 7 emphasizes the necessity of universal energy access. Development policies increasingly see decentralised supply structures as a viable solution to achieve that goal. From a postcolonial perspective however, it is also relevant whether renewable decentralized en- ergies enable more local control and reduce dependency relations. Technology critics in the ‘70s and ‘80s saw this potential. In the ...
Working paper
Mutations of globalisation and local actors’ agency: phenomena of the Social and Solidarity Economy in Uganda’s Busoga region
(2022-02)
This paper examines transformations occurring in everyday life in Uganda’s Busoga region as a result of globalisation and the population’s responses to its manifestations. This is done with special emphasis on alternative economic practices, which can be classified as activities of the Social and Solidarity Economy. In the course of this study, several such practices have been encountered and turned out to be in a complex relationship with globalisation. A combination of postcolonial theory, the Post-Development ...