Alternatives to ‘development’? Exploring counter‐hegemonic practices (with)in politics, economies and knowledges

Postdevelopment (PD) proponents have long called for alternatives to ‘development’ as a counter to the logics and impact of Eurocentrism, coloniality and the uncritical belief in euro-modernist ideologies of progress and growth, all of which come to be subsumed as ‘development.’ The question is whether we can think of alternatives to hegemonic models of the economy, politics and knowledge whilst living and being entangled in, through and with them. This paper sets out to examine concrete social and political practices that can be understood as resistances, i.e. counter-hegemonic alternatives, to the hegemonic model proclaimed as universal. The approach of the paper is to explore practices from different geographical contexts within politics, economies and knowledge. Rather than reiterating binaries of a noble and pure non-modern, non-Western, traditional way of life versus the destructiveness and coloniality of the industrialized West, the paper seeks to uncover what makes practices hegemonic, what are possible alternatives and how they relate to each other beyond the particularities of their contexts. The discussion concludes by cautioning of the danger of nationalist and exclusionary celebrations of the local, that rely both on the assumption of a homogenous local, but also on the delineation from the alleged Western enemy. The paper seeks to respond to the critique of vagueness in PD propositions and the scarcity of viable on-the-ground practices by highlighting how lived alternatives confront, contest and counter the assumed universality of ‘development.’