Institute of Development Studies

Participation Research - Radical Histories of Aid: Seminar 1: Post-Colonial Perspectives

• Dates: 4 October 2007
• Time: 9:00 to 17:00
• Location: IDPM, Manchester

Seminar 1: 4th October 2007

The first seminar in the Critical Research, Social Justice and International Aid series, held at IDPM, Manchester in October 2007, discussed how political and social history is a shaper of current aid relations through exploring studies relating to the Former Soviet Union, the Caribbean, China (and the history of its aid to Africa), and Palestine. The seminar discussed how donors’ pre-occupations are derived from long term historical and unquestioned framings, for example the taken-for-granted approach to the nation state as a unit of analysis which informs what aid does, where it does it and who it does it upon. These framings and associated labelling of categories of people, when linked to strategic intention, amplify the power effects of asymmetrical relations, including those of race and gender. The seminar asked, how can we have a truly post-colonial relationship to transform these kinds of inequalities?

Yet, at the same time, participants wondered whether post-colonial theory can only take the analysis so far because it fails to sufficiently illuminate the contradictions and new alliances that are part of current longer term political processes, including state formation. Nevertheless, even when such a proposition, there remains the question of how international aid practices and peculiarities are both shaped by and are a shaper of historical trends.

To explore such a question means considering not only what is going on within aid relations and wider society in the recipient countries but also to political and social trends back home in the donor countries. In that respect a key theme from the seminar is the impact on both givers and recipients of the idea of aid as possessing a moral purpose. ‘Doing good’ allows one to relieve the guilt of the past and to interfere in other people’s lives in the present. It creates an apolitical discourse which neutralises struggles for social justice, as in Palestine where aid has been used to cultivate ‘peaceful clients’.

When aid has a moral purpose, its reciprocal nature is that in return for the donor feeling good, the recipient obtains some material benefit. Conversely, aid explicitly based on an economically contractual relationship in which each party is understood to benefit from the deal - as with current Chinese aid to Africa - may be underpinned by a historical discourse of moral purpose, in this case anti-imperialist solidarity, that can serve as a smoke screen for what some are alleging is a new form of colonialism.

The seminar concluded that the focus of the series on social justice requires looking at the conditions in which aid works for and against social justice and that this should be a central theme in subsequent seminars.

Speakers

• Islah Jad, Women's Studies Institute, Bir Zeit University
• Giles Mohan, Development Policy and Practice Department, Open University
• Joy Moncrieffe, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex
• Marcus Power, Department of Geography, University of Durham 
• Olga Zubkovskaya, Department of Gender Studies, Central European University