Development in Decolonization: Walter Rodney, Third World Developmentalism, and “Decolonizing Political Theory”

Developmentalism is the idea that progress entails temporal movement of societies along a universal trajectory. Prevailing accounts conceptualize Eurocentric developmental discourses as ideological weapons imperial domination, specifically because they defer colonial claims to popular self-rule. Rejecting these historical entanglements exhaust meanings thought, this article sheds light on anticolonial debates over developmentalism. Turning Guyanese scholar-activist Walter Rodney, it reconstructs what I call “popular developmentalism,” way construing legitimation in actual contexts and postcolonial politics. From premise capitalist-imperialism “deflected” motion colonized societies, developmentalism places agencies progressive transformation with democratically empowered subjects. Shifting lens “decolonizing political theory” from epistemic critique worldly anticolonialism shows how became primary idiom for contesting reimagining futures. In turn, practices reshaped developmentalism’s very conceptual parameters.