Development Discourse and Global History: From colonialism to the sustainable development goals

Within this framework, the aim of the book is to analyze the discourse of international development organizations by studying their reports and projects from two Foucauldian-inspired perspectives: archeology and genealogy. Archeology refers to the systematic study of regularities in discourse production. In chapters 3-6, Ziai claims that development broke with the colonial discourse in several ways. For instance, it focuses on nation states and no longer overtly speaks of racism. Nevertheless, it also Post-development researchers advocate the end of international development because they understand it as a tool of domination of the Global North over the Global South. How do they arrive to this Manichaean assessment? Generally, researchers in this tradition employ discourse analysis to unveil power relations implied in concepts frequently used in the development industry, such as sustainable development. At first sight, these concepts are quite broad and positive. However, post-development researchers assert that, upon closer scrutiny, other not-soSamaritan patterns emerge.