Katharine McKinnon

Postdevelopment, Professionalism, and the Politics of Participation

Abstract Development is a project of hope, guided by the aspiration for greater social justice and emancipation of the poor and disadvantaged in the world. Over the past decade postdevelopment critics have argued that this project of hope has failed, and, instead of creating a fairer world, development can only serve to perpetuate uneven power relationships. Emerging work by postdevelopment authors reinvigorates the positive promise of development as a project toward emancipation and social justice. Discursive practices of development professionals in northern Thailand illustrate how one might conceive of a postdevelopment practice in which aspirations toward social justice and emancipation can coexist alongside the messy realities of development work. Drawing on contemporary discourse theory, Ernesto Laclaus conceptualization of hegemonic struggle provides conceptual tools for thinking beyond the bind of development-as-power. Using hegemony to reimagine development as first and foremost a form of political engagement it becomes possible to imagine viable postdevelopment approaches and strategies.

Social enterprise and wellbeing in community life

Purpose This paper aims to explore the well-being impacts of social enterprise, beyond a social enterprise per se, in everyday community life. Design/methodology/approach An exploratory case study was used. The study’s underpinning theory is from relational geography, including Spaces of Wellbeing Theory and therapeutic assemblage. These theories underpin data collection methods. Nine social enterprise participants were engaged in mental mapping and walking interviews. Four other informants with “boundary-spanning” roles involving knowledge of the social enterprise and the community were interviewed. Data were managed using NVivo, and analysed thematically. Findings Well-being realised from “being inside” a social enterprise organisation was further developed for participants, in the community, through positive interactions with people, material objects, stories and performances of well-being that occurred in everyday community life. Boundary spanning community members had roles in referring participants to social enterprise, mediating between participants and structures of community life and normalising social enterprise in the community. They also gained benefit from social enterprise involvement. Originality/value This paper uses relational geography and aligned methods to reveal the intricate connections between social enterprise and well-being realisation in community life. There is potential to pursue this research on a larger scale to provide needed evidence about how well-being is realised in social enterprises and then extends into communities.

(Im)Mobilization and hegemony: ‘hill tribe’ subjects and the ‘Thai’ state

In the mountains of northern Thailand the constraints and restrictions placed upon ‘hill tribe’ people and their bodies are often counter-posed to a legendary past where people could move freely across borders, where refuge in the mountains represented freedom from oppressive state powers, and where highlanders could come down from the mountains and integrate. This paper explores how highland subjects have been transformed as the emergence of the Thai state has imposed concrete and regulated boundaries demarcating Thailand, and a Thai people. Building on historical narratives in which the freedoms of the past are counterpoised with the closely governed present, I present a more complex and contradictory picture of the national subjects in Thailand. I discuss the citizenship movement, in which activists have been fighting for citizenship status for highlanders through a strategy that seeks a place for highland people within hegemonic discourses of the nation-state and belonging. The citizenship movement establishes a new ‘Thai hill tribe’ subject position, formed in opposition to its constitutive outside—the ‘non-Thai hill tribe’. And as highlanders find new ways to fit with the hegemony of the nation-state, both more fixed and more mobile subject positions open up as Thai-ness and its ‘others’ are redefined.

Gender equality and economic empowerment in the Solomon Islands and Fiji: a place-based approach

Abstract The economic empowerment of women is emerging as a core focus of both economic development and gender equality programmes internationally. At the same time, there is increasing importance placed on measuring outcomes and quantifying progress towards gender and development goals. These trends raise significant questions around how well gender differences are understood, especially in economies dominated by the informal sector and characterised by a highly gendered division of labour, as is the case in many Pacific countries. How well do existing international and national indicators of gender equality reflect the experiences and aspirations of Pacific women and men? What do concepts such as gender equality and economic empowerment mean in this geographical context? How might local attitudes and practices be identified and measured? In this paper, we draw on Boaventura De Sousa Santos’ call to recognise and value knowledges of the majority world that have been rendered either largely invisible or non-credible by mainstream development and human rights policy agendas. Reflecting on an action research project conducted with partner organisations in Fiji and the Solomon islands, we explore a more nuanced place-based approach to understanding and measuring gender equality and economic empowerment. This approach takes account of diverse economic practices, such as non-market transactions, and forms of non-cash exchange and unpaid labour, and recognises the imbalance in women’s and men’s household and care work.

Naked scholarship: prefiguring a new world through uncertain development geographies

A favourite pastime for development scholars and practitioners is to critique the apparent failures of development assistance. This paper explores how critique might be better harnessed for productive efforts in development scholarship, using academic practice in the classroom and beyond to foster new possibilities. In this commentary, I consider whether rethinking how ‘we’ development geographers position ourselves as voices of authority in the world could be one place to begin.

A different kind of difference: Knowledge, politics and being Antipodean

This commentary explores the implications of identifying an Antipodean economic geography distinct from an apparent Anglo-American hegemony. I explore Wray et al.’s (2013) proposal that there is a different kind of ‘edginess’ to the work produced by those on the underside of the world. Using an example from fieldwork in the highlands of northern Thailand, I suggest that identifying with perspectives of the so-called periphery, and striving to see those perspectives as, in fact, central is a crucial part of critical knowledge production.

The diverse economy: feminism, Capitalocentrism and postcapitalist futures

Feminist economic geography has been a rich site for exploring issues of political economy and gender. In this chapter the authors explore the contributions of feminist economic geographers to rethinking economy. Diverse economies thinking reveals diversity in existing economic practices, broadening our view of what is important and viable economic activity. This includes recognizing and valuing care work and the household, and recognizing diversity in forms of economic transactions, labour and enterprise through which people around the world secure their livelihoods. Alternative markets, unpaid work and noncapitalist enterprises all come into view as vital parts of our economy. Community economies scholarship begins by rethinking ‘the economy’ and the discourses that shape expectations of how globalization and capitalism function. Building on the work of J.K. Gibson-Graham, the diverse economies framework informs the work of others in the ‘Community Economies Collective’ and the ‘Community Economies Research Network’.