The Developer's Self: a non-deterministic Foucauldian frame

Morgan Brigg

Third World Quarterly, 2009, vol. 30, issue 8, 1411-1426

Abstract: Recent development studies literature has begun to consider the developer's self. This welcome enlargement of the field deserves to be deepened and extended by moving beyond opposition to post-development critics, and by articulating an explicit theoretical frame for examining developers' selves. By exploring Foucault's suggestion that modern approaches to knowledge and selfhood may be entwined through developmentalism, this paper proposes a flexible and non-deterministic cultural–historical framework for considering developers' selves. Foucault's analyses of relations of power and subjectivity provide strategies for examining developers' selves, but this does not suggest that such selves can be read off the proposed framework. Examining developers' selves is necessarily a reflective ethical task, and one which requires engaging the external relations that constitute the self. Foucault provides valuable resources for this task, but there is also a need to extend upon and complement a Foucauldian approach. Pursuing our new-found interest in developers' selves by working through and beyond Foucault promises to open new professional futures and possibilities for development practice.

Date: 2009
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DOI: 10.1080/01436590903279208

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