Episode 1: Decolonization is not a Metaphor
As Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang teach us, decolonization is not a metaphor. It is a political project.
Tune in to hear how the overuse and misuse of the term “decolonization” in the development sector needs to be questioned and how Frantz Fanon and Amílcar Cabral can be role models for development workers.
Links we refer to:
Intro to Political Economy Podcast with Noaman Ali
Decolonization is not a Metaphor by Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang
Transcript
Safa: Hello and welcome back to the Rethinking Development Podcast. Normally at this point, I would say: My name is Safa and I'm your host - but for our fifth season, that's no longer accurate anymore, because we are trying something new and this time around I have a co-host with me! I'd like to welcome Noaman Ali. Some of you may know Noaman as a guest that we had from season three. And at that time, I think we didn't really mention that Noaman is a podcast creator and host himself and he has a podcast called “Intro to Political Economy”. And so for this fifth season of Rethinking Development, we thought that we would try something new, and instead of me just interviewing different people every episode, it'll be a conversation between Noaman and I, thinking through some of the critical issues or themes or trends or topics that we're both interested in, in the context of rethinking development. So Noaman - welcome back. Thank you so much for joining me and being here.
Noaman: Thank you so much Safa. Grateful for the opportunity and I'm excited. And yeah, let's do this. Let's figure this out.
Safa: Yeah, absolutely. I'm excited to. Do you want to, in your own words, introduce yourself or say a few things about your background before we get more into the conversation?
Noaman: Sure, yeah. My name is Noaman Ali, as I think we've said a few times. I'm an Assistant Professor of Political Economy at the Lahore University of Management Sciences, which is in Pakistan. And so a lot of the stuff that I teach has to do with development, what do we mean by it? How are we supposed to even achieve it? How do we achieve it, and mostly thinking about that in the context, of course, of Pakistan, but also more globally. I think that's a very - that's a brief way of putting it.
Safa: Yeah, and I encourage everyone to definitely check out “Intro to Political Economy” to learn more about the type of conversations Noaman has already been facilitating and having with a variety of different stakeholders and interesting people in this sector and beyond. So Noaman and I were thinking kind of what should we start this season with. And one of the topics that really stood out was something that we've been noticing, and probably all of you out there listening, have also been noticing - which is the overuse or misuse of the term decolonization in the development sector, in the work that we do and the conversations we're having more and more these days. There’s just so many places where the word decolonization or decolonizing development or decolonizing development studies is used - all types of contexts in which the word comes up. We wanted to bring attention to what do we mean when we say this? What should we maybe be saying instead? And what is the context and history around this word? So getting right into it, Noaman, can you maybe tell us a bit about how you've seen this word or phrase come up more and more frequently over the maybe past few years?
Noaman: For me, there is I guess two big ways that this has come up, in terms of development. One is just in the academic discussion and debate around concepts like decoloniality, modernity, and coloniality, which scholars like Walter Manolo I think are kind of standard bearers of that. But the other context then is in looking at this kind of out in the world, in terms of, let's say, social movements, which is one part of it, talking about decolonizing universities, decolonizing certain practices - or just decolonizing in general. And then there's NGOs or development sector professionals who are talking about decolonizing, as well. So that's actually three things. So there's, there's different ways in which the term is mobilized by different people - academics, social movement activists and organizers, and then you've got practitioners, professionals, who are in the development sector. And of course, there's many other ways, you know, some people talk about decolonizing yoga, for example, and I haven't really wrapped my head around that. But I think these are the three kind of main ways that it stands out for me. But they're obviously all of these three things are related - because the ideas are coming from different places, and they're, they're interrelated and they're interchanging. And so I'm kind of curious about your experience with this Safa, especially I think because of a lot of work that you do in the development sector, how are you contending with the concept of decolonization? Where does it come up in the stuff that you're doing?
Safa: Yeah, I think in the context of the work I've done, or the experiences I've had - I’ve just had this observation and frustration that people are using it so lightly - without a real consideration, or acknowledgement or understanding or respect for the history of the word - and it takes me to this article written by Eve Tuck and Wayne Yang, entitled “Decolonization is not a Metaphor” - and they are academics who specifically talked about and through about how "decolonization is not a metaphor", and they were referring to it in the context of education systems in the United States. But there is a lot that we can learn from their work in terms of being careful about what we mean and meaning what we say. Because from my experiences in the sector, a lot of the time when people in the sector use the word, they are using it as sort of a blanket statement to mean or refer to basically anything that has anything to do with ‘improving the sector’. So sometimes they say it and what they actually mean is we need to be more anti racist, or we need to , you know, invest in DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion, or let's think about localization and how our organization can move towards that agenda. All of these issues that they use decolonization to address, but they are doing so or using it in a way that is either not appropriate or correct. If I were to share a specific example, I remember a time when I was in a meeting with a senior manager of a well known organization in the sector, and in the context of another conversation, he started to say : oh, you know, this movement towards decolonizing development - and as he said it, you know, he was kind of having a hard time even pronouncing the word. And the only reason I say that, is just as a way to share that he seemed to be not very familiar with the term, or uncomfortable with using it, he maybe hadn't said it out loud much before. And anyway, what he was saying is that: yes, this whole movement, I feel that our organization is kind of exempt from it, because the history of our organization is that we began with offices in the quote, unquote, global south, and our global north offices came much later. So I feel that that puts us in a different position. And you know, decolonizing development doesn't apply to our organization - basically saying that he felt that his organization was exempt from having to decolonize. So these type of experiences Noaman.
Noaman: That's super interesting. I mean, even the idea that just because you've started an organization in the global south, it's exempt from what it means to decolonize, was arguably what a lot of people would argue is kind of colonial thinking. But we can get into that in a second. So that's one way that you've described about how this is used. I remember reading a report about decolonizing the development sector several months ago, I think I shared that on Twitter, as well. And it was exactly as you said, it wasn't wasn't really engaging with what does colonialism mean? What does anti colonialism or decolonialization mean? It was really talking about diversity and equity in the development sector. And it was saying, look, the problem is, you know, not enough NGOs are not enough organizations are hiring enough people of color. And in order to decolonize we're gonna have to hire more people of color. Now, that may be a good thing, more diversity and equity is good. And of course, we need that. But that's not decolonization. That might be a part of a process of decolonization, which is a larger question, but that's not decolonization. And I think that should lead us, I guess, into asking well what do we mean, what do you think is meant then? What do you think is a predominant definition of decolonization? Is it just just anything goes, as you said? Or is there some kind of underlying thread that ties all of this together in terms of what decolonization might mean?
Safa: Yeah, I think that's so important to think about, especially considering that we all operate in different countries, different contexts and histories. For example in the history of Canada, which is where I'm based right now, the history of calls for decolonization is very specific to the settler, nation state project of Canada. Whereas if someone is based in another country, they have a specific historical relationship to that word. But referring back to that article I mentioned earlier by Eve Tuck and Wayne Yang, I think the point that comes across, is that when we say decolonization is not a metaphor, we're very specific about what it means in terms of land back, Indigenous sovereignty and reparations. And this process of Indigenization, which in the context of Canada, maybe more people are familiar with it. So again, decolonization is not a catch all phrase that you can just throw about every time you talk about something you want to improve. It has a very particular politics and meaning behind it, whether that is in terms of reparations or land back and sovereignty for Indigenous peoples or other issues.
Noaman: Yeah, definitely. I mean, in the Canadian context, that's for sure. And arguably, that's, that's everywhere. And I think maybe, you know, the way to get into this is then to talk a little bit about why those things are so important- things you just mentioned, land back, and Indigenous sovereignty, amongst other things. And how does colonialism impact development in the first place? Anybody who wants to talk about decolonization - you can't talk about it without first talking about colonization. That's the first part. The second part is then to ask: okay, what are the implications of colonialism? What are the implications of colonization, that's where we can have all kinds of debates. But the very first thing that we need to recognize, and I think most of us do it implicitly, but maybe not explicitly, is, look, we're talking about the very idea of development, the very concept we have, that there is under development or undevelopment, or so called low income countries, or developing countries, however you want to call it, that history is rooted in the fact that most of what we call, quote, unquote, developing countries or the third world, were colonized. And they were colonized by Europeans, by en large, and, of course, North Americans and the Japanese as well. And these are the kind of three major regions that were exercising colonialism. Now, there's been imperialism and territorial conquest in the past. So there's something about this form of colonialism, which arguably begins in 1492, when the Europeans started their conquest of the Americas, that sets it apart from previous forms of territorial acquisition. And a lot of that has to do with just totally restructuring the economies of the global south, totally restructuring the politics of the global south or what we now call the global south. And very importantly, for a lot of people who now are talking about decoloniality and coloniality - it's not just about structuring economies, you know, like stealing resources, and restructuring class structures and kidnapping people and turning them into slaves. And then in North America, and also in South America, but also in many parts of Africa and other parts of the world, just openly committing genocide, and just mass murder, all of that is part of it. But you're also killing certain forms of knowledge, you're also twisting certain ways of knowing the world, and you are imposing very Eurocentric or Western dominated ways of understanding the world. So I think those three things, minimally, those three things are very important, right? So restructuring economies and societies, how people live with each other, restructuring politics, so who's in control, how things are controlled, and then reshaping even the forms of knowledge that we have about the world that's around us. How do we even think about the world? Those three things or those three aspects, amongst other aspects, are extremely important. And that's where we, we start with a question of colonialism. So then the next question is, okay, then is that how the development sector actually understands colonialism? Or its implications? And are those the kinds of assumptions that are informing people practicing development when they're going into it?
Safa: I think the restructuring that happened, as you say, and they way that has echoed to the present day. I guess every organization has their own starting point or understanding or lack of understanding of the history of colonialism in the countries they operate in and the ramifications to the present day. So if we are really trying to move away from that and challenge it, there is a lot of work to be done. And I think this brings up another issue, which we spoke about last time I believe, and just generally its a common issue - which is this reality in the sector where a lot of the times, when organizations or individuals use these words, it's more so coming from a place of performance or concern about their image, or concern about how they appear to be working versus how they actually are working. But if they are saying let’s decolonize the way we work, what does that actually mean for how they have to restructure their organization, their programming, their relationships, their funding, all of that - all those layers.
Noaman: Oh, that that's that, yeah, I'm looking for, I'm searching for a metaphor or some kind of simile. It's kind of like saying, as somebody who identifies as a man I'll say this, a lot of men will say, and probably myself included, we'll talk about feminism and wanting to be better allies to women. And there's a whole set of performances that we can do, and that we do do, in order to try and present ourselves as feminists and a lot of is performative. It might be saying the right things in the right situation, acting the right way in the right situation. But whether or not that actually changes things substantially in terms of how we live our lives, do we live our lives in an equitable way with the women in our lives? Are we thinking about our habits, the ways that we approach people in different kinds of relationships, especially women and people who identify as women or people who are maybe gender nonconforming in different ways? Are we actually relating to them in really meaningful ways? And are we also relating to other men in ways that actually changes the way that other men act? So that's, that's kind of maybe a, an analogy here. I think that the trick when it comes to a lot of development sector, NGOs, so on and so forth, is do you have a consistent definition of decolonization? And that goes back to the stuff I was saying about colonialism and colonization, if we understand colonialism to be the restructuring of economies, to be the restructuring of societies, of political systems and of knowledge systems, then what exactly is the development sector doing to contest that? Or is the development sector continuing that? Because the thing is, you know, starting in the 1910s, 20s, 30s, 40s, there are these decolonization movements in the third world, in the colonized nations who want to liberate their economies and their politics, right. I think Kwame Nkrumah who was the first kind of post colonial leader of Ghana, he said: Seek ye first the political kingdom - grab the the politics, take it away from the hands of the Europeans or the Japanese so that you can then determine the shape that your economy is going to take. But then soon, Kwame Nkrumah was like hold on a second, there's something here called neocolonialism. That is, even though we have liberated the political structures of our society, the economic structures of our society are still very much under the control of the global north, of the European countries, of the Japanese, of the Americans. And what is it going to take to liberate those economies? And I think that is very much an unfinished project. But then the third critique that comes lately from scholars of decoloniality is that even the way that decolonizing movements thought about what it would take to overcome the economic neocolonialism, that was so in and of itself informed by Western ways of thinking. It was in and of itself informed by European ways of thinking, so that we couldn't escape that. And so what we got to do is decolonize our knowledge now - the way that we think about the world is something that has to be decolonized. But what role do NGOs and what role does the development sector play in this? And a lot of people have argued that actually the role of NGOs in the development sector, sorry to say, is not to liberate third world countries from first world countries, it's in fact to perpetuate the subordination of third world countries to first world countries, whether that's in terms of economics, politics, or knowledge systems. And in fact, we can see that it's all three. And if that's the case, then what amount of diversity and equity initiatives, what amount of using the right words, what amount of you know, incorporating indigenous knowledges changes your central mission, if your central mission is: we're going to take money from the global north, and we're going to invest it in certain kinds of projects that are ultimately going to end up perpetuating the economics, the politics and the knowledge systems that constitute what I would argue is neocolonialism.
Safa: Absolutely - and when organizations or leaders individuals are not anchoring their statements into a clear politics of liberation - when they're just using these words, but they’re actually also trying to maintain a politics of liberalism or white saviorism or other things, when their politics basically don't align with their principles, with their statements, that's where we have all these come up, these issues of using words that you don't mean, performative actions, all of this. Because a lot of organizations struggle, I think, with having to work with partners or funders or governments or a variety of actors, in a way that forces them to maintain kind of a politics of neutrality. And what does that mean? That means that they are not really into the politics of decolonization or the ideals and values that feed into that, and the actions that it implies. And I think that also related to what we were saying earlier in terms of the discrepancy between statements and policies versus actions and real, genuine, sincere commitment to decolonization. For example, this reminds me of a time about a year ago, probably at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, where all these questions about anti racism were coming up in the development sector. And at that time, I was in a meeting at one time, and the director of a organization was there - and the person was saying: Oh, you know, thank god, because we have an anti-oppression policy from last year, you know, its on our website, we've had this from last year, so we’re good right, we’re good (laughs). And I see you’re laughing and I was also internally rolling my eyes that, you know, thinking that these are the things these organizations and leaders are concerned about. And so yeah, Noaman what do you think of that?
Noaman: I mean, yeah, it's like, wow - how do you -what you're describing sounds more like let's cover our bases. Oh, shoot, you know, the people are revolting. The African Americans, the black people of the United States are revolting. But hey, guess what, we already covered that in our anti oppression policy. It's like, look, the problem of racial oppression in the United States is so deep, that it's not going to take a few like anti oppression policies, its not how you fix it. More positions for black people, or people of color in universities and in NGOs, is not how you fix it. Right? The problem of racial tension, I won't call it tension, it's subjugation, it is a form of - it's such a deep and penetrating question, it goes right to the very root of what the United States is. The United States is a country that's built on genocide of Indigenous people. It's built on the enslavement of millions of African people. And it's not just that that's where it was built. The continuous operation of the United States was entirely based on creating and then recreating, and then recreating the concept of whiteness. And the concept of whiteness was not simply about like, what you look like, or the kind of language you speak. But it's also a class question. It's also a question about the distribution of resources. It's about the distribution of wealth and income. It's about what kind of labor are even women, you know, black women versus white women doing. So in that, if your response to that is simply, hey, we're going to hire some black people and give them nice middle class jobs, or we're going to hire some black people and make them university professors. Again, as I said, that's a necessary step. That might be part of it. But that is nowhere near what is necessary - and what's necessary in the United States, like the decrepitude of the United States, I want to say this very clearly is on display right now, what happened over the last few weeks in Afghanistan. If after seeing that - after seeing that for 20 years, the United States was in Afghanistan for 20 years, they launched a war that killed over 200,000 people in Afghanistan and Pakistan. You know, in Pakistan, at least 65,000 people were killed, in Afghanistan, over 170,000 people were killed. And we don't even know if those figures are probably under estimates. Right. So racism is not simply a problem within the United States. It is a problem of what the United States exports and does everywhere else in the world. And for 20 years they were in Afghanistan and the left it pretty much where they took it. Right. And they did it in a way that didn't diminish the Taliban, but actually emboldened them and made them stronger than they were before, arguably. So what it says is that there's something so rotten about the United States as a country, as a place, that internally it is dependent on the ongoing genocide and subjugation of black people and externally, its functioning is dependent on destroying countries like Iraq, like Libya, like Afghanistan - and your response to that is anti oppression?Your response to that is diversity and equity? Your response to that is let's hire some Muslim in universities, let's have some, let's take some Afghan refugees? That is like the bare minimum that you can do. An actual process of decolonization would be let us restructure this country from the root. Right. There's some good things about the United States - the concept of republicanism that we shouldn't have monarchs. That's great. That's awesome. But that was a republicanism that was a liberal republicanism for the rich, for the wealthy, for property owners and for white people. You know, Malcolm X talks about this, you listen to Malcolm X when he's talking about the United States, he says: you need a revolution, you need revolution on every level, economic, social, cultural, political revolution in the United States. That is what decolonization in the United States minimally looks like. As you said, giving the land back to the Indigenous people - not doing land acknowledgments like we do in Canada like, oh, this land used to belong to the Mississauga nation. What does that mean in terms of repairing, reparation? Nothing, it's an acknowledgement. I can acknowledge your suffering. And you know, high five, I'm so cool, I'm an ally, I acknowledge the suffering of people. I'm so annoyed with land acknowledgments. And I'm not Indigenous - I'm just a person who's looking at this from the perspective of what does it mean to decolonize? What I want is for that land to be restored to the sovereignty of the Indigenous people. And that means a fundamental revolution in the United States, a fundamental revolution in Canada. How do we take this structure of thinking to Pakistan? What would it mean to decolonize Pakistan? Well, arguably Pakistan is already decolonized, because we got our independence in 1947. Sure, but you know, there's a rapper, his name is Immortal Technique, and he says: you may have a black president, but you don't control the economy. Right, that President doesn't, doesn't control the economy. So we have black presidents, we have brown presidents in Pakistan, they don't control the economy. The economy of Pakistan is deeply controlled by the United States, by China, by Saudi Arabia, by all these different countries. So are we actually decolonized? And what manner of like anti oppressive policies in a development sector, in an NGO in Pakistan is going to solve that problem? I'm not even sure that it's possible for the development sector to meaningfully take part in a process of decolonization, if we're not tackling the fact that that means revolution. That means like such a systematic revolution, that it would just up chuck everything, right.
Safa: Yeah, absolutely. It sounds so clear when you say it but its something that I think so few organizations or individuals really think of or admit to when they use the word decolonization. But maybe taking it back to the everyday concerns of our audience, who are practitioners, and who have this question of: well, I'm within the sector, right, this is my livelihood. This is what I've trained to do, what I've been doing for a long time, this is how I earn my paycheck. How do I grapple with this, or contribute to or really commit myself, invest myself into a movement of decolonization in the sector and outside? What does that mean for me? If we were to, you know, locate this into a specific country example, like in Pakistan, are there any thoughts you would have to share in terms of practitioners, whether they are international staff or national staff, working in Pakistan for example, what are some of the things that might be helpful for them to think through?
Noaman: So I mean, Pakistan is a great thing to talk about, I have a couple of friends, Kasim Tirmizey and Shozab Raza, who work on agrarian questions alongside myself, and one thing that we've been thinking about is the question of land that we just discussed in the context of Canada and the United States, where land was very clearly stolen from Indigenous people and put in the hands of, you know, white settlers. It's not, it's not exactly all that different in Pakistan, either. It's a very different context. It's still a country in which like, 40% of the economically active population or you know, people who work, are working in the agricultural sector. So despite what we might call, quote, unquote, modernization of the economy with the industry and services, agriculture doesn't contribute that much to the GDP, but it's still employing so many people. And it's a highly unequal distribution of land ownership. And that highly unequal distribution of land ownership is a direct consequence of colonialism, of literally millions of acres of land that were stolen from Indigenous peoples, and put into the hands of - well the province of Punjab in Pakistan, Western Punjab - most of the Punjabis who live there haven't been there for more than about 100 years. And that's because that land, the Indigenous people of that land, were mainly you know, semi nomadic people who used to farm along the rivers. And the rest of the time they would be taking cattle around. And the British took the rivers, they built canals, and they invited people from Eastern Punjab to come and populate that. So what we have in western Punjab is literally a settler economy. It's a settler colonial economy, some friends were pointing that out. Not only that, but the land was allocated in those places, but also in many other places in Pakistan, where, you know, you didn't necessarily have that kind of migratory settler thing. And that land was given to these landlords, who were these loyal people to the British. So colonialism is, is there now, just because the British left doesn't mean that those colonial institutions and structures of land ownership - for example, I was mentioning the domination of foreign economies over Pakistan. So what would decolonization in Pakistan actually look like? Minimally it would mean land back. It would mean that land be redistributed in a rational way, in a way that's egalitarian. We don't have that in Pakistan. And the development sector doesn't talk about it. So there's a couple of scholars one of them is Jan Bremen, who has worked a lot on on India. And he was working with somebody else, whose name I forget, and they were hired by the Asian Development Bank, in the Pakistan province of Sind, they said, you know, what is the most effective pro poor intervention that we can make? And so these two scholars, they go to Sind, they check it out, and they're like, well guess what - the most pro poor intervention that you could make is land redistribution. Its to take the land away from these powerful landlords and make an egalitarian distribution of it. Because the landlord's also had, like literally, they had, and they still have private jails, where they can imprison people they don't like or, you know, their workers. A lot of people who are working for these very rich landowners are bonded labor, their indentured servitude, basically. So they're like, look, what we need to do - the most significant pro poor intervention - and you know what the Asian Development Bank did with their report, was they buried it. They said, no, no, no - that's out of the question. So if you're working in the Asian Development Bank, if you're a development practitioner, and when somebody comes to you and says, the thing that you can do, is this incredibly decolonial move, and you say, we're going to bury it, then how are you in that situation? You know the question that you asked about, like, what does it mean for development practitioners, two people come to my mind, who I think we should have as role models. And these are very crucial to decolonial studies today. One is Franz Fanon, who was a Martinique-an psychiatrists and the others Amilcar Cabral, who was from Guinea Bissau and he was an agronomist. So at that time, Portugal was controlling Guinea Bissau. And we'll talk about Fanon in a second - Portugal was controlling Guinea Bissau. So Amilcar Cabral is this very bright young man who's able to get scholarships to study in Portugal and France. And he does and he is hired as an agronomist, which is a development practitioner, he's thinking about agriculture, improving agriculture, about making it more efficient, making it better, making it - you know, all of those things that can increase productivity and create more profits for the colonial sector. And what Cabral does is he goes around Guinea Bissau, he makes studies of Guinea Bissau, and I think maybe other regions as well, I should go check the biography of Cabral. And he does these detailed studies of society in Guinea Bissau and that knowledge - you know, he went and he spoke to the people of Guinea Bissau. He understood the differences in different societies in Guinea Bissau and he used that knowledge to start a liberation struggle, literally an armed liberation struggle against the Portuguese colonizers. That's Amilcar Cabral. That's our example of a development practitioner. The next guy Fanon, he's working for the French colonial - so Martinique was a colony of France, it's still I think is a department of France, it's still part of France, technically. So he goes to France to study from Martinique, which is in the Caribbean, in the Western Hemisphere, goes to France, studies as a psychiatrist, and then he's working for the French colonial medical system in Algeria. And there Fanon is there as a doctor. So now imagine today that you're an NGO, you're working as a doctor in a NGO, especially in mental health. And he's talking to Algerian patients, and they have these traumas, you know, their minds have been screwed around with, and he's like: this is a consequence of colonialism. There's no amount of like CBT, you know, cognitive behavioural dialectical theory that I can give to an Algerian who has been tortured by the French, right? The trauma is the trauma of colonialism, the trauma isn't something that happened to him and his childhood as a kid. Like, that's also part of it. Because colonialism, screws us from the moments we're born and messes with the ways that we think, that's part of it. Hondo - 100%. Hondo is how we say 100% in Toronto slang, and many other people's slangs. But what Fanon does then is he sends a letter of resignation to the French, you know, Ministry of Health or whatever. And he says, I'm gonna go join the Algerian resistance. And that's what he does, he goes and he joins the National Liberation Front of Algeria. And he writes, you know, famously the Wretched of the Earth. And he's writing many other documents. So to me, those are like, the role models that we should have in terms of what it means to be development practitioners. These guys were in their own times and their own ways, they were development practitioners, and they were like, screw this, it doesn't make sense. I know that that's not necessarily what your audience may want to hear. Or that students of mine that I'm saying, go get a job in an NGO, go get a job in the development sector. I don't know that that's what you want to hear. Oh, cool. My options are either I am a functionary of neocolonialism, or I'm somebody who's fighting it. But I think that's the world we live in.
Safa: Yeah, thank you for sharing all those examples. I would love to read that ADB report that you're referring to -and as you say, I think the materiality of decolonization, like what we're talking about in terms of the material aspect of this process, the wealth, the land, the resources - of course the knowledge issues as one very important aspect, - but definitely the wealth and the land, particularly, they are both such a big part of what we should be considering, as you say, when we think about decolonization or what actions we could take that could more substantially and sincerely and effectively address or realize the goals of decolonization. So thinking of Fanon, for example, if he could see where we are right now in terms of the development sector - what do you think? What do you think he would say? Because he writes also a lot about how pervasive the colonial mentality is, and how we can also internalize these colonial ideals and apply them to ourselves? What do you think he might think of if he could see the state of affairs today in the sector at least?
Noaman: That's a really good question, because at that time, back in the 1960s, 50s, and 60s, when when Cabral and Fanon were operating, the NGO sector as we know it today didn't really exist. You did have development practitioners, right? So you had like UN organizations were around, and you had World Bank and IMF who were doing their things still. Those were the main directors of development policy. But this kind of proliferation of NGOs, non governmental organizations, and so called civil society is really a phenomenon that we see in the 1990s I want to say - maybe a little bit in the 1980s, but certainly in the 1990s is where you have this massive expansion of the NGO sector and development sector. And were development then changes meaning from like a structural transformation of the economy, which we talked about the time that I came on your show first, it goes from this idea of structural transformation to becoming an idea of like, what are these microscopic interventions we can make? Let's build a well here, let's get these this village a goat or whatever, that kind of stuff - and to different degrees, right? What is women's empowerment? What is livelihood opportunities, and all that kind of stuff? So for people like Fanon and Cabral, if they were looking at the NGO sector today, they would they would be like, what on earth? And I think many of the people who have actually analyzed development, you know, what, what does it mean, when you have the proliferation of these NGOs? Well, what it means is third world countries - instead of saying that you as a third world country should be standing up on your own feet. And what it means to stand up on your own feet is to have an autonomous economic system, one that is broad based, you know, you have your own technology, you have your own industry. And if you want to think of that, at least starting to think of that in a decolonial way, it means to live in ways that are functioning to you know, Mignolo says this I think in a very nice way: reorients the human communal praxis of living. Like reorient what it actually means to live, so that we're living in a way that's in harmony - not harmony, but you know, like, in a good kind of metabolic relationship with the environment. That's not what NGOs do. NGOs don't say, what would it mean to make this entire economy self sufficient? They're talking about like, what does it mean to make these three women in a village self sufficient? And most of the time, they're not succeeding very well at that either. Right? What does it mean to make this one, these few people in this place self sufficient? Can we do that without asking the bigger structural questions about economy, politics and knowledge? We can't. And so if we can't do that, there's this one thinker, James Ferguson, who talks about depoliticizing development, and that the task of the NGO is to not ask questions about politics, the task of the development agencies that not ask questions about who actually rules in this country - whose interests are running this third world country, is it the interests of its local elite? Is it the interest of its local elite in collaboration with multinational elites located in the West and in Japan - Asian Development Bank was mainly bankrolled by Japan until China became a power. Development practitioners are not asking those questions. Instead, they're saying within the the framework that's already been set up for us - the neoliberal capitalist perspective that's set up for us by the IMF, by the World Bank, by the Asian Development Bank, we're just going to take on certain projects. So my question is, to you actually Safa, you tell me - because you have a much deeper involvement in the development sector, how can you - while you're enacting overall, the project of the IMF, World Bank, if you're within that framework, how do you start to think about decolonization? How do you start to think about, you know, the kinds of ideals and practices that Fanon and Cabral were living up to?
Safa: Yeah - I think it's just more like an internal journey of yourself becoming more politicized, growing your consciousness around these issues and thinking more about them through your own experiences, lived experiences, the different parts of your own identity - and starting to politicize how you work. But as much as on one hand, we're saying that, yes, the use of this term decolonizing development, decolonization is becoming more mainstream and more and more organizations are trying to integrate it into how they think about their work. On the other hand, like at the same time, there are still many, many, many organizations, powerful organizations, who are maybe trying to ride it out. Trying not think about it, or not acknowledge it, or just kind of ignore it, and hope that these calls and conversations that are currently proliferating in the sector, maybe they die down. And I guess everyone is in it for different reasons, right? Some people really fear for their livelihood what it would mean for their source of income, if they were to really think about what decolonizing development would really mean for them - if they were going to think more honestly about these issues and their implications, rather than being caught in this performative cycle, using words in different ways, trying to say this, trying to cover their bases, but in actuality not really thinking about the weight and significance of what it means or what it implies for them. So me personally or the people I know who are interested in these issues or thinking more in these terms, it's just because of personal experiences, whether you know, they've experienced harm, or just their own intellectual journey has brought them to this point, or frustrations. And I think this is a good segway for a question I have for you, which is as someone who's involved in the development studies sector more from an academic level, the students that you come across, how do you speak to them about these issues, keeping in mind that potentially they will be the next generation of development practitioners?
Noaman: Yeah, I mean, that's, that's a really good question. And I think, from the outset, like, you know, there's a song by Gil Scott Heron, and it's a great song, and it goes, the revolution will not be televised, right. It's a kind of spoken word poem that the revolution will not be televised, it's not gonna be advertised, they're not going to, like, announce it - it's going to happen in the streets. And it's the same thing about decolonization. If you want to talk about decolonization, it's not going to be academics who do it. It's not going to be the NGOs who do it. It's going to be social movements in the streets. And people who are academics or people who are development practitioners have certain skills and they can help social movements, they can join social movements, they can become part of social movements, like Cabral did, like Fanon did. Cabral was, you know, the leader of that movement of the PAIAGC, which was the name of the liberation movement in Guinea Bissau, sorry, the abbreviation I don't know, the full form, it's Portuguese. So we can join those movements, but if our main concern, and this is something I struggle with, as well, as an academic, if my main concern is like, where's my paycheck coming from, which it is, then it's not up to me to decolonize anything. I can talk about it. It's a nice concept. But it's those people who have nothing to lose and everything to gain by actually decolonizing, right. So in the context of Pakistan, there's indigenous fisherfolk, I was talking to a friend about this just the other day, Indigenous fisherfolk who are fighting the encroachments of these local capitalists, who are trying to take over, displace their waterways, their access to the land and to the water, which are linked. There are indigenous groups, even in Pakistan, whose land was displaced, who are now at the very bottom of the social hierarchy in Punjab, whose land I was talking about, the displacement of their lands 100 years ago, or 150 years ago, by the British, and they're the bottom of the social hierarchy. And they're not necessarily articulating their resistance in terms of decolonization. But that is effectively part of any project of decolonization is that - nobody's going to pay you to fight their system, nobody's going to pay you to overthrow, you know, capitalism and colonialism and neocolonialism, that's not going to happen. And that's what I tell my students is like, look, we know what we're doing here. It's kind of like, it's a dance, it's a song and dance where I'm performing by talking about these ideas, which I do believe in, I don't want to say I'm being entirely cynical about it, but the truth is, that liberation is going to come from the streets, the decolonization is going to happen by the people who are most affected by it and don't have, aren't simply looking for a position or a stake within the existing system. But what we mean, we as development practitioners and academics, when we talk about decolonization, I'm sorry to say - all it means is, let's maintain the system. And let's give some more brown and black people some positions within this and hopefully it'll be gender equitable, and we can also add LGBTQ+ to that so that we can be as woke about it as possible. It means giving more people of color a stake in the existing system, that is not decolonization. That is actually false decolonization, that's exactly the kind of decolonization that Fanon and Cabral were fighting against, the kind where a western country or - Nkrumah when he talked about, you know, neocolonialism, which is where the Western countries left, but they put in place these brown and black presidents, that's not real decolonization, that's false decolonization because the economy is still oriented toward the west, it's not oriented towards its own development as a human communal praxis of living, of living with each other in a good way. So honestly, this is what I do tell my students is at the end of the day, like if we're going to go work for these development sectors, just - as you said, just be honest about what you're doing, man, you know, we don't have to like pretend, we don't have to fudge, we don't have to say that what we're doing is revolutionary, or decolonial in this meaningful way. Sure, it can contribute to it in some ways, but the real stuff is going to be those social movements. And the question is for us, are we going to learn from those social movements, are we going to join those social movements, are we going to further develop those social movements? Or are you going to sit on the outside and talk about Oh, look, I decolonized my syllabus because there were 12 white authors on my syllabus, and now I have 12 black authors and brown authors. And there used to be, you know, 12 men on my syllabus, now it's 6 men and 6 women, therefore I've decolonized the syllabus - you aint decolonized nothing, we haven't decolonized anything, nothing changes, right? Sure. It's good. I'm not saying its bad. That's good, that's necessary. But that's not decolonization. You just made your syllabus a bit more reflective of the reality that exists in the world. And the people who are producing knowledge, you know, you're incorporating more of them. That's not decolonizing. That's not a decolonized syllabus, that's not a decolonized practice of development, just because we hired some black and brown people, more of them and put them into leadership positions. That's not the question. The question is, what is the political program that you have? As you said, decolonization is not a metaphor, decolonization is a political project, it is a project of redistribution, it is a project of restructuring power dynamics. That's the question we have to ask ourselves. And it is a very, very difficult question, because it's not always obvious who is doing what, what social movement is meaningfully good, what isn't , you know, that's the investigation we need to do.
Safa: Yeah, and as we, each of us, for ourselves, think through this, or choose sides, or you know, work on one side or the other, the violence continues, right, the violence continues in all sorts of ways, different levels, different forms, and it's an ongoing fight. And I think one of the things that kind of stands out in terms of what we've been thinking about is the idea of relationships - as if the unit of measurement of what we want to encourage, or what we're thinking of is really the quality and the honesty and the type of relationships we have with each other, within our sector, with other social movements, with other organizations, among different topics and issues, you know. There are so many silos in this sector, right, of people working just on their issue, on their own topic, in their organization, in their country, and just not enough real, honest, sincere interaction, trying to learn from each other, support each other, being better - like having healthier relationships with each other.
Noaman: Yeah, I mean, that makes a lot of sense in terms of, I think, part of the way that actually neocolonial imperialists operate is by by dividing groups into different, you know, specializing, right, you got to specialize on this, you specialize on this. And we need specialism, we need a division of labor, that's for sure. But that doesn't allow us to look at the whole picture. You know, you get caught up in the trees instead of looking at the forest. So given that there are these social social movements, can development practitioners actually start looking at the forest and start thinking about - cool, how do the trees that we're trying to plant, and oftentimes, we're unable to plant them, because if the forest is on fire, and you're trying to plant trees, that tree is also going to catch fire. But we're not looking at the forest. So we don't understand that there's a fire there, which is kind of weird. But yeah, I'm terrible at using metaphors. So can the development sector think about the relationships of those trees? And the context, the climate in which they exist, which makes them more susceptible to fire? These silos that we're operating in -why do we keep hitting limits? What is the bigger context that they're operating in? And how do the relationships we build with each other and with social movements, and with political groups that are meaningfully engaging questions of liberation and decolonization - how would that change, you know, whatever little agency or autonomy we have within these development agencies and NGOs? And I think I think you're on point - it's about relationships with each other and thinking about, looking at that bigger picture rather than just operating in silos.
Safa: No, that was a great metaphor, It helped me think through and visualize what you were saying, your point. And there's so much we can get into further, but this is kind of all the time we have for today. So maybe we can just leave it at that for now.
Noaman: You know, I think we touched on a lot of stuff. It's a lot actually. And because there's so much depth that we could go into. But then I'm also weary, like how much is this is going into, you know, trivia as opposed to what's going to be relevant to the audience?
Safa: Yeah, so feel free listeners, please message us, let us know what you thought, how you liked it. If there are certain things you want to learn or hear more of let us know. And just a big, big thank you to you Noaman for being here, for sharing your really powerful and rich insights with us. It's been great for me to have this new format and being able to speak to you, and I really enjoyed our conversation.
Noaman: Thank you Safa, it was a lot of fun. And I hope that we continue to do this. And I think I still got a lot to learn from you. So I'm looking forward to more, more of this. And I hope that listeners are as well.
Safa: Thank you. And thank you so much your listeners. If you're new here, subscribe to the podcast on your preferred podcast player. And go check out Noman’s podcast, it's called Intro to Political Economy, I'm going to link it in the show notes. In this new format we will be releasing monthly episodes, so you'll hear from us again next month. And in the mean time follow us on social media, and stay in touch and let us know what you think. So take care everyone, until next time, that's it from us. Goodbye.
