Postcolonialism in Development Policy : - a comparative analysis of SIDA and USAID

• Main Authors: Wiggur, Malin, Löfström, Ida
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Mittuniversitetet, Institutionen för socialt arbete 2009
• Subjects: comparative analysis; development; policy; postcolonialism; Social work; Socialt arbete
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:miun:diva-8298

  Two recent tendencies are brought together in this study; the emergence of a postcolonial academic discipline and the restructuring of international development aid and cooperation. Researchers have tried to advocate a postcolonial perspective in policies for international development. This study investigates to what extent this has been done in key documents from SIDA and USAID. A qualitative dimensional analysis was performed from which the results are then used for a comparative analysis. The findings show that documents from both agencies only to a limited extent express a postcolonial perspective, though; documents from SIDA show a stronger prevalence of a postcolonial perspective in some dimension and in the overall index. As demonstrated with the MIP index, both agencies policy documents have more non-postcolonialist rhetoric. The documents demonstrate a development discourse in which the donor countries own national development is prioritized at the cost of that of the receiver countries.