Coloniality in Gender and Development

Autorentext

Romina Istratii is Director of the Institute of Domestic Violence, Religion and Migration (IDVRM), UK, and Research Fellow at the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies Cambridge (IOCS), UK. She is also part of the UK Government's Prevention of Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative (PSVI) Team of Experts, and was formerly Co-Chair of the Centre of World Christianity, SOAS University of London, UK.

Klappentext

This book challenges us to rethink the foundations of gender and development and how a genuinely pluralistic approach to gender justice might be built. Written against the backdrop of shrinking aid budgets, political disillusionment and renewed calls for localisation, it argues that the central challenge facing gender and development is not simply conflict between feminism and its critics, but a deeper epistemological and ethical problem rooted in the dominance of western Euro-North American frameworks and their encounter with diverse religious, cultural and gender worldviews.

Drawing on fifteen years of interdisciplinary ethnographic research in East and West Africa and migrant communities in Europe, the book examines how a transnational epistemic community-spanning academia, international standards-setting bodies, consultancies, NGOs and state actors-has shaped and sustained dominant gender paradigms in international development. It shows how these paradigms have marginalised non-western, religious and tradition-oriented perspectives, while also tracing how grassroots actors, faith-based organisations and feminist movements negotiate, adapt and sometimes subvert their coloniality. At the same time, the book acknowledges the persistence of gender inequalities and abuses, often justified in cultural or religious terms, alongside the continuing importance of feminist and human rights frameworks in cross-cultural responses. Rather than advocating either for universalist or culturally relativist solutions, it proposes developing an 'epistemology of disagreement' as a practical and ethical framework for engaging divergent gender worldviews through reflexivity, humility and sustained deliberation across difference.

Drawing on insights from Project dldl, the book offers both a critical reappraisal of the contemporary gender and development apparatus and a practical vision for more equitable partnerships, rebalanced knowledge production and context-sensitive approaches to gender justice in a rapidly evolving global landscape.

Inhalt

Introduction: Coloniality in Gender and Development Theory and Practice; 1 The Global Dominance of a Western Euro-North American Feminist Epistemology and Gender Metaphysics; 2 The Concept of Epistemic Communities and Its Applicability to the Gender and Development Sector; 3 The Formation of a GAD Epistemic Community and Its Consolidation Through International Standard-Setting, Paradigm-Making and the Co-Option of Divergent Views; 4 Mainstreaming Hegemonic GAD Discourse Through Research, Publishing and Consultancy Regimes: The Role of 'Knowledge Brokering' Institutions; 5 The Role of State-Level and Grassroots Actors and Their Links to the Hegemonic GAD Apparatus; 6 The Need for an Ethics and Epistemology of Disagreement: A Way Forward for a Highly Contested GAD Sector; Conclusion