Aram Ziai’s research while affiliated with University of Kassel and other places

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Publications (66)


Post-Development approaches: Consequences for development theory
  • Article

January 2014

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1,317 Reads

Politische Vierteljahresschrift

Aram Ziai

Post-Development (PD) approaches point at and fundamentally question relations of power in theory and practice of "development". The ambiguity of the development concept is mirrored in PD's critique, which links it with a dominant ideology as well as with a failed political project. The sweeping critique of the first wave of PD paved the way for more nuanced works of discourse analysis and postcolonial studies. PD's central argument that "development" is a Eurocentric discourse imbued with power is widely accepted today. Development theory should avoid the concept of development, reflect its discursive and institutional structures, and recognize and practice alternatives.


Zur Architektur des Welthandels
  • Article
  • Full-text available

December 2013

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319 Reads

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3 Citations

Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte

Angesichts der Krise des multilateralen Handelsregimes werden zusehend bi- und plurilaterale Abkommen verhandelt. Schwellenländer gewinnen als weltwirtschaft-liche Akteure an Bedeutung. Dagegen nimmt der Druck auf ärmere Länder zu

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The Discourse of “Development” and Why the Concept Should Be Abandoned

February 2013

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832 Reads

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97 Citations

Development in Practice

This paper discusses the discourse of "development" and its effects. It argues that there are good reasons for giving up the concept of development and replacing it with various other concepts. Practices that aim at improving the human condition need not be identified with the term "development". Numerous practices which have not improved the human condition have been carried out in the name of "development". These should not be seen as an abuse of a positive concept, but as linked to certain Eurocentric, depoliticising, and authoritarian implications of the concept of "development".


Post-Development: Fundamentalkritik der „Entwicklung“

November 2012

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1,417 Reads

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29 Citations

Geographica Helvetica

The article presents the post-development school in development theory and deals with its basic lines of argument as well as with criticisms raised against the approach. Encountering these criticisms leads to a differentiation between a neo-populist and a sceptical variant of Post-Development. Subsequently the article discusses the theoretical position of the approach. Finally, the "alternatives to development" promoted here are dealt with and the conclusion argues that Post-Development has massive implications also for the North.


Postkoloniale Politikwissenschaft: Grundlagen einer postkolonialen politischen Theorie und deren Anwendungsfelder

January 2012

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119 Reads

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9 Citations

Was auch immer man unter postkolonialer Politikwissenschaft verstehen mag, eines ist sie sicher nicht: ein etabliertes Forschungsfeld. In der Politikwissenschaft sind postkoloniale Ansätze – jedenfalls, wenn damit mehr gemeint ist als die Beschäftigung mit nachkolonialen Gesellschaften – weitestgehend marginalisiert. Bezeichnend ist, dass zwar kürzlich in Frankfurt a.M. der erste politikwissenschaftliche Lehrstuhl für Gender und Postcolonial Studies besetzt wurde, allerdings mit einer Philosophin. Erst bei näherer Betrachtung finden sich an den Rändern der Disziplin eine Reihe von Arbeiten, die einer postkolonialen Politikwissenschaft zugerechnet werden können – auch wenn diese nicht immer von PolitologInnen verfasst wurden. Mit dem Begriff einer postkolonialen Politikwissenschaft sollen hier Studien bezeichnet werden, die erstens nach den Auswirkungen des Kolonialismus, nach Kontinuitäten und Diskontinuitäten zur kolonialen Ära in der heutigen Zeit fragen oder sich einer anderen postkolonialen Analysestrategie bedienen, zweitens dabei besonders die Ebene von Repräsentationen und Identitäten berücksichtigen, und drittens politische Institutionen, Politikfelder oder politische Prozesse zum Gegenstand haben.


Postcolonial Studies and Political Science: Complementary Deficits, State of the Art, and Research Perspectives

January 2012

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43 Reads

Politische Vierteljahresschrift

The article deals with the relationship between postcolonial studies and political science. As political science has hitherto largely ignored postcolonial inquiries and perspectives, and postcolonial studies on the other hand have treated political institutions and processes often in a rather superficial manner, the article argues that connecting these fields will prove to be productive and insightful. Based on a survey on the state of the art of political science informed by postcolonialism, a research programme is sketched which operationalises the concepts of orientalism and othering, subalternity and representation/articulation, hybridity and provincialising Europe.



‘The Millennium Development Goals: Back to the future?’

February 2011

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157 Reads

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44 Citations

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) constitute a normative consensus in the development community at the beginning of the 21st century. This article examines that consensus from the perspective of post-structuralist discourse analysis by situating it in its historical context, comparing the Millennium Declaration with the UN International Development Strategy of 1970. The article illustrates the depoliticising bias of the main MDG documents and interprets the shift in favour of market-oriented solutions and non-antagonistic conceptions of global community as the principal manifestations of a significant shift in development discourse.


German development policy 1998-2005: The limits of normative global governance

June 2010

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65 Reads

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5 Citations

Journal of International Relations and Development

The Social Democratic/Green government which was in office in Germany from 1998 to 2005 announced that it would practise development policy as `global structural policy': as policy aiming to transform global economic structures in favour of poor countries. The article proceeds by analysing the attempts to do so in three areas: the reform of structural adjustment programmes and debt relief, the reform of the international financial architecture, and the `Development Round' in world trade negotiations. The article also analyses the accompanying discourse in order to identify the factors limiting this form of normative global governance.


From Development Discourse to the Discourse of Globalisation – Changing Forms of Knowledge about Change in North-South Relations and their Political Repercussions

January 2010

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82 Reads

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7 Citations

Sociologus

The article argues that in the field of North-South relations, predominant conceptions of social change have been transformed during the last decades. The discourse of 'development', which used to be dominant, has been gradually replaced by a discourse of 'globalisation'. The article engages in a comparative analysis of the two discourses, their underlying principles and the political practices rendered possible by them.


Citations (26)


... Cirillo & Taleb, 2016, covering the period from 1500 to the present; see also next section, below) and the "new wars" thesis (cf. Kaldor, 1999, Münkler, 2005 thus seems to be somewhat overstated (see critically Krieger et al., 2018), there seems to be a link between modern statehood, conflict and displacement that has tended to produce more refugees compared to the pre-modern era. ...

Reference:

Refugees
Bewaffnete Konflikte, Neue Kriege und Staatszerfall.
  • Citing Chapter
  • January 2018

... Although the framing of 'development' or modernization 4 as a 'panacea for all ills', as universally desirable, or as a means to an end (for welfare, overcoming poverty and hunger) has been criticized by various post-development scholars for the concept's euro-centric and authoritarian implications (Ziai 2016, p. 54;Ziai 2015;Escobar 2015), the Global North (the EU in this example) operates (once again) as an 'active' agent, determining paths, conditions, and promises for the envisioned transition to the bioeconomy (Vogelpohl and Töller 2021, p. 144;EU 2018, p. 46). The 'passive' 5 peripheral countries in the Global South and semi-periphery are expected to adhere to this model and apply the same logic when designing their own bioeconomy strategies. ...

The concept of ‘development’ and why it should be abandoned
  • Citing Chapter
  • August 2015

... This study adopted theory of neo-colonialism. This theory has been widely attributed to the writings of the former President of Ghana, Nkrumah (1965) in his publication title: Neo-colonialism: the last stage of imperialism, as a follow up to Lenin's Imperialism: the final stage of capitalism (Ziai, 2020). The title of the works of both scholars cited above underscores the nexus between capitalism and neo-colonialism which describes the activities of the Chinese state in African economies. ...

Neokolonialismus in der globalisierten Ökonomie des 21. Jahrhunderts - Ein Überblick

Momentum Quarterly - Zeitschrift für sozialen Fortschritt

... (Bendix, 2013;Jansen, 2019;Langdon, 2013;Sims, 2018 (Mawdsley, , p.2017. 이렇게 급변하는 개발 환경 속에서, 기존 국제개발학 패러다임에 비판적 관점을 견지하고 있는 연구자들은 전통적인 개발 협력 체제와 구분되는 SSC의 차별화된 아이디어, 역사 및 지리적 위치 등에 대한 고민의 필요성이 제기된 것이다 Ruggie, 1983 (Corneliussen, 2021;Dreher & Fuchs, 2015;Naim, 2007 (Bull, 1977;Wight, 1977 동력이 됐다 (Buzan & Little, 2002;Howard, 1984 (Bowden, 2009;Gong, 1984). ...

Beyond the Master's Tools? Decolonizing Knowledge Orders, Research Methods and Teaching
  • Citing Book
  • October 2020

... Iran, for example, opposes modernization and offers a post-development discourse which is better known as the concept of Gharbzadegi. "The Gharbzadegi discourse has been very influential in modern Iranian history and is seen as a 'manifesto of anti-westernization' [33]. ...

Gharbzadegi in Iran: A Reactionary Alternative to ‘Development’?
  • Citing Article
  • October 2019

Development

... Being part of a largely energy-independent collective situated in the Global North, my role is an ambivalent one, as, despite efforts at dismantling it, I am still benefitting from the energy system that I criticize. In this sense, my positionality as a White and queer scholar/activist is motivated by my commitment to practicing ecosocial solidarity and post-development in the Global North, both by securing fundamental aspects of living housing, food production, and energy use (Bendix et al., 2019) and by contributing to decolonizing activities in academia (Ziai et al., 2020). ...

Postdevelopment alternatives in the North

... Muti-lateral organisations such as the World Bank, as well as postdevelopment scholars, have called for the end of such distinctions. 5 However, Horner & Hulme's work was widely criticised for its minimalist definition of development (particularly ignoring structural transformation), data and categories used, as well as their alignment with neoliberal approaches to development theory (Fischer 2019;Ghosh 2019;Sumner 2019;Ziai 2019). Since then, more nuanced arguments for Global Development have focussed on the potential of universalist approaches to encourage 'horizontal learning' between the South and North, avoid infantilising the Global South and argued that since poverty exists everywhere, 'development' must be a focus globally (Leach et al. 2021;Gillespie and Mitlin 2023). ...

Towards a More Critical Theory of ‘Development’ in the 21 st Century: Debate: Towards a More Critical Theory of ‘Development’
  • Citing Article
  • March 2019

Development and Change

... In Thailand, the critique can be pushed even further. While the present military government aspires to link up to the new Chinese high-speed train network, it uses the concept of sufficiency economy to preach modesty to the poor population and silence all political opposition (Schaffar and Ziai, 2018). ...

Reaktionäre Alternativen zur „Entwicklung“? Zur Rehabilitierung der Post-Development-Konzepte in Thailand und im Iran

PERIPHERIE – Politik • Ökonomie • Kultur

... There are calls for a more inclusive engagement with indigenous, communally grounded expertise, such as traditional medicine or agricultural knowledge, and a recognition of pre-colonial scholarly institutions, such as Islamic education in West Africa or Ethiopian monastic schools (de Souza Santos 2015; Abidogun and Falola 2020; Woldegiorgis 2021). Attention is also directed to indigenous notions of development and well-being, including the Latin American concept of 'Buen Vivir,' the Southern African 'Ubuntu,' and the Indian notion of 'Swaraj' (Ziai 2017;Demaria and Kothari 2020;Schoeneberg 2021). ...

Post-development 25 years after The Development Dictionary
  • Citing Article
  • December 2017

... Supported by the assumption that the Global South is "overpopulated" -although people in the Global North consume many times more resources -there is often a disregard for women's rights, under the banner of poverty reduction: through financial incentives to sterilise impoverished women, long-term contraceptives (banned in Europe) with unpredictable side effects, or through the aim of teaching women to have fewer children and branding their desire to have children as backward, irrational or irresponsible. An instrumentalisation of development cooperation through foreign trade is found in the partnerships with the pharmaceutical industry (and conservative nongovernmental organisations [NGOs] like the Deutsche Stiftung Weltbevölkerung [German Foundation for World Population]), which result in development cooperation funds being used to finance contraceptives from BayerHealthCare or Fresenius (Bendix/Schultz 2015Schultz 2006;Bendix/Ziai 2017). ...

Rassismusanalyse in der Entwicklungsforschung am Beispiel deutscher reproduktiver Gesundheitspolitik in Tansania

PERIPHERIE – Politik • Ökonomie • Kultur