Disrupting the gender and development impasse in university teaching and learning spaces

Gender and development (GAD) is coming under increasing scrutiny for its entanglements with hegemonic systems of governance, policy, and knowledge. This article argues that GAD programs and/or development studies programs with teaching provision on gender have not sufficiently responded to the imperatives of race and intersectionality most recently intensified by COVID-19 and the decolonising of the curriculum and Black Lives Matter movements. The article explores the ways in which GAD frameworks have resisted rather than embraced paradigmatic critiques. We argue that this resistance to the imperatives of intersectionality has resulted in a GAD impasse which is reproduced and perpetuated through pedagogy and teaching, which shapes teaching and learning spaces in the UK. Despite the potentials for teaching to question dominant paradigms and frameworks, the impasse has hindered the field of GAD from adopting an introspective, intersectional, and transformative approach

The Everyday Practices of Development

This chapter examines the ways in which the international development paradigm reproduces and reinforces racialised and gendered subjectivities and how these identities are constructed through everyday encounters where development takes place. It also examines the architecture of aid as one of power, borne from the colonial project. The chapter explores linkages between postcolonial and black feminist thought as a basis for developing deeper understanding of the complex realities arising from new global–local moves. It also explores what can be considered a postcolonial interaction within the Global South, but does not place its focus on the engagement between the former colonised and colonisers. The chapter presents the narratives and contradictions that play out in the experiences of the female aid workers. It argues that pushing the boundaries of work on aid workers, diaspora communities and postcolonial and black feminisms can open a space for deeper understanding of these experiences

Vignette 3: ‘Thinking about race and gender in conflict research'

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