Critiquing ‘race’ and racism in development discourse and practice

I 'Race' in developmentForms of racism and expressions that articulate ideas about 'race' are fluid and multiple, contingent and contextual, ranging from overt to covert and unreflexive.Historically and geographically rooted, such expressions have become increasingly variegated, even detached from their originary impulses, and can travel far and wide.It is in this spirit of critical enquiry that the papers in this special issue aim to reveal some of the tenacious strands of racialized forms of knowing and representing in development discourse and practice.This is a realm that has remained curiously untouched by the postcolonial critiques and debates about 'race' in other social science disciplines (see Biccum, 2002).Together, the papers attempt to disrupt these 'disturbing silences, banalisations and erasures' (Grovogui, 2001: 437) and, focusing on a diverse range of issues from varying perspectives, question the absence of discussions around 'race'.They suggest how understanding development in terms of 'race' can spotlight inadequacies, contradictions and misrepresentations in development ideologies, policies and practices, as well as relations of power.Escobar (1995) argues that discourses of (western) development discursively produce the third world as different and inferior, and accordingly as its object of study and intervention.These articles explore how racialized forms of power and inequality build upon this foundational distinction between the 'developed' and 'developing' and draw attention to the various, unspoken assumptions about 'race' that underpin some of the key ideological bases of development thought and practice.Additionally, they identify the need for further exploration of the subtle manifestations of racism within international development.Postcolonial, postdevelopment and antidevelopment critics have provincialized the supposed universality of western notions of development and have critiqued the inability of the west to theorize non-western experiences.However, while these accounts have alluded to 'race', they have largely focused on challenging eurocentrism (Escobar, 1995;Pieterse and Parekh, 1995).This does not mean that ideas about 'race' have been completely absent in accounts about development.Other research and writing, largely within geography, have explored the relationship between gender/feminism, postcolonialism and development (Robinson, 1994;