From paternalism to participation: the motivations and understandings of the “developers”

Recently there has been a shift in development discourse from ideas of paternalism to those of participation. Set within the framework of a postmodern critique of development, this paper questions the assumption that the ideas of development still exist in the same discursive space. Using University of East Anglia (UEA) development studies postgraduate students as a case study, it considers why students want to work in development and the manner in which individual students think of and conceptualise the enterprise. It explores the role of postgraduate study in developing a conscientisation needed for truly transformative development.

The full article is available here:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09614524.2012.714351