Evaluating power in development programmes

Abstract

SINCE the mid-1990s, there has been a growing interest in, and use of discourse theories within development studies to understand contexts of power inequalities between individuals, groups and institutions. Banded together, several genres of scholarship which can be considered ‘discourse theories’ have emerged – post-development, post-positivist policy analysis, critical/sub-altern theorisations, post-structuralism, post-modernism and their feminist variants, among others – all of which draw some, if not the main bulk, of their core ideas from the perspectives derived by Michel Foucault (1926-1984) and his social/ linguistic/philosophical analyses.