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Director’s Welcome to December 2018 MOJO:
Responding to the atrocities and early legacies of World War II, political leaders and everyday people mobilized to support establishment of the United Nations. The International Development field was then borne of the UN-related and other platforms to coordinate, lead, and share
commitments to peace, health, economic prosperity, democracy, and advocacy to end colonial occupation--among other activities. By the 1980s, however, the emergence of neoliberal capitalism accumulated even greater wealth and power amongst “donor” countries, to whom all other countries fast became subject. It is in context of broad interdisciplinary examination of such macro-level political economic circumstances and their social impacts—such as global declines in social and environmental indicators, the persistence of poverty and exclusion of people perceived to be different from majority ruling populations—that intellectual workers of all kinds began to question the principles and core activities of the international development field. Scholarly examination of structures and forces operating in the international development field raised critical questions about the viability and ethical commitments of the field—particularly to human rights and social justice concerns:
How could international development leaders and workers be trusted to work towards equity when funded by
governments that legislate such things as wage slavery and prison economies in their own countries and political occupation externally?
How could international non-governmental organizations be trusted when their activities are subsidized by corporations and philanthropic organizations that demand endorsements in exchange for financial and in-kind contributions,
and/or who dictate the kinds of projects organizations must undertake or avoid?
Over the past 20 years, scholars and activists have cultivated such questions to galvanize re-examination of the field and to grow new approaches to social justice work within and across international spaces and power structures. Critical international development studies and practice responded to concerns with emphasis on examinations of bias, of normative institutions (policies, hiring practices, programming) that marginalized persons perceived to be “outside the norm,” by placing emphasis on biodiversity and healthy ecosystems, and reinvigoration or creation of new frameworks to establish or restore balance to the planet. Critical international development—still an emergent field, represented by a handful of academic departments around the world, including Gallaudet University—joins anti-poverty studies to projects on anti-racism, critical postcolonial
studies, critical gender studies, sexuality studies, signed language linguistics, intercultural studies, disability studies, and many other areas. To engage critical international development—particularly in such troubled and troubling world-historic sociopolitical circumstances—is to commit to in, in Alice Walker’s phrasing, “belief in the love of the world” (Anything We Love Can Be Saved, 1997). It also requires that each of us makes a commitment to international development as intellectual, social, and affective praxis: that is, to understand the ways that we ourselves are each implicated in the world’s multifold inequalities, to understanding the ways we might—from our unique positions—engender equity. To do this we must be loving, and we must be continually renewed—or in Underhill-Sem’s (2016) words, “agile.” Underhill-Sem writes that “agility allows students to deconstruct what seems evident before reconstructing in ways that makes possible diverse options” (2016,2). And in this quest, we are all students.
In this issue of MOJO we celebrate students everywhere—their intellectual agility, their commitments to social justice, and their heart. Responding to the atrocities and early legacies of World War II, political leaders and everyday people mobilized to support establishment of the United Nations. The International Development field was then borne of the UN-related and other platforms to coordinate, lead, and share commitments to peace, health, economic prosperity, democracy, and advocacy to end colonial occupation--among other activities. By the 1980s, however, the emergence of neoliberal capitalism accumulated even greater wealth and power amongst “donor” countries, to whom all other countries fast became subject. It is in context of broad interdisciplinary examination of such macro-level political economic circumstances and their social impacts—such as global declines in social and environmental indicators, the persistence of poverty and exclusion of
people perceived to be different from majority ruling populations—that intellectual workers of all kinds began to question the principles and core activities of the international development field. Scholarly examination of structures and forces operating in the international development field raised critical questions about the viability and ethical commitments of the field—particularly to human rights and social justice concerns: How could international development leaders and workers be trusted to work towards equity when funded by governments that legislate such things as wage slavery and prison economies in their own countries and political occupation externally? How could international non-governmental organizations be trusted when their activities are subsidized by corporations and philanthropic organizations that demand endorsements in exchange for financial and in-kind contributions, and/or who dictate the kinds of projects organizations must undertake or avoid? Over the past 20 years, scholars and activists have cultivated such questions to galvanize re- examination of the field and to grow new approaches to social justice work within and acrossinternational spaces and power structures. Critical international development studies and practice responded to concerns with emphasis on examinations of bias, of normative institutions (policies, hiring practices, programming) that marginalized persons perceived to be “outside the norm,” by placing emphasis on biodiversity and healthy ecosystems, and reinvigoration or creation of new
frameworks to establish or restore balance to the planet. Critical international development—still
an emergent field, represented by a handful of academic departments around the world, including
Gallaudet University—joins anti-poverty studies to projects on anti-racism, critical postcolonial
studies, critical gender studies, sexuality studies, signed language linguistics, intercultural
studies, disability studies, and many other areas. To engage critical international development—particularly in such troubled and troubling world-historic sociopolitical circumstances—is to commit to in, in Alice Walker’s phrasing, “belief in the love of the world”
(Anything We Love Can Be Saved, 1997). It also requires that each of us makes a commitment to international development as intellectual, social, and affective praxis: that is, to understand the ways that we ourselves are each implicated in the world’s multifold inequalities, to
understanding the ways we might—from our unique positions—engender equity. To do this we must be loving, and we must be continually renewed—or in Underhill-Sem’s (2016) words, “agile.” Underhill-Sem writes that “agility allows students to deconstruct what seems evident
before reconstructing in ways that makes possible diverse options” (2016,2). And in this quest,
we are all students.
In this issue of MOJO we celebrate students everywhere—their intellectual agility, their
commitments to social justice, and their heart.
For more information on critical international development and social justice, here are some of our favorites!
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