Learning Disobedience: Decolonizing Development Studies - Amber Murrey & Patricia Daley

A new addition to the growing body of work on radical pedagogies, decolonial options and decolonising the university

This is a book about teaching with disobedient pedagogies from the heart of empire. The authors show how educators, activists and students are cultivating anti-racist decolonial practices, leading with a radical call to eradicate development studies, and counterbalancing this with new projects to decolonize development, particularly in African geographies.

Building on the works of other decolonial trailblazers, the authors show how colonial legacies continue to shape the ways in which land, wellbeing, progress and development are conceived of and practiced. How do we, through our classroom and activist practices, work collaboratively to create the radical imaginaries and practical scaffolding we need for decolonizing development? Being intentionally disobedient in the classroom is central to decolonizing development studies.

The authors ask: What does it mean to study international development today? Whose knowledge and perspectives inform international development policy and programming?

Amber Murray is an Associate Professor at the University of Oxford and a Fellow at Mansfield College, Oxford. Amber is the editor of A Certain Amount of Madness: The Life, Politics and Legacies of Thomas Sankara.

Patricia Daley is Professor of the Human Geography of Africa and The Helen Morag Fellow in Geography at Jesus College, Oxford. She co-edited with Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, The Routledge Handbook on South-South Relations.

“This is a must-read for current struggles for dignity and pluriversal, decolonized solidarity. The authors invite us to abolish development, not as simple rejection, but as a life-affirming pathway into liberation and freedom beyond coloniality“
— Rosalba Icaza, Professor, Erasmus University of Rotterdam

“Murrey and Daley take no prisoners in their sharp decolonial analysis“
— Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, author of Beyond the Coloniality of Internationalism

“The book we've all been waiting for to divest from development studies. It engages the abolitionist imperative as intelligible and doable; as a labour of love, solidarity and abundance“
— Olivia Umurerwa Rutazibwa, Assistant Professor, London School of Economics and Political Science

Published by Pluto Press, 2023
Paperback, 246 pages
ISBN: 978-0-7453-4714-1
14 x 21,6 cm