Making a Case for Postcolonial Thinking in International Development Studies: Towards a More Critical and Self-reflexive Field

Abstract

As the international development landscape has become increasingly polycentric, there has been growing efforts towards decentring and decolonising in development studies globally. In contrast to such decentring and decolonial efforts elsewhere, International Development Studies in East Asia (IDS) has been rather passive and silent on postcolonial thinking. By problematising this silence through its roots and consequence, the paper argues for the case of postcolonial thinking via fuller and more explicit engagement with questions of postcolonialism and/in development. A postcolonial thinking necessitates (critical) self-reflection, an understanding of historical processes of our own research field to restructure both the academia and pedagogy. As a step towards such endeavour, this paper explores the politics and process of knowledge production in Korea's IDS. In doing so, the paper first reviews central questions of postcolonialism and/in development that are of critical relevance to IDS to better define postcolonial thinking in this paper. Then to explore the state of knowledge production in IDS more concretely, the paper focus on Korea's Knowledge Sharing Programme (KSP) to explain how and why epistemic and ethical positions drawing upon more explicit postcolonial thinking have not successfully taken roots in the region's IDS. In doing so, the paper critically examines two key aspects of KSP in light of postcolonial questions. The paper concludes with possibilities of IDS towards more explicit postcolonial thinking - therefore, a more critical and self-reflexive field.