Postdevelopment Book Series: Refusing Extractivism & Growing Alternatives

New Books

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About the Series

Through Rupture Press, we introduce a new book series: Postdevelopment: Refusing Extractivisms & Growing Alternatives. This series, dedicated to postdevelopment thought considered broadly, creates an outlet for contemporary radical knowledge rejecting and moving beyond development. With Rupture Press we embody the ethos of postdevelopment connecting theory with academic publishing practice by breaking the enclosure on critical works, advancing affordability, the self-exploitation of authors and working within our ethics. 

What is Postdevelopment?

The ‘school’ of post-development emerged from the early observations of the deleterious—and geopolitically motivated—effects of imposing capitalist development in Latin America. The original contention, as Ivan Illich (1971/1969) expressed it, was that the model of development spread across the world by Euro-America (and its allies) was intensifying pre-existing material inequalities, eliminating vital knowledges, creating psychosocial poverties and severe ecological damage that continued a process of (neo)colonialism. ‘Development,’ said simply, became a sort of ‘planned’ or ‘modernized poverty’ by continuing existing colonial forms of political organization, material and economic development through a mask of benevolence and ‘aid’ that promised to ‘bring development’ (progress, technologies, modern science) to the poor, the needy and the ‘backwards’ peoples of the South 

Postdevelopment, while recognizing the problems of industrial modernity, capitalism and statism (as they are intimately intertwined & co-dependent), also seeks to create, as Arturo Escobar (2012/1995:212) expressed it, an “alternative[s] to development” as opposed to ‘development alternatives’. While development embodies an inhospitable environment for otherness and difference to the dominant culture, postdevelopment stands for hospitality, solidarity and convivial alternatives, embracing and extending to the insurrectionary struggles to realize and reconstruct said desires. It originates from the recognition that, despite the best intentions and societal aims, modern institutions become counterproductive after certain thresholds, exacerbating rather than curbing the problems that they seek to address: after a certain threshold, schools exacerbate a generalized lack of knowledge, transport systems increase travel time for the majority, while hospitals crease more sickness and ailments (Illich, 1978). Through development people lose the capacity to trust in their own senses, ideas, knowledges and practices, instead, just like the economic system, they become subjects defined by scarcity: they ‘lack’ certain attributes and hence ‘require’ expert knowledge and management. 

Postdevelopment embodies the values of autonomy, anti-authoritarianism, socioecological respect/reciprocity, grassroots self-organization, direct action and, together, a ‘radical pluralism’ that Gustavo Esteva (2023 [1999]: 96) conceptualizes as

a political horizon beyond the nation-state, reformulating the meaning of democratic struggles and recovering autonomous definitions of the good life that emerge from autonomous centers of knowledge production. Even governments that openly oppose the dominant paradigms, such as those of Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela, still adopt these catechisms and heretically repress the grassroots movements that challenge them.

Often associated with the ‘pluriverse’, postdevelopment encompasses the work and practice of several thinkers and social movements that have, at times painstakingly managed to influence and maintain academic currents struggling against extractivism, authority and creating liberated spaces by which people, existences and habitats are respected. In this view, postdevelopment allows space for societies and natures to coexist in deep but connected differences. 

Postdevelopment thought has remained cross-and-interdisciplinary (yet sometimes lacks transdisciplinary and anti-academic qualities), as represented by the authors within its edited volumes (see Sachs, 1992; Rahmena & Batrwee, 1997; Klein & Morreo, 2019; Kothari et al., 2019). There is, however, an enormous amount of room to grow, better linking to the struggles and alternatives on the ground by which this book series seeks to contribute and advance. More so, in an age of ecosystemic survival facing ecocide and genocide, postdevelopment thought is needed more than ever and must expand, yet requires certain reframings to stay an unruly and unsettling concept and real-life practice.

What does this Book Series invite?

We celebrate and see in Rupture Press an ethical commitment and approach that resonates with the ethos and the purposes of postdevelopment. Through this book series, we seek to expand the publishing of high-quality books that are available free of charge (as PDF) and as affordable paperbacks, offering a truly not-for-profit operation that does not charge authors fees (but do expect greater attentiveness to formatting, typos, and index, see Author Guidelines). We seek to create and expand outlets of dignified oppositional publishing given that this is, regretfully, not already the norm within academic publishing.

We are seeking and welcoming works related to postdevelopment explicitly or considered broadly through different disciplines and approximations. This book series consequently requires a conceptual framing and engagement with postdevelopment thought. This entails, more than engaging a particular  “school of thought” or classic authors, recognizing the ethos of postdevelopment: Rejecting extractivism/capitalism; challenging statism; and developing anti-authoritiarn (pluriversal) alternatives. We welcome monographs, translations, edited volumes or novel and original contributions that engage (but are not limited to) the follow topics:

  • Struggles against land control and/or extractivism;

  • Autonomous and/or social struggle challenging capitalism/statism/development

  • Exhibiting alternative lifeways and/or appropriations/domestications of modernity, particularly when linked to pluriversal alternatives;

  • Postdevelopment with queer & trans-feminist thought;

  • Urban postdevelopment praxis; 

  • Explorations into postdevelopment food, water, housing & electricity systems;

  • Challenges to (mainstream) decolonial thought and other overspecialized disciplines within academia;

  • More-than-human encounters challenging anthropocentrism

  • Speculative fiction engaging with the critique of ecomodernism, post-industrial futures, and societal collapse

  • Analysis of the continued failures of the development enterprise within different actors/sectors (i.e. agriculture, energy, transportation, industrial development etc.)

We must reclaim our work from the extractive networks of academic publishing, and begin expanding respectable spaces outside the Big 5 Publishers (advancing exploitation, extractivism, and financial violence). The book series is curated by  Alexander Dunlap, Franziska Müller, Carlos Tornel & Daniela Soto Hernandez who will review proposals. Please fill out the Rupture Press book proposal form and send an expressions of interest to rupturepress[AT]proton.me. In the email subject heading please write: POSTDEVELOPMENT: [Proposed manuscript title].

 References

Escobar, Arturo. 2012 [1995]. Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Esteva, Gustavo. 2023. Gustavo Esteva: A Critique of Development and Other Essays. New York: Routledge.

Illich, Ivan. 1971. Celebration of Awareness. London: Calder & Boyars.

Illich, Ivan. 1978. Towards a History of Needs. New York: Pantheon books.

Klein, Elise, and Carlos Eduardo Morreo. 2019. Postdevelopment in Practice: Alternatives, Economies, Ontologies. London: Routledge.

Kothari, Ashish, Ariel Salleh, Arturo Escobar, Federico Demaria, and Alberto Acosta. 2019. Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary. Delhi: University of Colombia Press.

Rahnema, Majid, and Victoria Bawtree, eds. 1997. The Post-Development Reader. London: Zed Books.

Sachs (eds), Wolfgang. 1992. “The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power.” In London: Zed Books.