Post-modern, post-structural and post-colonial inquiry intersects with contemporary feminist critique (Ashcroft et al. 1989:156). Generally speaking, the evolution of feminism and post-modernism, post-structuralism and post-colonialism have occurred as concurrent and comparable discourses which are increasingly being drawn together (Ashcroft et al. 1989:177; also see McEwan 2001). In many societies women have been rendered to the position of ‘other’, placed at the margins and, in a figurative sense, colonised (Spivak 1987). In many societies women had in common with the colonised:
an intimate experience of the politics of oppression and repression, and like them they have been forced to articulate their experiences in the language of their oppressors. Women, like post-colonial peoples, have had to construct a language of their own when their only ‘tools’ are those of the ‘colonizer’ (Ashcroft et al. 1989:175).
In critical gender studies, Third World scholars, such as Minh-ha (1987), Mohanty (1988) and Ong (1988) engaged in a critical analysis of development discourse. In her groundbreaking article ‘Under Western Eyes’, Mohanty (1988:80) criticised the ways in which many writers, many of whom were from First World countries, utilised the term ‘Third World women’ to denote powerlessness. Using Foucauldian insights into discourse, power and knowledge, Mohanty’s analysis of various development texts illustrates postcolonial orientalist tendencies in development, especially in relation to women. Mohanty firmly rejected the way that ‘Third World women’ were generally presented to be uniformly poor, ignorant and underdeveloped, with the benchmark being ‘modern Western women’ (Mohanty 1988). Certain Western feminist writings and analysis (see those mentioned in
Mohanty 1988), and writing by some Third World women, many of whom had been schooled and versed in Western institutions, had created a hegemony which defined Third World feminism as ‘other’, and Third World women as exotic and rooted in culture. Undeniably, stereotypes of ‘other’ women are integral to how white Western women have constructed themselves (Bulbeck 1998:1). As Foucault (1970) suggests ‘other’ is a necessary part of the order whereby in constructing Third World women as lacking in agency and as victims, white Western women can then be constructed as emancipated (Chua et al. 2000:821).
Ideas constructed by particular groups during particular periods have reflected dominant power relations: that is, the West as powerful and the East or Third World as powerless, or the controller and the controlled (Mercer et al. cited in Willis 2005:121, Waylen 1996). Many past and present writings, in academia and popular literature, have tended to exoticise and eroticise Pacific women. Schmidt (2001) argues that in the case of Samoa this started with the voyages of Captain Cook and was further cemented by Mead (1928) (see also Jolly 1997 and Suaalii 2000 for commentary around the ways in which Pacific women have been constructed as exotic/erotic). As mentioned previously, Northern women (in particular those involved in the ‘Decade for Women’) tended to define themselves as strong, radical in their thinking, and as social transformers (McEwan 2001:99, Porter and Vesghese 1999:132-33, Udayagiri 1995:160-161).
Mohanty argued that this way of thinking not only “denies the experience of millions of women” (Willis 2005:121), but keeps the power and control within the hands of the West. Western feminism needed to seriously come to “terms with the vexed question of difference and the Third World ‘Other’” (Munck 2000:10), thereby acknowledging that monolithic, universal categories, especially in relation to Third World women, theorised power in limited ways (as noted in Chapter Two). In support of Foucault’s ideas which recognised the multiple structures of power, varied in its forms and multiplicity (Escobar 1984/85:381), it was argued rather than being powerless, Third World women had agency, could form counterattacks and show resistance (Chua et al. 2000, Mohanty 1988). Oppressed peoples have various modes of resistance that they use to counteract the process of normalisation and contest the imposed labels, programs and practices which may seek to disadvantage them (Connelly et al. 2000:24).
While discourse transmits, reproduces and reinforces power, conversely discourse can also undermine and expose power, rendering it fragile. As such, discourse also makes it possible to thwart power (Foucault 1980:101, Marcus 1990:13). That is, meaning is never fully referential, therefore it is contestable (Purvis and Hunt 1993), and discourse is where meaning can also be contested and power relations can be recognised (Foucault 1980). The reinstatement of “unheard voices and subjugated knowledge(s), as an act of critical scholarship”, would work to undermine the power of development (Crush 1995a:21). Overall, critical feminism and post-colonialism presented powerful critiques of development, with McEwan (2001) arguing that post-colonial feminist approaches offered “significant advancement in rethinking development” (p.94).
A number of parallels can be drawn between post-colonialism and critical feminism, and it is these intersects that are of particular interest to this thesis. Firstly, all are pluralistic epistemologies that are dedicated to disrupting universal patterns of thought, arguing against ‘truth’, and seeking to contest meaning within the dominant discourses. Secondly, all are concerned with representation, and parallels can be drawn in terms of critical feminism which is also overtly concerned with the politics of ‘othering’. Thirdly, post-colonialism is committed to uncovering power relations, as is critical feminism, so they all start from the premise that knowledge and power are intrinsically linked. Fourthly, language is also central to the concerns of the post- colonialism and critical feminism. Finally, post-colonialism and critical feminism both call for the rethinking of margins and borders and the de-centring of certain normative perspectives, such as patriarchy, modernisation or Western development (Ashcroft et al. 1989:31).
The theoretical underpinnings of this thesis draw on the intersections that arise out of post-modernism, post-structuralism, post-colonialism, post-development and critical feminist thinking, which can be understood loosely as feminist post- development thinking. Feminist post-development thinking offers a framework for understanding women’s diversity in a variety of settings. The four basic tenets underlying this framework are:
1. The intersections of class, ethnicity, gender, age, religion and culture with systems of oppression and privilege are fundamental to the construction of self;
2. There are multiple accounts of truth and reality based on the personal and the cultural collective;
3. Binary opposites and categories need to be questioned; and,
4. Identities are fluid and shift within different social/cultural/political/economic structures.
Feminist post-development thinking will therefore provide the framework for understanding how FHHs have been conceptualised by development discourse. By drawing on ideas of difference, identity and deconstruction, this thesis will interrogate the ways in which FHHs have been discursively represented, and the category of FHHs has been constructed.
This thesis is concerned with some of the taken-for-granted realities about FHHs in the context of development praxis and seeks to contest these. Utilisation of a post- development feminist framework will also provide a means for critically analysing the various solutions and strategies which have been offered to abate the under- development of FHHs. This line of thinking opens up a space whereby a counter- argument, or counter-solutions and strategies may be considered. This thesis by identifying with feminist post-development thinking, calls for local, specific and historically informed analysis of FHHs, which is grounded in both spatial and cultural contexts, so that difference and capacity are also rendered visible (Parpart and Marchand 1995:4).
While there are obviously issues that will unite women, even cross-culturally, generalisations and stereotypes should be problematised (Bulbeck 1998, Chant 2003a, 2003b, McEwan 2001, Mohanty 1988). Post-colonial critiques in seeking to remove some of the negative stereotypical labels about Third World people, especially women, provide a space to not only think inside and outside various categories but to also rethink various categories. They also challenge us to “understand how location, economic role, social dimensions of identity and the global political economy differentiate between groups and their opportunities for development” (McEwan 2001:96).
Conclusions
Rather than asking what development is, is not, or how it can be more precisely defined, better hypothesised or sustainably carried out, various development scholars have argued for a shift in:
the way in which development is written, narrated and spoken; on the vocabularies deployed in development texts to construct the world as an unruly terrain requiring management and intervention; on their stylized and repetitive form and content, their spatial imaginary and symbolism, their use (and abuse) of history, their modes of establishing expertise and authority and silencing alternative voices; on the forms of knowledge that development produces and assumes; and on the power relations it underwrites and reproduces (Crush 1995a:3).
With the above in mind the purpose of this chapter was twofold. Firstly, it has introduced the various discursive critiques which arose and sought to expose the ways in which knowledge about the Third World and its peoples has been created and sustained through development discourse, along with why and how this knowledge has then influenced and been integrated into development policy, planning and practice. Thus it is shown that knowledge is power. It is also shown that various values, ideas, traits, practices and knowledge forms of many Third World countries and peoples have been positioned as problematically ‘other’ and as such were considered to be of little value to the ‘development’ process. This supports the point that ‘culture’ too can be categorised or labelled as useful or not useful to the development process.
This chapter also illustrates how development categories emerged, why they are favoured by development discourse and how certain categories get problematised. Essentialist conceptions of the category and essentialist theories of identity are thus explicitly linked (Natter and Jones 1997:142). With respect to this, because of the way that normative development ideology creates categories, FHHs not only get conceptualised in essentialist terms and placed as ‘other’ against MHHs, but the literature has had a tendency to pathologise FHHs. In representing the identity of FHHs in limited ways their multiple realities have not been taken into account; they have gone unnoticed. Yet, in introducing discourse as reproducing and transmitting power it is also shown that discourse can undermine, expose and thwart power. It is hence suggested that many concepts such as women, the household, and headship are in fact not natural terms, they are contestable.
Secondly, in light of the discussion above and by drawing on critical feminism, post- modern, post-structural and post-colonial critiques of normative development discourse, this chapter has made clear that a feminist post-development framework will be utilised to question essentialist conceptions of FHH which render them poor and fragile. It is also this framework that informs the analysis and practice of this thesis in its entirety and in particular the material that is to be presented in the following chapter, the literature review of FHHs.