ABSTRACT Decolonial thought has become increasingly influential across the social sciences, foregrounding coloniality, epistemic injustice, ontological difference and pluriversality as alternatives to Western universalism. This Introduction to the Forum Debate ‘Debating Decolonial Thought’ critically examines the ‘decolonial turn’ in development studies, situating it in relation to anti‐colonial, postcolonial, Marxist, dependency and feminist traditions. It argues that influential strands of decolonial thought grant explanatory priority to coloniality, epistemic location and ontological difference, at the expense of attending to the historically specific material relations through which knowledge, subjectivity and social hierarchies are produced, reproduced and transformed. Through discussions of political economy, state power, racialization, indigeneity, gender and epistemic exteriority, this essay argues for situating coloniality within changing relations of capitalist expansion, imperialism, labour, and institutional power.
ABSTRACT In the field of transitional justice, integral and transformative approaches to reparations have gained prominence. These approaches share a commitment to addressing the root causes of harm, fostering societal change, recognizing victims as rights‐holders and, in many cases, promoting community development. Yet, little is known about how such reparations are understood by the broader public. This article presents empirical findings from a secondary analysis of survey data collected from 300 Guatemalan respondents, on the topic of reparations for Indigenous victims of the internal armed conflict. Findings reveal that public understandings of reparations coalesce around three core themes: rights and justice, healing and reconciliation, and economic progress and development. Where these themes — or a combination thereof — are interpreted in ways that emphasize structural change, recognition and social inclusion, they often resonate with the principles of transformative justice and underpin strong support for reparations. However, each theme is also subject to contested, ambivalent and narrow interpretations that inform scepticism or opposition. Insights into these multifaceted public understandings contribute to bridging the gap between legal‐normative proposals and the implementability of repair in polarized post‐conflict settings.
ABSTRACT In recent years, there has been an apparent tidal shift in neoclassical industrial policy scholarship as a ‘new economics of industrial policy’ has emerged. These scholars claim to have fundamentally repositioned the debate on industrial policy, supposedly offering a novel account of how, and why, states turn to industrial policy (the ‘new economics’), as well as a precise measurement of its causal effects (‘the new empirics’). In particular, the ‘new economists’ claim to show that the South Korean state, undistracted by politics, could follow a strictly economic rationale and could correct the significant market failures that occur in the development process. Following Marxist scholarship on the state, this article suggests that this is fundamentally misleading. The author argues that, rather than correcting market failures, the South Korean state intervened to support capital accumulation through markets. While the new economists are right to suggest that the South Korean state seemingly acted in a rational manner, this was a peculiarly capitalist rationality, and one that rested upon the violent subordination of labour and containment of democratic pressures. The apparent depoliticization, or bureaucratic autonomy, achieved by the South Korean state was key to this effort.
ABSTRACT The debate on decolonial thought has reached an unhelpful stalemate. A core problem in assessing decolonial thought is that the term ‘decolonization’ has been stretched so widely that it now allows for many competing uses. For some critics of decolonial thought such as Nigerian philosopher Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, this overuse points to conceptual bankruptcy. For admirers, by contrast, it is this very conceptual reach and capacity to suture together vast histories under a single interpretive rubric that makes the ‘decolonial’ conceptually powerful. This article takes stock of what has been lost with this stalemate. It asks what might be gained by foregrounding the variation and disagreement about what decolonization means within anticolonial/decolonial political theories and politics. Building on a framework of political theories of decolonization, the author argues that the stalemate can be resolved by paying greater attention to the conceptual and political‐economic variations and differing political futures mapped out in different meanings of colonialism and decolonization. The article presents two models of decolonization to highlight the political stakes of the resonances and tensions between them, arguing that addressing the question of ‘which decolonization?’ can move the debate forward.
