Cultivating Post-development: Pluriversal Transitions and Radical Spaces of Engagement

Abstract

AbstractThe current planetary scale of the problems humanity faces and the increasing sense of urgency in the face of climate havoc offers the opportunity for an epistemological and ontological tour de force that is vital to cultivate alternative civilisational frameworks to replace development-as-modernisation praxes. This chapter presents ways of theorising and practising pluriversal knowledge and agency to cultivate post-development futures. We argue that to cultivate postdevelopment in a world of different colonial histories entangled with imperial modernity, post-development practitioners should depart from culturalist and anthropocentric notions of identity, embrace place-based embodied experiences, and attend to nonhuman voices and agency. First, we present the generative concept and framework of ecocultural identity and elaborate on how this encompassing notion may contribute to pluriversal transitions in environmental governance. Then, we redirect our attention to territory and territoriality as strategic constructions of space that entail spiritual, material, and political dimensions of engagement that are at the core of the praxis of post-development praxis. Third, we reflect on the multiple voices and agencies implicated in the germination of pluriversal worlds and show the challenges and opportunities social and political movements face in advancing alternatives to development. In closing, we suggest entry points and avenues to nourish creative and hopeful political imaginations and invigorate regenerative ethical frames of actions and care.