"This collection of essays is the first to chart what a specifically 'postcolonial politics' might look like in the context of global development so as to question development's dominant cultural representations and institutional practices." "The Postcolonial Politics of Development examines recent development policy initiatives in such areas as 'governance', 'human/gender rights', and 'participation' to better understand and contest how knowledge is produced in international development - its cultural assumptions and power implications. It shows how we, development practitioners and westernized elites/intellectuals, are complicit in this knowledge production. Such noble gestures as giving foreign aid or promoting participation and democracy often mask our institutional biases and economic and geopolitical interests, while silencing marginalized groups, on whose behalf we purportedly work."--BOOK JACKET.