(Dis)comfort, judgement and solidarity: affective politics of academic publishing in development studies

Abstract

The publication of a controversial article in Third World Quarterly and the consequent unveiling and critical questioning of journal practices continue to engender strong negative feelings for many scholars. At a critical juncture within the publication process of this collection, we faced an ethical dilemma regarding how to maintain political and ethical commitments while manoeuvring within a sometimes hostile academic environment. Here we examine the dilemma and its resolutions to reflect on configurations of power in academia. Through the lenses of (dis)comfort, judgement and solidarity, we examine the affective intensities that shaped our individual and collective decisions. Reflections on the process reveal the need to attend to how affects shape the resolution of shared ethical dilemmas in ways that reinforce structural (dis)advantages. We argue that ‘comfort’, achieved through solidarities, allows for the navigation of the ethical-political in ways open to multiple possibilities. Decolonial practice should attend to affective practices that privilege some claims over others and limit the capacity of future scholars to shape the ethical terrain of development studies.

Keywords:

• Ethics
• development studies
• solidarity
• emotions
• academic publishing
• power in the academy

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Sarah Homan and Regina Macalandag, who were part of the discussions that form the core of this paper. While they contributed greatly to the decision-making process, they chose not to be included as authors for this article. We are exceptionally grateful to the time and guidance of several academics who we approached for advice; your collegiality meant a great deal to us. Thank you to the editor, Shahid Qadir, for your response to our queries and for your patience, and to several former and current members of the editorial board for your advice. Anonymous reviewers and editorial board guidance also helped to sharpen the arguments in this viewpoint piece. Finally, thank you to the established scholars who responded to our request to review an article with well-intentioned advice, and for the extensive email exchanges among us.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 This collection originally had two co-editors. Sarah Homan decided to withdraw from the collection over the controversy, but has contributed a great deal to the discussions and this paper, as well as the labour in getting the collection together.

2 We have not named any of the authors of these emails, or of our broader exchange. A draft version of this paper was sent to these academics with an invitation to respond.

3 We note the importance of these acts of generosity below and thank again here the people who responded to emails.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kaira Zoe Alburo-Cañete

Kaira Zoe Alburo-Cañete is Postdoctoral Researcher for the Humanitarian Governance Project at the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam (2022–2024). She completed her PhD at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. Her doctoral research critically examined disaster reconstruction in post-Haiyan Tacloban City, Philippines, using a feminist lens. Her current research project focuses on how civil society actors and crisis-affected people can help (re)shape humanitarian governance and explores possibilities for advancing alternative humanitarian ethics ‘from below’.

Shonali Ayesha Banerjee

Shonali Ayesha Banerjee is Research Associate at the Centre for Strategic Philanthropy within the Judge Business School, University of Cambridge. Her current research focuses on system change in philanthropy, specifically in the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia. She holds a PhD in international development from the University of Sussex, an MSc in development studies from SOAS, University of London, and a BA in international affairs and political science from The George Washington University. Her research interests include philanthrocapitalism, digital platforms, ICT4D and new media in development.

Sochanny Hak

Sochanny Hak is Research Fellow at the Analyzing Development Issues Centre, Cambodia, and a freelance consultant. Her research interests include land grabbing, indigenous people, gender transformation, natural resource governance, and climate change. Her thesis Examining Gendered Responses to Land Exclusions and Livelihood Transition in Six Bunong villages of Mondulkiri province, Cambodia analysed livelihood changes, exclusionary effects of land on indigenous people, and emotional and gendered responses to land conflicts.

Tanya Jakimow

Tanya Jakimow is Associate Professor of anthropology in the College of Asia and the Pacific, ANU. She is an Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellow, working on a project examining women’s political labour and pathways to politics in Sydney Australia, Medan, Indonesia, and Dehra Dun, India. Her theoretical concerns, as outlined in her recent monograph Susceptibility in Development: The Micro-Politics of Urban Development in India and Indonesia (July 2020, Oxford University Press), include the intersection of affect and emotions, power and personhood. The book is based on ethnographic research with community volunteers in Indonesia and Municipal Councillors in India, funded by an ARC Discovery Early Career Research Award.

Chanrith Ngin

Chanrith Ngin is Research Director at the Centre for Policy Studies, Cambodia, and an Honorary Academic at The University of Auckland, New Zealand. He publishes on the transformation of rural and urban communities by land governance and climate change, migration and disaster resilience. He has been a Designated Professor at Nagoya University Cambodia Satellite Campus, Dean of the Faculty of Development Studies at the Royal University of Phnom Penh and a Senior Research Fellow at The University of Auckland, New Zealand.

Mahardhika Sjamsoe’oed Sadjad

Susanne Schech is a human geographer who teaches development geography at Flinders University in South Australia. She co-authored Culture and Development: A Critical Introduction (Wiley, 2000), edited Development Perspectives from the Antipodes (2014), and has published on a range of development issues including participation, gender justice, poverty reduction, volunteering and humanitarianism. Another focus of her research interest is migration and mobility, particularly forced migration and refugee settlement in Australia. Her current research projects examine the history of humanitarianism through the lens of the League of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and temporary labour migration from East Timor to Australia.

Susanne Schech

Mahardhika Sjamsoe’oed Sadjad is a PhD Researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam. She is in the final stages of her doctoral research, which focuses on Indonesian host societies’ imaginings of and encounters with refugees and asylum seekers as a window to critically examine constructed discourses of ‘Indonesianness’. She is interested in people’s stories and experiences with movement and migration. Her research applies critical discourse studies and ethnographic approaches in exploring narratives of identity and emotions within the nexus of migration and development.

Yvonne Underhill-Sem

Yvonne Te Ruki Rangi o Tangaroa Underhill-Sem is a Cook Island New Zealander with close family ties to PNG. She is a Pacific feminist decolonial development geographer currently working at the University of Auckland where she is an Associate Professor teaching Pacific studies, gender studies and development studies. The intricacies of mobilities, maternities and markets continue to catch her attention as she works to resist the erasure of diversity within colonial differences, while simultaneously finding epistemic strength in one’s partial position.

Joyce Wu

Joyce Wu is an academic at the University of New South Wales, and Deputy Editor for Development in Practice. Her research interests include gender mainstreaming, male behavioural change and violence against women. Her book Involving Men in Ending Violence against Women examined how this work was carried out by activists in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Timor Leste.