Whose development? Power and space in international development

ABSTRACT

In recent years, global attention on international development has coalesced around the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Introduced to replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2015, the SDGs provide a dominant global framework for thinking about, implementing and measuring development until 2030. While the SDGs are lauded for approaching international development as a global concern and not simply something restricted to the Global South (see Willis, 2016), issues of power and space continue to frame this field. Responding to these concerns, this article reflects upon the role of power and space in relation to who decides what development is and where development happens, who is represented as needing to undergo development and who is positioned as having responsibility and agency for securing development. In so doing, this article shows how power matters in terms of understandings and representations of development (who is depicted, in what ways and with what level of agency); space matters because of where development policy decisions are made – and about where – and development imagery constructed.