‘Leading the revolution?’ Gender, race and

the language of social justice in development communications

Kalpana WilsonDSA Annual Conference 2013

Outline• Changing representations in development:

from ‘victimhood’ to ‘agency’?• Neoliberalism and ‘Gender Equality as Smart

Economics’• Race and gender in the construction of the

hyper-entrepreneurial subject• The Girl Effect• Kony 2012• Displacing collective agency, appropriating

social justice

Changing representations?

A mother holds her malnourished children during a therapeutic feeding program at an ambulatory center run by MSF in Aje, Shalla district of Oromiya region.

Thanks to micro-credit, this women’s co-operative has been able to launch itself into the production of palm oil and maize dough.

Photo: Tom Greenwood

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Plant an allotmentProduct code: OU4049AG £24.00

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Train a farmerProduct code: OU4052AG £50.00

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Farming toolsProduct code: OU4051AG £30.00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIvmE4_KMNw

Women protest the seizure of their land by the government for a Special

Economic Zone (SEZ), Singur, West Bengal, India, December 2006