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The Voices of the Unheard : A postcolonial analysis of how indigeneity is discursively (re)produced by international donors

In the last 20 years, international donors have made efforts to increase the participation of minorities into development programmes. Despite these efforts, development actors continues to receive critique from postcolonial theorists for continuing to reinforce neocolonial and Western-centered tendencies onto minorities. Given this background, the purpose of this study is to investigate how indigenous peoples in Latin America and their issues are represented and allowed to participate in and challenge the development agenda. This is done by analysing how ‘indigeneity’ and indigenous peoples’ issues are portrayed in reports by international donors. Through a discourse analysis of two reports from the World Bank and ECLAC, this study finds that indigenous peoples are still not allowed to challenge the standard development agenda. Even though improvements have been made concerning explicit representations of indigenous peoples knowledges and values as inferior, the findings of this study show that indigenous peoples’ issues are often represented to be legitimate only when its moved to Western frameworks. These findings suggest that postcolonial attitudes towards indigenous peoples are still integrated in development programmes. This study however encourages further research of postcolonial attitudes towards indigenous peoples within international donors, and how international donors can improve in these aspects.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-402714
Date January 2020
CreatorsNäsman, Catalina
PublisherUppsala universitet, Statsvetenskapliga institutionen
Source SetsDiVA Archive at Upsalla University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeStudent thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text
Formatapplication/pdf
Rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

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