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| Title: | Desire for Development
: Whiteness, Gender, & the Helping Imperative |
| Author: | Barbara Heron |
| ISBN: | 1554580013 : 9781554580019 |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Size: | 155x230mm |
| Pages: | 191 |
| Weight: | .31 Kg. |
| Published: | Wilfrid Laurier University Press - February 2008 |
| List Price: | 19.5 Pounds Sterling |
| Availability: | In Print |
| Subjects: | Womens studies |
Heron draws on post-structuralist notions of subjectivity, critical race and space theory, feminism, colonial and postcolonial studies, and travel writing to trace colonial continuities in the post-development recollections of white Canadian women who have worked in Africa. Following the narrative arc of the development worker story from the decision to go overseas, through the experiences abroad, the return home, and final reflections, the book interweaves theory with the words of the participants. She posits that the desire for development is about the making of self in terms that are highly raced, classed, and gendered. The construction of white female subjectivity is thereby revealed as contingent on notions of goodness and Othering, played out against, and constituted by, the backdrop of the North-South binary, in which Canada’s national narrative situates us as the 'good guys' of the world.
Challenging the Development Work(er) Narrative; Where Do Development Workers Really Come From?; Development Is ... a Relational Experience; Negotiating Subject Positions, Constituting Selves; Participants' Retrospectives: Complicating Desire; Summing Up, Drawing Conclusions; Index.
