FNM Advising
Catalyzing Systemic Change | Workshops | Consulting | Strategy | Advocacy
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Welcome!
This is a collaborative learning space to explore concepts related to decolonizing, de-imperializing, shifting power and re-imagining global development
I'm working to curate interesting articles and other materials. This is very much a work in progress, so I apologize in advance for any critical pieces I've missed. I'm also doing my best to include global authors and consider global perspectives, and acknowledge that I have my own limitations of language and access. Thank you for your patience as I work on this side project.
Interesting article to share?
Please share articles, podcasts, videos and other materials you'd like to add here. I'll do my best to incorporate as much values-aligned material as I can!
Decolonizing Development Learning Library
Bold New Visions
Center for Feminist Foreign Policy
Time to Decolonise Aid
Insights and lessons from a global consultation
Aid flows between former colonial powers and former colonised regions often mirror their past colonial relationships, with decision-making power concentrated in the Global North.”
How do we ‘decolonise’ research methodologies?
Struggles for ‘decolonising’ have evolved from the undoing of colonial rule to the even more fundamental challenge of freeing knowledge, practice and culture from deeper worldwide concentrations of incumbent power
Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of imperialism by Kwame Nkrumah
“The neo-colonialism of today represents imperialism in its final and perhaps its most dangerous stage…The essence of neo-colonialism is that the State which is subject to it is, in theory, independent and has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty. In reality its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside…”
A Vision for a Feminist Peace: Building a Movement-Driven Foreign Policy
"The militarized approach to security both domestically and internationally has not made us safe. US foreign policies of exploitation, domination, and control have not only harmed targeted communities worldwide, they are fundamentally responsible for creating the conditions we now face at home...We’re calling on social movements to break out of their silos and align in action to call out the linkages between US foreign policy and domestic conditions. Unless we work together, we will never be able to take on US militarism at home and abroad, and transform our world toward peace driven by gender and racial justice."
Center for Feminist Foreign Policy
Towards an Intersectional Feminist Development Policy for Germany
Development History: The Tricontinental Conference
Read more about the 1966 conference among newly independent and soon to be independent nations and explore the library of research still being done in that spirit.
#Foundational Vocabulary
Localization, decolonizing, and #ShiftThePower: are we saying the same thing?
"Decolonizing, a term coined by Global South thinkers and activists and which builds on decades of activism and thinking from the decoloniality movement, attempts to tackle the neo-colonial and racist thinking and practice that still dominates our sector."
Gender in other languages:
Hijras in South Asia: The Divine, The Disenfranchised:
"British rule recast the third gender community as pariahs. Modern South Asian laws have yet to undo the damage."
Coloniality and the ‘aid bubble’: Can language be a driver for change?
Amazing article that explores the use of language that we're using in the #Globalaid sector
Reparations
Fossil fuel firms owe climate reparations of $209bn a year, says study
"The world’s top fossil fuel companies owe at least $209bn in annual climate reparations to compensate communities most damaged by their polluting business and decades of lies, a new study calculates."
How Britain stole $45 trillion from India
"Drawing on nearly two centuries of detailed data on tax and trade, Patnaik calculated that Britain drained a total of nearly $45 trillion from India during the period 1765 to 1938. "
“How did this come about? It was a scam – theft on a grand scale.”
The Root of Haiti’s Misery: Reparations to Enslavers
"In 1791, enslaved Haitians did the seemingly impossible. They ousted their French masters and founded a nation.But France made generations of Haitians pay for their freedom — in cash...We found that Haitians paid about $560 million in today’s dollars.
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Follow #DecolonizingDevelopmentLearningLibrary on LinkedIn to get updated articles on your feed!
Lest we remember: how Britain buried its history of slavery
“But Britain struggles to see itself as so many others see it. It has studiously eschewed an honest, accurate reckoning with what it has done, where it has been, and what that means for what it is and where we are. Indeed our determined avoidance of this history tells us almost as much about who we are as the history itself. “The essential characteristic of a nation is that all its individuals must have many things in common,” wrote the 19th-century French scholar Ernest Renan. “And must have forgotten many things as well.”
But is this really mere forgetfulness? Or something more deliberate? This is not the accidental, absent-minded misplacement of a fact. The transatlantic trade in human beings for profit doesn’t slip one’s mind, momentarily, like an elusive name or date. A nation does not forget centuries of slavery as a person might forget an umbrella. The nation sets about the task with great prejudice. After all, there are a good many things that predated this particular racial journey, from 1066 to the Wars of the Roses, that we do remember well.
…As the Caribbean historian Eric Williams observed, “the British historians wrote almost as if Britain had introduced Negro slavery solely for the satisfaction of abolishing it”
Flipping the Lens
Taking on ‘Trust’ in Global Development Philanthropy
"But why should our own perceptions of trust as funders come into the equation at all? We’re not the ones with lives or systems or futures at stake. The arrogance of centering the privilege of trust with global development funders and international actors is not just jarring, it doesn’t work. Don’t take my word for it, read what community leaders have to say?"
"Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid"
We have to learn how to look at the US, our history and politics with the same analysis that we use for other countries. This article captures ethos by looking at our recent history: "And yet American democracy is now operating outside the bounds of sustainability. If we do not make major changes soon, then our institutions, our political system, and our society may collapse..."
White Saviorism in International Development: Theories, Practices and Lived Experiences
White saviorism is ingrained in the systems, modalities, practices and attitudes of the global North development sector towards those it claims to work with. And it has led to devastating consequences for the sector and those who it claims to work for.”
Research and Reflections
To support the broadest change, I also work at the systemic levels of industries and society through critical research, writing, podcasts, political education and advcacy work. This includes:
Podcast: Shifting Paradigms
A conversation about power and our shifting relationship with work as we navigates pandemics, technology revolutions, and a changing world
With: Nidia Trujillo
Diversity in Global Development
Groundbreaking report and follow-up research on diversity in the global development sector
Blog Articles and Reflections
My articles on liberation, decolonizing development, reparations, Women's Storytelling and other reflections
Political Education
I also work with movement organizations to support political organization for members
Contact Me
Podcast
Shifting Paradigms
A conversation about Power and our changing relationship with work
with Farah Mahesri and Nidia Trujillo
Episode 1
Explore fundamental questions such as what is work, how we measure it, when and where it happens. We will share our personal anecdotes of how COVID-19 disrupted our notions of work and how history has shaped work culture.
Episode 2
We need to assess the current power dynamics between employees and employers as for the #futureofwork. It’s not about flexible schedules or wellness benefits - we need to reshape the workplace landscape so that we work to live not live to work.
Episode 3
Explore tools that help us ask broad questions and center goals, not tactics. Since workers are not just experiencing burnout; they are having existential crises, we need to explore the future of work and find ways to humanize our work spaces.
Episode 4
Explore the role of technology as an asset to humanize workspaces using a systems-level analysis at the individual, team, organizational, and societal level. We will argue that a paradigm shift is needed to put the human back into human capital.