dismantling the false promises of development, with an empirical focus on Namibia
At first glance, my publication list can seem disjointed. However, all of my writing engages questions about the actors and ideals of development. While I regularly draw from diverse fields like critical tourism studies, social foundations of education, and cultural geography, I always return to my central preoccupation--dismantling the false promises of development.
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The research collections critique the hegemonic promises that formal schooling, full employment, and pedagogical tourism respectively will lead to development. I offer a political economic approach to challenge these widely accepted ambitions and argue for more radical changes in our social organization.
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Under Construction: The Venn Diagram below visualizes how my research collections connect to each other. The collection labels will gradually become links leading to more detailed pages about each of the research collections.
how it all fits togeher
Development Studies
Tourism Collections
Education Collections
Post-Wage Collections
future projects
Teaching Development
This project will examine how the concept of development is taught in ‘spaces of development’ and how school is integral to development imaginaries. Most research on development is either epistemological critique of agencies and actors or evaluation of project sites. However, this outward focus misses many of the complex ways development is negotiated in spaces which receive interventions. Development may be (rightly) critiqued in the literature as neocolonial interventionism; yet, it is often broadly supported in spaces like northern Namibia where residents look to other areas of the country and world as models of modernity. Formal education, especially, serves as a key signifier of modernity and development. School is both a site of desire and a house of proselytization for modernisation-style development. This project will draw on qualitative ethnographic and textual methods like interviews, participant observation, and textbook analysis. The findings will internationalize social foundations of education theory, serve as an example of critical-ethnographic comparative education, and contribute to the emerging literature within the critical geographies of education. The first publications from this project will be submitted by 2022.
This project will contribute to the Education Collection.
The Cultural Geographies of Guesthouses
This project will investigate the social geographies of guesthouses in mid-size Namibian cities. Most research on African guesthouses is conducted from a tourism marketing perspective to gauge international traveller satisfaction. However, this outward focus misses the many ways guesthouses are deeply integrated into local urban geographies. While guesthouses are ostensibly built to serve tourists, they also serve as centers of local cosmopolitanism. Unlike resort lodges which function as gated communities, guesthouses invite local residents to patronize their ‘entertainment parks.’ In the summer months, swimming pools are full, and photographers are hired to take social media pictures on the manicured green lawns. Even without tourists, guesthouses become transnational, cosmopolitan spaces, imbued with cultural capital. Thus, they contribute to development in a rather unexpected way—not from bringing in tourists, but consolidating local middle classes. This ethnographic project will advance cultural geographic theory on cosmopolitanism and also contribute to debates in urban geography about the value of ‘ordinary cities.’ The first publications from this project will be submitted by 2022.
This project will contribute to the Tourism and Post-Wage Collections.