Decolonial Approaches to Poverty

This chapter explores decolonial approaches to poverty. It focuses on the role that colonialism, and the enduring presence of the power relations associated with colonialism, play in creating poverty. It also explores decolonial accounts of what ought to be done to address poverty. Decolonial theorists have been very critical of ideas and practices of development that have been at the centre of global attempts to address poverty. In its place, decolonial theorists call for the construction of a pluriverse, or a world in which many worlds fit. Building a pluriverse requires both epistemic decolonisation, with attention paid to the multiple ideas, worldviews and practices of people who have borne the brunt of colonialism and its continued presence, and a broader decolonisation through which wealthy regions, states and people cease from the practices of exploitation that condemn others to poverty.