Development studies and postcolonial studies: disparate tales of the 'Third World'

This article presents and juxtaposes critical genealogies of develpment stu dies and postcolonial studies, two bodies of liberature on the 'Third World ' that ignore each other's missions and writings. I demonstrate that the tw o fields have some areas of convergence, such as groundings in knowledge of and concern about the West, and other areas of divergence: development stu dies does not tend to listen to subalterns and postcolonial studies does no t tend to concern itself,vith whether the subaltern is eating. I argue that , of the two fields, postcolonial studies has the greatest potential to be a new and different location of human development thinking if it can overco me a tendency to lock into intellectual rather than practical projects of p ostcolonialism.