Citation

Coleman L. Br. J. Polit. Int. Relat. 2007; 9(2): 204-219.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2007, Political Studies Association, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/j.1467-856X.2007.00288.x

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

In this article I consider how gendered hierarchies are constitutive of neo-liberal development and the violence attendant upon it. Building on Arturo Escobar's observation that violence is constitutive of development, I explore how the violent imposition of neo-liberal development is legitimised through the inscription of gendered imaginative geographies, which define ‘savage’ spaces of exclusion in need of ‘civilising’ development interventions. Drawing on the example of contemporary Colombia, I trace how the development discourse produces space in this way by normalising certain identities and political rationalities—those associated with competition and rational economic behaviour—while representing others as errant, as hyper-masculine subjects prone to violence or ‘pre-rational’ feminised subjects.