Space | Place | Power

Over the last 10 years, there has been a two-fold transformation of the global development landscape: namely, the growth of South-South Cooperation (SSC) and a shift from ‘aid’ to ‘trade’. Whilst SSC is nothing new, and trade between nations of the so-called ‘Global South’ has endured for centuries, there has been an increased interest in the growing political, economic, and rhetorical encounters between these countries. As part of this cooperation, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) has been valued as a significant contributor to national development and, relative to the size of national economies, increasingly overshadows other forms of development assistance. 

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SSC is said to (in part) challenge the coloniality and conditionality attributed to ‘traditional’ development partners from Europe and North America. However, with the growth of FDI comes the re-centring of economic growth as a driver of development. Resulting relations of power cannot, in turn, be removed from what is known of capitalist development more broadly, including, spaces of uneven development, inequality, marginalisation, and dependency. It is important, therefore, to interrogate the location of power and agency within the contemporary development landscape and the limits of FDI within the narrative of SSC. 

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This work draws upon insights from postcolonial geography to identify who has the power to describe what development is, how it is to be achieved, and the implications for historically marginalised groups. From the construction of roads and ports, to performative appeals of solidarity, recipients (or hosts) of FDI must undergo various material and imagined transformations to support the flow of, or opening up to, trade and investment. As sites through which capital, resources, knowledge, and identities are produced, circulated, and resisted, space and place are critical sites of analysis when it comes to understanding the functioning (and or disruption) of social, political and economic systems.

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It is not the case, however, of one actor enacting change over another. The production of space and place is continually supported and/or resisted through parallel and competing processes. This is where a politics of space and place exists. Understanding the implications of FDI, in the context of SSC, cannot be understood without an appreciation of the intimate, yet understudied, negotiations over space and place. This work asks how space and place is produced within FDI, by whom, and to what ends. 

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This research contributes towards understanding how new and emerging actors in the development landscape are challenging, or reinforcing, legacies of colonial and imperial domination. More broadly, this work adds to wider debates around how d/Development continues to be (re)defined and opens up space for those wanting to more effectively engage with, or resist, change.