Environment and Planning A 2008, volume 40, pages 6 ^ 14

doi:10.1068/a40104

Guest editorial

Ordinary urban spaces: between postcolonialism and development

Introduction
This theme issue on the ``Ordinary spaces of modernity'' arose from a conference event
that sought to bring together scholars interested in how the contingencies and ambiv-
alences of urban space mattered for how different actors engaged in `improving' or
`developing others'. Our rationale for this event was motivated in part by a double
notion of parochialism. On the one hand, we sought to emphasise the importance of the
parochial, of the tensions and ambivalences of municipal officials, and of the role of
everyday materialities of construction or infrastructure, for the nature and contestation
of improvement and development. On the other hand, we sought to do this by disrupt-
ing what has come to be criticised as a certain parochialism in urban studies, and in
particular the tendency to make generalisations of `non-Western' urban forms, or to
conceptually separate the `Western city' from the `Third World city' (cf Bishop et al,
2003; King, 2004; McFarlane, 2006a; Robinson, 2006). We sought papers that
illustrated the importance of connections and comparisons temporally, between colo-
nialism and development, and spatially, between `Western' and `Southern' urbanism.
We hope that, in tracing a range of contextual tensions and translations, the collection
charts a diversity of temporal and spatial continuities and discontinuities. Legg, Perera,
and Harris focus on colonial contexts in India, Sri Lanka, and a variety of African
contexts, and Gandy, McFarlane, and Robinson are concerned with contemporary
urban spaces in India and South Africa.
At a general level, the collection illustrates the possibilities of comparative urban
research. In particular, it demonstrates how attentiveness to the connections between
ordinary urban spaces across time and space demands that postcolonial and develop-
ment scholarshipöso often divergent in their objects and forms of analysis (Power et al,
2006; Simon, 2006; Sylvester, 1999)öbe brought into dialogue (Briggs and Sharp,
2004; Legg, 2006; McFarlane, 2006b). Such a dialogue helps make sense, for example,
of how the historical and contemporary relationalities of urban space, the mixing of the
`here' and `there', inform the practices of urban government on issues as diverse as
planning, housing and infrastructural provision, congestion, and the production of
city development strategies. In this sense, we wish to locate the ordinary urban spaces
featured in this issue between development and postcolonialism. In order to explore the
collective contribution of this issue for thinking comparatively across urban space, this
introduction is framed around two broad central themes that are engaged in the theme
issue. These themes consider the issue's contribution to debates at the intersection
between urban studies, development, and postcolonialism around, first, the relations
between modernity, development, and the city, and second, on spatial and temporal
(dis)continuity.
Modernity, development, and the city
In demonstrating a variety of ways in which urban space becomes a key site for the
production and contestation of improvement and development, this collection echoes
work exploring the relation between modernity, improvement/development and the city
(see, for instance, Joyce, 2003; Ogborn, 1998; Robinson, 2006). Harris and Perera write
on the role of the local in the production of colonial urban forms, Legg on the
relationship between individual colonial officials, welfare, and housing, Gandy and
Guest editorial 7

McFarlane on the changing relationship between the state, urbanisation, and

infrastructure, and Robinson on how divergent political interests play a role in imagin-
ing the present and future of urban space. The collection points to how familiar
tensions and ambivalences of improvement and development, such as those between
economism and welfarism, or local practice and external interference, resurface in
different times and places. It also points to the enduring importance of colonial
histories in contemporary urban forms and politics. All of the papers focus on the
role of particular organisations, individuals, or processes in producing, fragmenting,
and contesting the modern, even given significant differences in modes of government,
context, and materiality. While the collection details different forms of urban modernity
in different places at different times, it simultaneously points to a range of continuities in
the relationship between modernity, development, and the city.
How does the `ordinary' feature in this relation between modernity, development/
improvement and the city? Robinson (2002; 2006) has argued for theorising the
`ordinary' in ways that transcend categories that fix, such as `Third World city', `world
city', or `global city' (cf Beaverstock et al, 1999; Gulger, 2004; Sassen, 2001), promoting
a `cosmopolitan approach' to urban studies that seeks to bring more cities into view
in the construction of theory, and that does so through a postcolonial critique of
generalised, abstract Euro-American analytic categories. This involves a focus on cities
as `ordinary' (Amin and Graham, 1997), entailing a shift beyond the labelling, catego-
rising, and ranking of cities. This collection responds to this call on two registers. First,
by bringing into view and theorising a range of ordinary spaces, from the material
contingency of local space to the ambivalence of individual officials, the collection high-
lights a variety of contexts and histories that shape cities in different ways. In bringing
together scholars who stress the contingent and particular nature of urban forms, the
collection attends to the ways in which different actors are engaged in improvement or
developing `others', and how these meanings are contested. These contingencies arise in a
variety of spaces of urban improvement and development, from the tensions of municipal
administration to the material geographies of infrastructure provision.
Second, the collection explores how connection and comparison are mobilised as a
means of conceiving and categorising urban space in particular projects of improve-
ment and development. Pointing to colonial connections, Harris and Perera focus on
the hybridisation of European models with local administrative or aesthetic traditions.
Harris reminds us that the labels that postcolonial scholars often deployömëtissage
and creolisation in the Caribbean, transculturation in Latin America, and hybridisation
in Indiaöwere developed in order to comprehend the regional consequences of colonial
experiences (Young, 2001). These attempts to grapple with colonial mixture have witnessed
important discussions on the nature of power and change as different ideas, objects, and
people interact. In tracing these connections across space that in part constitute urban
politics, the theme issue echoes postcolonial scholarship that has demonstrated the
historical relationality of `First' and `Third Worlds' (King, 2004). This perspective has
been used to deconstruct metropole ^ periphery binaries in favour of a `new historical'
emphasis on flows, networks, and relational spaces (Lester, 2006).
While postcolonial studies are concerned with temporal comparisons between
pre-independence and post-independence conditions, they also seek to draw out com-
parisons across space. This is also apparent in their focus on indentured labour,
migration, and diaspora (Yeoh, 2003). Stoler (2001, page 847) has stressed that such
comparisons need not simply compare nations but can study the imperial system,
examine specific encounters that cut across national borders, or highlight unexpected
points of congruence and similarities across or between empires. A simultaneous
commitment to specificity and comparison is central to the study of what both Stoler
8 Guest editorial

(2006; Stoler and McGranahan, 2006) and Sinha (2000; 2006) refer to as ``imperial
formations''. Such formations focus around processes of dislocation, dispersion, appro-
priation, and displacement through imperial terrains, resulting in the uptake of some
practices and the desertion of others. This was acknowledged and manifested in
discussions about and across empires (Rao and Pierce, 2006, page 20). Sinha (2006,
page 17) used the discussions regarding a controversial publication in the 1920s to
examine ``a revised spatial unitöan expanded space defined by the flow of historical
forces above, below and between nations and states öas well as a thickened density of
historical analysis based on a recognition of the inherently messy and contingent
pattern of historical development.'' The study of imperial formations necessitates
comparisons which work to undermine the conservative boundaries of the nation-state
and to open them up to acts of resistance, hybridity, and transgression.
Highlighting comparisons, Perera (2005; 2008) narrates how in colonial Colombo,
modified British town planning discourse (mediated through a variety of agents,
including influential individuals like Patrick Geddes and legislation like the 1915
Housing Ordinance) laid a particular view of the capitalist city over the colonial city,
marginalising the poor. This theme is developed in Legg's discussion of ambivalence
amongst the colonial administration in Delhi, and on his and Harris's consideration of
subsidised rehousing. As Perera (2005) has argued, British experts `saw what they
knew', problems familiar to British industrial cities, and proposed plans that were
effectively futures for urban Britain, rather than urban India or Sri Lanka. With echoes
of discourses of town planning, this move constituted an exterior view that related a
narrative to the British elite through which they sought to understand the urban present
and future. These strategies of colonial comparison imbue ordinary spaces with the
colonial intent to model the city in particular ways.
Bombayöthe focus for Gandy and for McFarlaneöof course, like the other Indian
port cities of Calcutta and Madras, and like many other urban forms across European
empires (Chattodpadhyay, 2000; Harris, 2008; Hosagrahar, 2001; King, 2004; Rabinow,
1989; Wright, 1991) was conceived in part through comparison, as a hybrid city
developed through European discourses of planning and improvement. Writing else-
where on colonial Lagos, Gandy (2006, page 375) describes how British colonial
administrators ``sought to transform the port into the `Liverpool of West Africa' '',
although attempts to improve urban conditions were ``hampered by lack of financial
support from the British Treasury, regional political instability and wider economic
perturbations affecting the price of commodities such as cotton and palm oil.'' These
various histories of colonial government and improvement resonate in the present, in
the fractured geographies of water (Gandy) and sanitation (McFarlane, 2004; 2008)
found in Mumbai today. Moreover, they resonate over time and space with varied
debates on the relations between modernity, development, and a diversity of ordinary
urban spaces (see, for example, Bishop et al, 2003).
Debates around comparison and connections over time and space relate to debates
concerned with the degree to which we consider the `situatedness' of cities in terms of
path dependence, in relation to both their history and their networks. Postcolonial studies
and global cities and world cities approaches have tended to stress this path dependence,
while development studies and regional studies have perhaps underplayed them. We will
attempt, below, to stress the (dis)continuities in terms of time and space which the papers
of this collection negotiate. The following section will consider the temporal (dis)conti-
nuities between colonialism and development through three themes, obviously selective
and partial, covering: the colonial origins of development; the transition from regimes
of colonialism to development through the process of decolonisation; contemporary
academic dialogues between postcolonial and development studies.
Guest editorial 9

Spatial and temporal (dis)continuities: colonialism and development

The extent to which colonial governments constituted developmental, or simply
exploitative, states has been debated in the context of Britain's tropical colonies
(Havinden and Meredith, 1993), the role of colonies and dominions in shaping its
doctrines of development (Cowen and Shenton, 1996), and its infrastructural inter-
ventions (for a summary of debates regarding colonial India see Legg, 2006). Joseph
Chamberlain famously championed colonial development in the late 19th century, as
much in response to the crisis of Britain's new imperialism as to the conditions of the
colonies themselves (Cowen and Shenton, 1996, page 274; Porter, 1996, page 283). Such
policies were directly challenged by competing strategies, whether those of Fabian
colonialism, visions of the `dual mandate' (Watts, 1995), or shifting assumptions
regarding the potential of the `native' (Zachariah, 1999). The late colonial period saw
British officials in India challenging earlier notions of the biological, essential other-
ness of indigenous peoples (Metcalf, 1994) in favour of an improvable difference in
what Zachariah (2005) has questioningly termed the government of India's ``reformed
imperium?''
Darwin (1999) has suggested that this shift to development was a key characteristic
of the `late colonial state' in general, in which waves of experts and advisors swept
through colonial territories advancing social and economic change. One should not
underestimate, however, the dependence of such experts on past patterns of develop-
ment, their financial limitations (Legg, 2008), their failure to engage with local
representatives (Myers, 2003; Yeoh, 1996), or their assumption of anthropological
categories that further politicised the indigeneity, and fortified the communal divisions,
of the local population (Mamdani, 2002; Pandey, 1990). Nor should these incremental
increases in `development' deflect attention from what some have termed the systemic
underdevelopment of imperial territories (see Brennan, 2004, page 133; Kapoor, 2002).
Such policies had diverse effects on urban space. The colonial diaspora of experts and
planners, referred to above, included engineers, sanitary experts, and urban designers
(Home, 1997), who helped export town planning to the colonies (Gupta, 1993; Perera,
2008). These professionals had to adapt entrenched ideas about what colonial urban
development was; challenging the consensus around the importance of cordon sani-
taire and the `dual-city' approach to encourage tentative engagements with local urban
forms (Abu-Lughod, 1965; 1980; C°elik, 1997; Legg, 2007; Rabinow, 1989; Wright, 1991).
The spread of modernist architecture constituted what Crinson (2003, page 16) referred
to as a ``new imperialism of development'', although such modernist ideals were
invariably hybridised and remade in their new contexts (Harris, 2008).
The social disruptions instigated by the new wave of colonial development aggra-
vated and politicised new sectors of colonial society (Darwin, 1999, pages 76 ^ 77). This
stoked anticolonial sentiment and contributed to the mid-20th-century decolonisation
of the majority of Europe's colonies (Le Sueur, 2003). Tracing the legacies of colonial-
ism is an incredibly complex process, whether attempted through categories such as the
economic, social, or cultural (Pieterse and Parekh, 1995), or through epistemological
categories such as the visual, the technical, or the ethical. Exploring the hyphen of the
post-colonial can be attempted through quantitative analyses of economic development
(for instance, see Lange, 2004; Lange et al, 2006) or through tracing the shifts in
development in a particular place [see Myers (2006) on Lusaka and Gandy (2008),
on Bombay/Mumbai].
An alternative approach is to examine the people of empire and independence. Such
studies can look at how individuals continued to work towards urban development past
the midnight hour of independence (Myers, 2003) or how colonial employees came
to work on similar projects in development agencies (Cooke, 2003; Kothari, 2006).
10 Guest editorial

What appears to be less commonly considered is the transfer of power to anticolonial

nationalists who became governors of independent states that prioritised development
as a means of decolonisation (Chatterjee, 1998). Development can be considered as
another `derivative discourse' (Chatterjee, 1986) that was taken up by nationalist elites,
notably by Jawaharlal Nehru in India (Zachariah, 1999, page 167). However, the colo-
nial Indian model of development was spliced with Soviet and indigenous models of
social development to create an original hybrid (Watts, 1995, page 46). Such trajectories
eschew any easy coupling of development and democracy, as Indira Gandhi's populist,
authoritarian surge of development via sterilisation and slum demolition during the
`Emergency' of 1976 ^ 67 attests (Tarlo, 2003). This is also borne out by the success of
Singapore which realised the potential of nondemocratic development to spectacular
effect (Kong and Yeoh, 2003; Perry et al, 1997, Vasil, 2000).
Patel and McMichael (2004) link the rise of such extreme forms of sovereignty to the
continued influence of elites who promulgated colonial development, but also to the
continuity of the exclusive sense of sovereignty that was created by colonial regimes
(Sidaway, 2003). Colonial forms of sovereignty also continue to frame development at
other scales. Noxolo (2006) has commented upon the racialised hierarchies that con-
tinue to inform discussions of the Commonwealth, just as the UN took up colonial
models of trusteeship, and the League of Nations' model of `mandates' (Callahan,
1999), and rebranded them as `development' into the 1990s (Power, 2003, page 131).
The contemporary debate regarding colonial legacies, postcolonial theory, and
developmental practice has been well summarised in a series of recent papers (Briggs
and Sharp, 2004; Power et al, 2006; Radcliffe, 2005; Simon, 2006; Sylvester, 1999).
What these papers illustrate is that, while postcolonial and development studies have
traditionally worked apart, there is a great deal of common ground between them.
Indeed, Kapoor (2002) has shown how the differences between dependency theory and
postcolonial theory create a productive crisis which can enliven each discipline. Both
are committed to critiquing the conditions of existence of those outside the privileged
`developed' world, with `postdevelopment' theorists especially willing to launch more
overt critiques of the neoimperialism of contemporary financial and developmental
agencies. Three of the most stimulating conversations in the ongoing postcolonial-
ism ^ development dialogue are summarised below, regarding: biopower; disciplinary
histories; and `postcolonial developmentalities'.
Rajan (1997, page 615, quoted in Sylvester, 1999) has suggested that postcolonialism
has failed to discuss many of the material issues that are key to developmental practice,
referring to sanitation, resource distribution, poverty, or state violence. Many of these
issues are, however, being addressed as postcolonial studies contemplates the Foucauldian
literature on biopower and sovereignty, and applies these to development issues. Brigg
(2002) has rightly emphasised the utility of Foucault's notion of `dispositif ' and
biopower to understanding contemporary development, but erroneously asserts a
binary between colonial ^ repressive/postcolonial ^ productive power modalities that
underestimates the repressive presence of sovereign power in the postcolonial world.
Slater (2004, chapter 3) has shown how the Unites States of America utilised
modernisation theory in the mid-20th century to legitimate both (productive) develop-
ment and the (repressive) subordination, containment, and assimilation of the `Third
World'. The recent resurgence of this power in the `colonial present' (Gregory, 2004)
has seen the articulation of the aims and means of development to justify such blatant
demonstrations of global sovereignty and the creation of `bare life' (Agamben, 1998).
Sylvester (2006) has argued that the production of such life, that can be taken without
consequence, is a retained practice from the colonial state. But this production is taken
Guest editorial 11

up in developmental programmes independently of neoimperialism, resulting in acts

such as the Rwandan genocide or Zimbabwean political violence.
An alternative approach is to examine disciplinary histories for evidence of the
potential for postcolonial development studies. Development studies itself has been
well analysed in terms of political biases in its historiography and its potential for
postcolonial critique (Crush, 1995; Escobar, 1995; Kothari, 2005). Geography has
long acknowledged its colonial origins (Driver, 1999; Hudson, 1977; Livingstone,
1992), but recent work has started to examine the intersection of colonial and devel-
opment studies within `tropical geography' (Power, 2003, chapter 3; Power and
Sidaway, 2004) and to examine the postcolonial afterlife of the discipline in developing
countries (Corbridge et al, 2006). This awareness of the past has provoked the urge
to `postcolonialise geography' (Robinson, 2003), to consider the role of fieldwork
(Radcliffe, 2005, page 296), and to think about how a postcolonial development
geography would be practised (McFarlane, 2006b; Raghuram and Madge, 2006).
One toolkit for negotiating the nexus of development and postcolonialism is
provided by Foucault's (1978) work on governmentality. This analytical methodology
and approach to the history of power relations and the state has been applied to
development explicitly by Watts (2003) and is a popular approach within colonial
studies (Arnold, 1993; Prakash, 1999; Rabinow, 1989). The study of `postcolonial
developmentalities' (Legg, 2006) attempts to analyse the place-specific and period-
specific imbrications of sovereign, discipline, and governmental power as influenced
by the colonial past but reworked in programmes of development. Corbridge et al
(2005) and Chatterjee (2004) have begun to explore this methodology regarding rural
and urban India, respectively. Such studies throw up theoretical dilemmas and oppor-
tunities, but also raise methodological questions regarding the scope, scale, and nature
of the connections between these sites of development.
In focusing on the ordinary spaces of modernity, we believe that this collection
demonstrates the (dis)continuities between colonialism and development, and illustrates
the possibilities of dialogue between development and postcolonial studies. In these
senses, the collection can be located between postcolonialism and development, bring-
ing a range of perspectives together through engagement with a variety of ordinary
spaces of modernity, from the tensions and ambivalences of colonial officials to the
mundane material geographies of housing and infrastructure. Indeed, these ordinary
spaces demand dialogue between development and postcolonial scholarship, illustrating
the importance of thinking relationally across divides of colonialism/decolonisation,
and First/Third World or Southern/Western cities.
Stephen Legg, University of Nottingham
Colin McFarlane, Durham University
References
Abu-Lughod J, 1965, ``Tales of two cities: the origins of modern Cairo'' Comparative Studies in
Society and History 7 429 ^ 457
Abu-Lughod J, 1980 Rabat: Urban Apartheid in Morocco (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ)
Agamben G, 1998 Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford University Press,
Stanford, CA)
Amin A, Graham S, 1997, ``The ordinary city'' Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers,
New Series 22 411 ^ 429
Arnold D, 1993 Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth-century
India (University of California Press, Berkeley, CA)
Beaverstock J, Taylor P, Smith R, 1999, ``A roster of world cities'' Cities 16 444 ^ 458
Bishop R, Phillips J, Yeo W W, 2003 Postcolonial Urbanism: Southeast Asian Cities and Global
Processes (Routledge, New York)
12 Guest editorial

Brennan T, 2004, ``From development to globalization: postcolonial studies and globalization

theory'', in The Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Literary Studies Ed. N Lazarus
(Cambridge University Press, Cambridge) pp 120 ^ 138
Brigg M, 2002, ``Post-development, Foucault, and the colonization metaphor'' Third World
Quarterly 23 421 ^ 436
Briggs J, Sharp J, 2004, ``Indigenous knowledges and development: a postcolonial caution'' Third
World Quarterly 25 661 ^ 676
Callahan M D, 1999 Mandates and Empire: The League of Nations and Africa, 1914-1931 (Sussex
Academic Press, Brighton)
C°elik Z, 1997 Urban Forms and Colonial Confrontations: Algiers under French Rule (University of
California Press, Berkeley, CA)
Chatterjee P, 1986 Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse? (Zed Books,
London)
Chatterjee P, 1998,``Development planning and the Indian state'', in The State, Development Planning
and Liberalisation in India Ed. T J Byres (Oxford University Press, Delhi) pp 82 ^ 103
Chatterjee P, 2004 The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World
(Columbia University Press, New York)
Chattopadhyay S, 2000, ``Blurring boundaries'' Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians
59 154 ^ 179
Cooke B, 2003, ``A new continuity with colonial administration: participation in development
management'' Third World Quarterly 24 47 ^ 61
Corbridge S, Williams G, Srivastava M, Vëron R, 2005 Seeing the State: Governance and
Governmentality in Rural India (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge)
Corbridge S, Raju S, Kumar S, 2006, ``Introduction'', in Colonial and Postcolonial Geographies of
India Eds S Corbridge, S Kumar, S Raju (Sage, London) pp 13 ^ 22
Cowen M P, Shenton R W, 1996 Doctrines of Development (Routledge, London)
Crinson M, 2003 Modern Architecture and the End of Empire (Ashgate, Aldershot, Hants)
Crush J (Ed.), 1995 Power of Development (Routledge, London)
Darwin J, 1999, ``What was the late colonial state'' Itinerario 23 73 ^ 82
Driver F, 1999 Geography Militant: Cultures of Exploration in the Age of Empire (Blackwell, Oxford)
Escobar A, 1995 Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World
(Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ)
Foucault M, 1978 Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Colle©ge de France 1978 (Palgrave
Macmillan, Basingstoke)
Gandy M, 2006, ``Planning, anti-planning and the infrastructure crisis facing metropolitan
Lagos'' Urban Studies 43 371 ^ 396
Gandy M, 2008, ``Landscapes of disaster: water, modernity, and urban fragmentation in Mumbai''
Environment and Planning A 40 108 ^ 130
Gregory D, 2004 The Colonial Present (Blackwell, Oxford)
Gulger J, 2004 World Cities Beyond theWest: Globalization, Development and Inequality (Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge)
Gupta N, 1993, ``The British town-planners and India: a postscript to Eric Stokes' The English
Utilitarians and India'', in India's Colonial Encounter: Essays in Memory of Eric Stokes
Eds M Hasan, N Gupta (Manohar, New Delhi) pp 237 ^ 247
Harris R, 2008, ``Development and hybridity made concrete in the colonies'' Environment and
Planning A 40 15 ^ 36
Havinden M, Meredith D, 1993 Colonialism and Development: Britain and its Tropical Colonies,
1850 ^ 1960 (Routledge, London)
Home R, 1997 Of Planting and Planning: The Making of British Colonial Cities (Spon, London)
Hosagrahar J, 2001, ``Mansions to margins: modernity and the domestic landscape of historic
Delhi, 1847 ^ 1910'' Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 60 24 ^ 45
Hudson B 1977, ``The new geography and the new imperialism: 1870 ^ 1918'' Antipode 9 12 ^ 19
Joyce P, 2003 The Rule of Freedom: Liberalism and the Modern City (Verso, London)
Kapoor I, 2002, ``Capitalism, culture, agency: dependency versus postcolonial theory'' Third
World Quarterly 23 647 ^ 664
King A, 2004 Spaces of Global Cultures: Architecture Urbanism Identity (Routledge, New York)
Kong L, Yeoh B S A, 2003 The Politics of Landscapes in Singapore: Constructions of `Nation'
(Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, NY)
Guest editorial 13

Kothari U, 2005, ``From colonial administration to development studies: a post-colonial critique

of the history of development studies'', in A Radical History of Development Studies:
Individuals, Institutions and Ideologies Ed U Kothari (Zed Books, London) pp 47 ^ 66
Kothari U, 2006, ``Spatial practices and imaginaries: experiences of colonial officers and
development professionals'' Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 27 235 ^ 253
Lange M K, 2004, ``British colonial legacies and political development'' World Development 32
905 ^ 922
Lange M K, Mahoney J, vom Hau M, 2006, ``Colonialism and development: a comparative
analysis of Spanish and British colonies'' The American Journal of Sociology 111 1412 ^ 1462
Legg S, 2006, ``Postcolonial developmentalities: from the Delhi Improvement Trust to the Delhi
Development Authority'', in Colonial and Postcolonial Geographies of India Eds S Corbridge,
S Kumar, S Raju (Sage, London) pp 182 ^ 204
Legg S, 2007 Spaces of Colonialism: Delhi's Urban Governmentalities (Blackwell, Oxford)
Legg S, 2008, ``Ambivalent improvements: biography, biopolitics, and colonial Delhi'' Environment
and Planning A 40 37 ^ 56
Lester A, 2006, ``Imperial circuits and networks: geographies of the British Empire'' History
Compass 4 124 ^ 141
Le Sueur J, 2003, ``An introduction: reading decolonization'', in The Decolonization Reader
Ed J Le Sueur (Routledge, London) pp 1 ^ 6
Livingstone D, 1992 The Geographical Tradition: Episodes in the History of a Contested Enterprise
(Blackwell, Oxford)
McFarlane C, 2004, ``Geographical imaginations and spaces of political engagement: examples
from the Indian Alliance'' Antipode 36 890 ^ 916
McFarlane C, 2006a, ``Crossing borders: development, learning and the North-South divide''
Third World Quarterly 27 1413 ^ 1437
McFarlane C, 2006b, ``Transnational development networks: bringing development and
postcolonial approaches into dialogue'' The Geographical Journal 172(1) 35-49
McFarlane C, 2008,``Sanitation on Mumbai's informal settlements: state,`slum', and infrastructure''
Environment and Planning A 40 88 ^ 107
Mamdani M, 2002 When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda
(Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ)
Metcalf T R, 1994 Ideologies of the Raj (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge)
Myers G, 2003 Verandahs of Power: Colonialism and Space in Urban Africa (Syracuse University
Press, Syracuse, NY)
Myers G A, 2006, ``The unauthorized city: late colonial Lusaka and postcolonial geography''
Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 27 289 ^ 308
Noxolo P, 2006, ``Claims: a postcolonial geographical critique of `partnership' in Britain's
development discourse'' Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 27 270 ^ 288
Ogborn M, 1998 Spaces of Modernity: London's Geographies 1680 ^ 1780 (Guilford, London)
Pandey G, 1990 The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India (Oxford University
Press, Delhi)
Patel R, McMichael P, 2004, ``Third Worldism and the lineages of global fascism: the regrouping
of the global South in the neoliberal era'' Third World Quarterly 25 231 ^ 254
Perera N, 2005,``Importing urban problems: the impact of the introduction of the housing ordinance
in Colombo'' Arab World Geographers 7(1 ^ 2) 61 ^ 76
Perera N, 2008, ``The planners' city: the construction of a town-planning perception of Colombo''
Environment and Planning A 40 57 ^ 73
Perry M, Kong L,Yeoh B S A, 1997 Singapore: A Developmental City State (John Wiley, Chichester,
Sussex)
Pieterse J, Parekh B, 1995, ``Shifting imaginaries: decolonization, internal decolonization,
postcoloniality'', in The Decolonization of Imagination: Culture, Knowledge and Power
Eds J Pieterse, B Parekh (Zed Books, London) pp 1 ^ 11
Porter B, 1996 The Lion's Share: A Short History of British Imperialism (Longman, Harlow, Essex)
first published in 1976
Power M, 2003 Rethinking Development Geographies (Routledge, London)
Power M, Sidaway J D, 2004, ``The degeneration of tropical geography''Annals of the Association of
American Geographers 94 585 ^ 601
Power M, Mohan G, Mercer C, 2006, ``Postcolonial geographies of development: introduction''
Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 27 231 ^ 234
14 Guest editorial

Prakash G 1999 Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India (Princeton University
Press, Princeton, NJ)
Rabinow P, 1989 French Modern: Norms and Forms of the Social Environment (MIT Press,
Cambridge, MA)
Radcliffe S, 2005, ``Development and geography: towards a postcolonial development geography''
Progress in Human Geography 29 291 ^ 298
Raghuram P, Madge C, 2006, ``Towards a method for postcolonial development geography?
Possibilities and challenges'' Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 27 270 ^ 288
Rajan R S, 1997, ``The Third World academic in other places; or the postcolonial intellectual
revisited'' Critical Inquiry 23 596 ^ 616
Rao A, Pierce S, 2006, ``Discipline and the other body: humanitarianism, violence, and the
colonial exception'', in Discipline and the Other Body: Correction, Corporeality, Colonialism
(Duke University Press, Durham, NC) pp 1 ^ 35
Robinson J, 2002, ``Global and world cities: a view from off the map'' International Journal of
Urban and Regional Change 26 513 ^ 554
Robinson J, 2003, ``Postcolonialising geography: tactics and pitfalls'' Singapore Journal of Tropical
Geography 24 273 ^ 282
Robinson J, 2006 Ordinary Cities: Between Modernity and Development (Routledge, London)
Robinson J, 2008, ``Developing ordinary cities: city visioning processes in Durban and
Johannesburg'' Environment and Planning A 40 74 ^ 87
Sassen S, 2001 The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo 2nd edition (Princeton University
Press, Princeton, NJ)
Sidaway J D, 2003, ``Sovereign excesses? Portraying postcolonial sovereigntyscapes'' Political
Geography 22 157 ^ 178
Simon D, 2006, ``Separated by common ground? Bringing (post)development and (post)colonialim
together'' The Geographical Journal 172 10 ^ 21
Sinha M, 2000, ``Mapping the imperial social formation: a modest proposal for feminist history''
Signs 25 1077 ^ 1082
Sinha M, 2006 Specters of Mother India: The Global Restructuring of an Empire (Duke University
Press, Durham, NC)
Slater D, 2004 Geopolitics and the Post-colonial: Rethinking North ^ South Relations (Blackwell, Oxford)
Stoler A L, 2001, ``Tense and tender ties: the politics of comparison in north American history
and (post)colonial studies'' The Journal of American History 88 829 ^ 865
Stoler A L, 2006, ``On degrees of imperial sovereignty'' Public Culture 18 125 ^ 146
Stoler A L, McGranahan C, 2006, ``Refiguring imperial terrains''Ab Imperio 2 17 ^ 58
Sylvester C, 1999, ``Development studies and postcolonial studies: disparate tales of the `Third
World' '' Third World Quarterly 20 703 ^ 721
Sylvester C, 2006, ``Bare life as a development/postcolonial problematic'' The Geographical Journal
172 66 ^ 77
Tarlo E, 2003 Unsettling Memories: Narratives of the Emergency in Delhi (Hurst, London)
Vasil R, 2000 Governing Singapore: a History of National Development and Democracy (Allen
and Unwin, St Leonards, NSW)
Watts M, 1995, `` `A new deal in emotion': theory and practice and the crisis of development'', in
Power of Development Ed. J Crush (Routledge, London) pp 44 ^ 62
Watts M, 2003, ``Development and governmentality'' Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 24
6 ^ 34
Wright G, 1991 The Politics of Design in French Colonial Urbanism (Chicago University Press,
Chicago, IL)
Yeoh B S A, 1996 Contesting Space: Power Relations and the Urban Built Environment in Colonial
Singapore (Oxford University Press, New York)
Yeoh B S A, 2003, ``Postcolonial geographies of place and migration'', in Handbook of Cultural
Geography Eds K Anderson, M Domosh, S Pile, N Thrift (Sage, London) pp 370 ^ 380
Young R C, 2001 Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction (Blackwell, Oxford)
Zachariah B, 1999, ``British and Indian ideas of `development': decoding political conventions in
the late colonial state'' Itinerario 23 162 ^ 209
Zachariah B, 2005 Developing India: An Intellectual and Social History c.1930 ^ 50 (Oxford University
Press, New Delhi)

ß 2008 a Pion publication printed in Great Britain