JEP » Issues » Food Sovereignty and Alternative Development in Palestine » Alternative Development: A Response to Neo-Liberal De-Development from a Gender Perspective

Alternative Development: A Response to Neo-Liberal De-Development from a Gender Perspective

Autor*innen: Kuttab, Eileen
https://doi.org/10.20446/JEP-2414-3197-34-1-62
Volume XXXIV • Issue 1 • 2018
Pages 62-90
Keywords: settler colonialism, resistance economy, empowerment, alternative development, cooperatives, self-reliance

Abstract

This article is a critical reflection on, and contextualisation of, the Palestinian ‘de-development’ process over the last 50 years of Israeli settler-colonial occupation. It also highlights the Palestinian Authority’s neo-liberal economic practice of structural adjustment post Oslo, that resulted in weakening the resistance economy and community development initiatives, while blocking any opportunity for steadfastness and self-reliance. It presents local community responses in a historical and gender perspective. Kuttab re-examines and re-visits ‘alternative development’ as a concept and paradigm through a case study of the women’s cooperative ‘Our Production is Our Pride’, which endorsed principles of resistance, steadfastness, independence and liberation.

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