Demolishing the House? Abolitionism and Aid: an Abolitionionist Justice Approach

Online event series Decolonizing Aid - Planetary Solidarity beyond Aid. Critical perspectives on development and aid. Recording from 26.02.2023.
Abolitionist voices, demands for reparations, and radical post-development perspectives call not only for the abolition of institutions but for the reconstruction of the world on the basis of an anti-racist, anti-capitalist, anti-colonial, and anti-patriarchal understanding of social and transformative justice. These perspectives make visible structures that (re)produce intersectional hierarchies and help to overcome them. Would we still need help if we understood hierarchies and inequalities as systemic injustices? Can we learn anything from abolitionist and restitution-oriented practices, policies, and histories for this? How can we conceptualize aid, or something akin to aid, in a communitarian sense, a sense of mutual aid?
Lata Narayanaswamy is Associate Professor in Politics of Global Development at the University of Leeds, England. Her research interests include the decolonization of development, the nexus of gender and development, and the relationship between knowledge (production) and development. She is also part of the "COST Action: Decolonising Development: Research, Teaching and Practice ", the "Water Security and Sustainable Development Hub" and the "Gender and information ecosystems in climate change adaptation" project.
Vanessa E. Thompson is an assistant professor and distinguished professor in black studies and social justice at Queen's University, Canada. She researches and teaches in the areas of black studies, critical racism and migration studies, gender studies, anti-colonial theories and methodologies, and critical ethnographies. She is particularly interested and engages with transnational black urban and social movements, struggles against state violence and policing as well as abolition geographies and socialities. Vanessa continues to collaborate with abolitionist collectives in Europe as well as transnational abolitionist movements. Recent publications: Abolitionismus. Ein Reader (2022, Suhrkamp) and Black Feminism(s) (2021, Femina Politica).