Zeitschrift für Empirische Kulturwissenschaft: Issue 1/2026, 122. Volume Under-Development. Future Uncertain

A development consultant is dispatched to India to assess a project that is funded by the British Foreign Office. His Adivasi interpreter once again makes him aware that he himself is part of the depoliticizing machinery known as development policy. While in the hotel’s fitness center, he experiences a collapse. In the aftermath of this event, the protagonist is transported to a future of degrowth in his native Great Britain, where a reversal of global regimes of knowledge and power has become reality. In this transformed world, societal survival now depends on the assistance of the Adivasi interpreter.

Keywords
development cooperation, post-development, postcolonialism, development-induced displacement, degrowth