Zoe Pflaeger
University of Birmingham
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To be presented at the ISA Annual Conference, San Francisco, 26
th
-29
th
March 2008
A Critical Analysis of the Discourse of Empowerment in Post-
Washington Consensus Development Policy: The Case of
Kenya’s Coffee Industry
FIRST DRAFT – PLEASE DO NOT QUOTE
Abstract
The concept of ‘empowerment’ has become an indispensable part of mainstream
development vocabulary, appealing to a diverse and contradictory range of development
thinkers, practitioners and policy-makers. This paper critically engages with the
discourse that invokes empowerment by exploring how strategies aimed at empowering
Kenyan coffee producers intersect with the power relations that underpin the production
and trade of coffee. In particular, it will be shown that the reliance upon a problematic
understanding of government intervention has resulted in development policies that fail
to address the unequal power relations that pervade the global coffee industry and limit
the possibilities for the regulation and management of the coffee market.
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