Living excluded from the world: essentialism in development discourse and its percolation into Santomean self-perceptions

Abstract

Using an analysis of development discourse in and about São Tomé and Príncipe (STP), this article aims to trace the relationship between sociocultural constructions of difference and socio-economic structures of exclusion in the global development project. Using ethnographic data from a rural fishing village and from development professionals, I show how development discourse constructs STP as a place that is perpetually marginal and assigns essentialist traits to the islands and their people. In response, Santomeans imagine their society as one that is isolated and insular from global processes, even though they have historically always been incorporated into global networks of capital, labour, culture and commodities. I argue that this process, whereby Santomeans imagine and reproduce their own marginality, has an under-appreciated impact not only on their collective identity but also on their action and potentiality. I reflect on how the construction of marginality serves the global political, economic and social inequalities upon which the development project depends.