Postcolonial Trauma and Development in Asia: Psychoanalysis and the Neoliberal Political Economy

Colonial Trauma and Postcolonial Anxieties argues that economic decisions reflect unconscious anxieties about survival and dignity experienced in a cycle of repeat trauma tracing back to the original trauma of loss in colonialism.

Readers will understand how emerging economies evaluate the costs and benefits of key economic policies in the postcolonial era using a psychoanalytical framework.

While there are psychoanalytic studies of the economy and finance from a western perspective, there have been no sustained psychoanalytic studies from the perspective of East Asian economies, the fastest growing in the world. Scholars will also find the methodology combining archival research with and field studies, including rare interviews with senior decision-makers useful in their own research since it is rare to find studies of social theory that are empirically rich.

This book will be of interest to policymakers and scholars of political economy, international development, human geography, postcolonial studies, psychoanalysis, and area studies (Southeast and East Asia). The book can also be used as a text for graduate and upper level university courses.

Maureen Sioh is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at DePaul University. She trained as a hydrologist and has worked in China, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore and with First Nations communities in Canada. Her early research focussed on water quality. Concerned with the subjective process of how communities made decisions when confronting environmental issues, her research evolved to postcolonialism, and then to economics and psychoanalysis. She is the coauthor of Global Libidinal Economy with Ilan Kapoor, Gavin Fridell and Pieter de Vries.