The Construction of a Western Voice: OECD and the First UNCTAD of 1964

Abstract

During the period of decolonization, the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) worked as an exclusive space of knowledge production and negotiation among aid donors. At this international body, “the West” positioned itself as a competent center of rationality versus an emotional and irrational “Global South.” The building of such a collective Western identity was decisively shaped by confrontations experienced by Western diplomats at the first UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in 1964. The unity established among Third World politicians at the Geneva conference and their powerful performance provoked a perception of threat, which was answered with recourse to colonial categories. At the DAC, colonial discourse subsequently allowed for a new differentiation between the “West” and “the rest of the world.”