Global health and the elite capture of decolonization: On reformism and the possibilities of alternate paths

Global Health is experiencing a moment of reckoning over the field’s legacy and current structuring in a world facing multiple, intersecting challenges to health. While “decolonization” has emerged as the dominant frame to imagine change in the field, what the concept refers to and entails has become increasingly unclear. Despite warnings, the concept is now being used by elite Global North institutions and organization to imagine their reformation. In this article, I attempt to provide clarity to the issue of conceptualizing change in Global Health. By first outlining a brief history of decolonial thought and then exploring the current state of the decolonizing global health literature, I show a profound disjuncture between popularized calls for decolonization in Global Health and other theorizations of the term. I then argue that the diluting of “decolonization” into a depoliticized vision of reforming the inherently colonial and capitalistic institutions and organizations of Global Health is an example of “elite capture”—the coopting and reconfiguration of radical, liberatory theories and concepts then used by elites for their own gain. Showing how this elite capture has facilitated harm within the field and beyond, I conclude by calling for resistance to elite capture in all its forms.