Differentiating Development: Beyond an Anthropology of Critique

By Thomas Yarrow

Over the last two decades, anthropological studies have highlighted the problems of ‘development’ as a discursive regime, arguing that such initiatives are paradoxically used to consolidate inequality and perpetuate poverty. This volume constitutes a timely intervention in anthropological debates about development, moving beyond the critical stance to focus on development as a mode of engagement that, like anthropology, attempts to understand, represent and work within a complex world. By setting out to elucidate both the similarities and differences between these epistemological endeavors, the book demonstrates how the ethnographic study of development challenges anthropology to rethink its own assumptions and methods. In particular, contributors focus on the important but often overlooked relationship between acting and understanding, in ways that speak to debates about the role of anthropologists and academics in the wider world. The case studies presented are from a diverse range of geographical and ethnographic contexts, from Melanesia to Africa and Latin America, and ethnographic research is combined with commentary and reflection from the foremost scholars in the field.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Release date: Apr 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9780857453044

Book preview

PART

I

Anthropology and Development Reconsidered

CHAPTER

1

On Text and Con-text

Towards an Anthropology in Development

John T. Friedman

This chapter addresses the fields of international development and anthropology in their relation to one another. The set of concerns that set it in motion implicate development practitioners and anthropologists alike. With respect to the former, it is difficult not to overlook the tendency of those working in the development field to offer rather simplistic, static and monocausal explanations for the shortcomings (or complete failures) of their projects. In this sense, and quite ironically so, many development practitioners explain away the limited effects of their projects by pointing a finger at the very conditions they set out to address. Accompanying this inclination to deflect responsibility, practitioners also tend to overestimate the importance of development more generally. As Crewe and Harrison point out, ‘it is easy to forget that, for many intended to be on the receiving end, the effects of what developers do are peripheral or even entirely irrelevant’ (1998: 1).

Since its formalization as a field of international practice, the development sector has remained sceptical of anthropology’s ability to help ameliorate the conditions associated with global poverty and inequality. The turn towards a more holistic human welfare approach in development has helped reduce apprehensions within some agencies, but anthropology’s marginal standing within the wider development landscape continues.

In those few instances when agencies have striven to bring anthropology to bear on development outcomes, the efforts have yielded only limited success. In part, this lacklustre performance relates to the fact that development’s modus operandi rarely, if ever, accommodates the needs of a vigorous anthropology. The development anthropologist is thus forced to make significant methodological compromises. Not only is the customary 12–24 months of participant observation reduced to a mere 2–4 weeks within the scope of a development project, but also the more open-ended anthropological approach is replaced by a rigid and outcome-oriented research strategy. The insights that result from such efforts are often relatively shallow, limiting the extent and impact of their application.

These ways of ‘doing’ anthropology in the development sector are also one of the main reasons why, in relation to the wider field of anthropology, development anthropologists are often viewed as being much more of development than of anthropology. The other reason why so many academic anthropologists continue to treat their colleagues in development as disciplinary pariahs relates to the moral and normative mandates that accompany them to the field. Many academic anthropologists feel uncomfortable with any non-culturally relative approach.

If anthropologists have been forced to make significant methodological compromises in the practice of development, then what might be said of those on the academic side of the discipline? Though there are some noteworthy exceptions that resonate with the position to be adopted herein (e.g., Long and Long 1992; Olivier de Sardan 2005), during the past quarter-century the anthropology of development has remained closely tied to the post-structuralist paradigm. Inspired by the work of Michel Foucault, this perspective asserts that through the institutional production of development discourse Western countries dominate, manage and exploit the ‘third world’. These critics call for the dismantling of development discourse as the only way to transcend development’s domination and exploitation (e.g., Crush 1995; Escobar 1995; Ferguson 1990; Grillo and Stirrat 1997; Rahnema and Bawtree 1997).

Any honest assessment of anthropology’s post-structuralist critique of development must acknowledge its important contributions. The critique has generated awareness about development discourse’s ability to shape and construct global poverty, and it has helped us realize the extent to which the industrial West exerts control over processes of global change. In a nutshell, the approach has forced us to recognize the important relationship between poverty, knowledge and power. For these reasons, the post-structural critics have moved us beyond development’s failed outcomes and imperfect practices in order to challenge an all too normative and self-evidently taken world view. But despite generating such critical awareness – and herein lies the problem – there is little evidence to suggest that the post-structuralists have contributed much to the improvement of the material realities of the world’s poor and disenfranchised. In the end, then, this line of critique has revealed itself as mostly an intellectual exercise. As I will argue more extensively below, the anthropology of development’s continued over-reliance on post-structuralism has ultimately limited the discipline’s ability to contribute positively to the lives of those in the so-called developing world.

From both the academic and applied sides of our field, we are then left with a rather stark contradiction about anthropology more generally. How can a field of study that is so fully committed to humanity have such difficulties when it comes to acting in ways that improve the conditions under which that humanity exists? The burden of this problem rests on the backs of both anthropologists and development practitioners. As for the former, it is high time to re-balance the anthropology of development’s overly structural interpretations, ones that privilege structure over agency, hegemony over dialectics, and text over context. By conceiving development as a dialectical encounter, rather than only a hegemonic one, and by returning to participant-observation and long-term fieldwork in grass-roots settings, rather than continued discourse analysis, anthropologists can engage more fully, understand more comprehensively and, most importantly, contribute more effectively to improving the quality of life for people in the ‘third world’. For their part, development professionals need to recognize and accept the value of anthropology in development. Thus, this chapter also stands as an attempt to urge development practitioners and their agencies to embrace the field of anthropology, but to do so on anthropology’s, rather than development’s, own terms.

There is indeed some scope for a more productive and progressive relationship between development practice and the anthropology of development. In what follows, I present an ethnographic account of a high-profile case of development in northwest Namibia as a means to reflect on the dynamics of development more generally. The nuanced understanding of ‘development’ that emerges out my analysis of the proposed Kunene River Hydropower Scheme suggests the opportunity for a more significant anthropological contribution in the field of development practice. In trying to forge a productive synthesis between knowledge and practice, between an ‘anthropology of development’ and a ‘development anthropology’, I aim to chart a possible path forward towards a more efficacious anthropology in