40 Anthropology, Development and the Post-modern Challenge spending in general were cut back severely under the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher. There were few teaching jobs or research openings for trained anthropologists within the university system and opportunities outside academia for working anthropologists suddenly became a pressing issue within Britain's professional associations. The dangers of academic research agendas becoming determined wholly or in part by the demands of the market place under conditions of reduced public expenditure during the 1980s led to fears about the academic credibility of applied anthropology.6 The status distinction between 'academic' and 'applied' work lives on in some UK academic departments; while in Canada, applied work is taught alongside generalist courses in order to try to avoid the dangers of separating the two (Warry, 1992: 155). The American Anthropological Association, the main professional body for anthropologists in the US, lists 'applied anthropology' as a legitimate field of the discipline (this is somewhat less apparent in corresponding UK literature). Applied anthropologists have continued to undertake work and publish on a wide range of important social issues. Recent articles in Human Organisation have included studies on the relationship between AIDS knowledge and behavioural change (Vincke et al., 1993), the perceptions of economic realities among drug dealers (Dembo et al., 1993), and the adaptive problems of General Motors personnel and their families during overseas assignments (Briody and Chrisman, 1992). Work in 'radical anthropology' and 'action anthropology' has continued, though outside the mainstream, to explore issues of political aption/ As we have already noted in Chapter 1, mainstream anthropology embarked upon a period of re-evaluation during the 1980s, with discussions about representation and textuality, based mainly on the critique set in motion by the work of Clifford and Marcus (1986). This post-modern anthropology concerned itself primarily with the need for a reflexive approach to ethnographic writing. The concept of practice was to some extent relegated to the back burner again, despite its centrality to issues such as anthropology's relationship to development and the growing interest among sociologists and political scientists about the new social movements which were beginning to challenge and change social and political realities at the local level (Escobar, 1992). The realisation that much of applied anthropology had been taking place within what Escobar (1995) calls the 'dominant discourse' began to stimulate discussion about anthropology's potential to challege its hegemony and to draw - Applying Anthropology - Historical Background 41 attention to other, less visible discourses. These themes are returned to in subsequent chapters. There are signs that the insights of post-modernism could lead applied anthropology towards new approaches in keeping with radical development perspectives. A recent article by Johannsen (1992: 79) suggests the continuation of Tax's tradition of action anthropology in which anthropology provides an infrastructure for sustained self-reflection by the people being studied, which will ultimately produce a process of self-assessment. It aims at empowering people by providing a context that better enables them to represent themselves, their culture and concerns. Johannsen advocates steering a new path between trying to solve posed problems (applied anthropology) and representing a cultural system by one's own writing (interpretative anthropology). Both types of approach recognise that the practice of anthropology is essentially an intervention of some kind, either intentionally or unintentionally. By accepting this and making it explicit, a post-modern applied anthropology can provide the means by which people within a community represent themselves and identify the nature and solutions of their problems. It remains to be seen how this could work in practice, but these ideas come close to the types of action research being undertaken by some NGOs and other grassroots organisations. We will be discussing this in more detail in Chapters 4 and 5. Applied development roles for anthropologists The preceding sections have dealt briefly with the history of applied anthropology. Now we need to turn to what it is that anthropologists have to offer, and what they actually do. What follows is an exploration of the various types of activities which applied anthropologists have undertaken in the development field. The traditional methodology of social anthropology is what is known rather vaguely as 'participant observation': that is, the principle of living within a community for a substantial period of time - 'fieldwork', which might be expected to take one or two years - and immersing oneself in the local culture, work, food and language, while remaining as unobtrusive as possible. Many of the earliest anthropologists recorded their observations in a fieldwork diary, taking copious notes on all aspects of life, to be written up later as a monograph or ethnographic text, and without necessarily having a sense of the particular research questions they wished to 42 Anthropology, Development and the Post-modern Challenge address until they were well into their period of study or even until after they had returned home. What resulted from this approach (and many of anthropology's classic texts fall into this category) tended to be highly personalised accounts voiced as objective accounts, with little explicit discussion of research methodology. This, coupled with the convention of changing names of people and places, meant there was very little opportunity for others subsequently to verify the more controversial aspects of anthropological accounts. In one of the more famous examples of anthropological revisionism, elements of Margaret Mead's work in Western Samoa were challenged in a controversial book by Derek Freeman (1983), who alleged that some of Mead's key findings on gender and sex differences were based on misleading information which had been provided by Samoan adolescents who had found it amusing to mislead an anthropologist with stories of fictional sexual exploits. As noted in the previous chapter, this questioning of 'classic' anthropology reached a more serious crisis point during the mid-1980s when post-modern critiques (e.g. Clifford and Marcus, 1986) cast severe-doubts upon the authority of the anthropologist and the texts he orjshe produced. The blandness of participant observation as a technical methodological term in the 1960s and 1970s was gradually addressed by the growing body of more defined data collection techniques which anthropologists began to use under the general category of participant observation: case study collection, questionnaire surveys, structured and semi-structured interviewing, even computer modelling and the supplementing of qualitative material with quantitative data. Nevertheless, participant observation has retained its centrality to the work of many anthropologists, and anthropologists have in general retained their fondness for qualitative rather than quantitative data. Applied anthropologists have drawn upon a number of key insights from wider anthropology in order to equip themselves for their work. In terms of research methodologies, the main change is that participant obervation must normally now be undertaken within a tightly circumscribed time-frame, with a set of key questions (provided by the agency commissioning the research) replacing the more open-ended 'blank notebook' approach. Furthermore, the applied anthropologist knows that his or her findings will be appreciated far more if they can be presented concisely and made to include at least an element of quantification. At a more theoretical level, applied anthropologists have tried to use an awareness of Western bias and ethnocentrism to provide a Applying Anthropology - Historical Background 43 counterweight to the less culturally sensitive perspectives of planners and technicians. Applied anthropologists have utilised the once-influential distinction between the 'emic' (internal cultural or linguistic cultural categories) and the 'etic' (objective or universal categories) in order to highlight to development people , the importance and variety of people's own categories of thought and action.8 In other words, what people say they are doing may not be the same as what they are actually doing, and what projects set out to do may in practice have very different outcomes. Anthropology's 'actor-oriented' perspective (Long, 1977; Long and Long, 1992) provides a valuable entry point and a 'way of seeing' which is appropriate to specific development projects, particularly in rural areas or with specific sections of the community. Development projects can themselves be viewed as 'communities'. Combined with this, participant observation, with the direct contact with local people which it involves, might be seen as less 'top-down' than other methods, such as the survey or questionnaire. Finally, applied anthropologists have drawn upon anthropology's holistic approach to social and economic life, which stresses an interrelated-ness that is often missed by other practitioners. This was seen as having the potential to make useful links between the micro and the macro perspectives, as well as revealing hidden, complex realities which have a bearing on project-based work. Equipped with these general insights, anthropologists have set about their applied work in a considerable number of different roles. Firth (1981) has set out a general typology and his list forms a useful starting point for our discussion. Perhaps the most common role is that of mediation by the anthropologist between a community and outsiders and, following from this, the attempt to interpret a culture to outsiders. Anthropologists can sometimes contribute to the formation of public opinion on issues relating to a small-scale community, such as through journalism or participation in other media. A more active level of participation might include helping to provide direct aid during times of crisis for a society being studied. Finally, anthropologists can undertake client-oriented research either as commissioned academics or as professional consultants. Since applied anthropology, as we have seen, began its life within the arena of public administration, many applied anthropologists have continued to concern themselves with planned development. Lucy Mair's Anthropology and Development (1984) provides an overview of the anthropologist's role as intermediary between 'the developers' and 'the developed': in which anthropologists should act as go-betweens between the top-down developers and the 44 Anthropology, Development and the Post-modern Challenge voiceless communities. If a development intervention is to achieve its objectives, then the anthropologist has a responsibility to become involved to try to ensure that certain kinds of problems are avoided. Mair recounts hair-raising stories of planners foisting inappropriate projects on hapless rural people, which include resettlement schemes where people are moved without adequate compensation, and new technology resulting in economic benefits being captured by men within the household at the expense of women. But Mair's is essentially an optimistic view of the potential of anthropology to render development more people-centred, and she reassures us that 'if I concentrate on the disasters, it is because they are what anthropological knowledge might help to prevent on later occasions' (1984: 111). Applied anthropologists and development projects Anthropologists are also increasingly being employed by development agencies to help with project design, appraisal and evaluation. Since the Second World War the notion of the 'project' has become central to mainstream development activity, whether centred on large-scale infrastructural work such as the building of ]& dam or bridge, or 'softer' areas such as health or education provision. Projects tend to pass through a series of staged activities, often known as the 'project cycle', and this process is depicted in Figure 2.1. By the 1960s and 1970s, the World Bank and the United Nations were promoting what they termed 'integrated rural development', in which conventional planning methods were cast aside in favour of a measure of community participation (at least at the level of intention) in setting needs and a more comprehensive approach to tackling problems on a number of sectoral fronts simultaneously -for example, agriculture, health-care provision and ■ education components might be linked in one large project. Many of these projects unfortunately remained conservative incharacter as large bureaucracies proved themselves incapable (or unwilling) to involve local people in decision-making (Black, 1991). As Pottier (1993) points out, the idea that economic and social change can be framed within projects is central to the top-down, controlling urge of development activity. When questions are asked within the conceptual framework of a project, it is all too easy to submit to the idea of 'social engineering' and to forget that most 'complications' involve real people in real-life situations around which straightforward decision-making boundaries cannot be drawn. Applying Anthropology - Historical Background 45 Identification Appraisal Planning Implementation re- operation and maintenance Evaluation Project extension into new phase or termination Figure 2.1: The project cycle But it should not be surprising to find that many applied anthropologists have ventured into the world of development projects in the sincere hope that better results can be achieved. They have been invited to carry out 'impact studies' among the local community to 46 Anthropology, Development and the Post-modern Challenge assess whether or not the project's objectives have been met. Sometimes these studies can be combined with academic, longer-term research concerns in familiar cultural contexts, while others are 'one-offs' in less familar areas of the world for the anthropologist. Many anthropologists have formed part of interdisciplinary teams assembled for short periods in order to undertake time-bound consultancies which investigate these sets of issues. Lucy Mair (1984) fully endorses the interventionist approach and argues that the applied anthropologist is in a position to warn those active in development of the 'likely resistance to be meť with regard to development projects from among the communities for which such projects are designed. He or she is also well placed to try to 'register the discontent' of people bypassed by development processes and to pass this information to those in a position to make improvements. The danger of Mair's position is that it retains a tendency to treat communities as being 'acted upon' in the development process, instead of actively determining the direction and conditions of change through a more bottom-up, .participatory involvement. There are other pitfalls: anthropologists fcan be viewed by donors as the representatives of the local people and asked simply to provide certificates of social acceptability for projects. Another area of difficulty has been the tendency to bring in the anthropologists only when things begin to go wrong, rather than having them involved from the start. As Robertson has put it, anthropologists have often been used only as 'pathologists picking over project corpses', with little involvement in planning (1984:294). Applied anthropology and advocacy These issues have led some anthropologists away from mediation and project-based work towards advocacy. Given contemporary post-modern debates surrounding 'voice', and the legitimacy of the pronouncements of outsiders about 'disadvantaged' groups which were mentioned in the last chapter, this role is not without its problems. Some of the pitfalls of advocacy are exemplified by the work of Oscar Lewis, who in research in a slum in the 1950s in Mexico saw himself as both a 'student and a spokesman' for the poor, who (it was assumed) were unable to speak for themselves. The publication in Spanish of Lewis's book about the 'culture of poverty' in a slum in Mexico (The Children of Sanchez) caused a political storm and he was accused by the government of having insulted the culture of the people of Mexico (Belshaw, 1976). ; \ Applying Anthropology - Historical Background 47 In spite of these problems, advocacy has a long tradition in applied anthropology. During the 1960s, in the field of resettlement issues, ; Thayer Scudder and others struggled to influence the authorities and agencies involved to take the needs of relocatees more seriously. Scudder was a pioneer of what became known as 'resettlement anthropology', though the advocacy role often adopted by the t anthropologist in this context brings with it many risks and respon- sibilities (De Wet, 1991). Advocacy has now developed into a relatively well-established tradition within anthropology, at least within the US, where activities have included lobbying in state legislatures for increases in welfare rights, fighting to improve conditions in women's prisons and testifying before congressional committees to support child health-care programmes (M. Harris, 1991). The_appearance of what has been termed ^dyocacy_,tantliropD^" : siyvival "group -^eFRliller, 1995) has invj^e^&j^ \- of 'mcugenous' people to gain more control ..pyer^_^eirwliyes t (^coEar, 1992). For example, the right of people to retain their own I cultural identities and to maintain access to their local natural I resources (particularly land) are being contested in the United [ States, Canada, Australia, Brazil and many other countries. Anthro- ': pologists have played a role in organisations such as Survival ; International and the International Work Group for Indigenous t Affairs (IWGIA). These concerns have also generated a broader t form of what has been called 'committed anthropology', which may L extend outside the formal academic career environment or the t development mainstream in order to bring to public attention cases £ of genocide and ethnocide, taking action in campaigning about such r; abuses and making requests for material help for communities f under threat (Polgar, 1979: 416). There have also been calls for *- anthropologists to pay more attention to issues of conflict X resolution, which might allow a 'fusion of social commitment and \ critical insight' (Deshen, 1992:184). t' In the development context, the advocacy role has tended to be p more associated with resistance to outside interventions rather than i- prima facie agenda-building; for example, supporting opposition T~ from local communities to the building of a dam, or the preservation ? of local culture m the face of change and repression. The new r emphasis on the idea of 'participation' within development (wHch jr we discuss further in Chapter 5), along with soul-searching within Z anthropology itself, h#s meant that anthropologists are now keener t \9Jee themselves as facilitating disadvantaged groups within a L cornmuruty in finding their voices, rather than speaking gn behalf-of 48 Anthropology, Development and the Post-modern Challenge them. A shift may be underway which takes the anthropologist away from mediating between people and projects towards facilitating better communication between communities and outsiders. Tosome extent these advocacy and 'social mobilisation' roles are ones which many NGOs and community groups already fulfil ffiemsefr es. There^aTBeena Eem^ndous gfowtK' mTecent years of NGO activities, with advocacy and lobbying an important part of the agenda. The case for anthropologists' involvement here may be weakened in many contexts, and this will be discussed in Chapter 7. Nevertheless, anthropologists are in a good position from which to contribute: helping to facilitate or create situations in which, say, hitherto 'voiceless' low-income farmers can put across their views to policy-makers through their own forms of local organisation, and helping to network information and lobbying policy-makers in the North, are perhaps some of the key roles which remain for the applied anthropologist in the development context.9 4ty Applying Anthropology - Historical bacKgrouna effective challenge to the dominant paradigms of development? We will argue that anthropologists can suggest alternative ways of seeing and thus step outside the discourse, both by supporting re^stance_to devejopment and.b the discourse to challenge and unpick its assumptions. The anthropological critique oirdevelopment is often a piecemeal task, resembling a constant chipping away at a giant rock, but the rock is not immovable. Conclusion Various other approaches to development issues have bee& taken by anthropologists. For example, although anthropologists such as ?Cucy Mar? explicitly reject the dependency school of development theory with its implication that only by revolution, not evolutionary change, can real development take place, more radical anthropologists have sought to develop explicitly just such a 'revolutionary anthropology' (Stavenhagen, 1971). {' Rather than standing apart from the subjects of study, some anthropologists have therefore accepted various degrees of involvement with the people among whom they have worked. Sometimes this takes the form of helping out in various ways with local problems (such as providing medical supplies or taking a member of the community for treatment outside the locality), or trying to help the community through providing resources, such as contributing to the building of a new school. Other anthropologists have taken a more active role in community affairs, adopting the view that tneir research implies wider responsibilities for bringing about change, as debates about empowerment and participation within development have "begun to cross-fertilise with the post-modern questioning of ^lonventional antte In subsequent chapters oFthis bob explore the difficult issues faced by anthropologists working in development in the 1990s. Is anthropology hopelessly compromised by its involvement in mainstream development or can anthropologists offer an ■■-41 til.-- ■ — * 3 THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF DEVELOPMENT . s1.. . .. s... ... I, 6.. ■ ■ ■ r. Anthropologists, change and development i While anthropologists have long made practical contributions to ;: i- planned change and policy, many have also studied development as |: a field of academic enquiry in itself. Although much of tjiis work has i t 'applied' uses, its primary objective has been to contribute to wider $ theoretical debates within anthropology and development studies. ■ | In this chapter we shall explore some of this work, and attempt to | show how the distinction between what^Nomm^Lpng calls :-< I 'knowledge for understanding^versus 'knowledge for action' is | largely false. In other words,Qhe'anthr^^ j- cannot easily be separated from" 'development anthropology* (i.e. : I ag^gr^^rogi^ogyj.5As Long points out,, such a dichotomy .-• I obscures the inextricability of both types of knowledge, thus encouraging practitioners to view everything not written in report form as 'irrelevant' and researchers to ignore the practical implications of their findings (Long and Long, 1992: 3). As we shall see in this and the next chapter, the insights gleaned from knowledge produced primarily for academic purposes can have important effects upon I f the ways in which development is understood. This in turn can ■ t affect practical action and policy. t Rather than necessarily being trapped within the dominant | J discourses of development, we shall also suggest that the anthro- i; t pology of development can be used to challenge its key assumptions i' and representations, both working within it towards constructive !" change, and providing alternative ways of seeing which question the very foundations of developmental thought. Research which focuses upon local resistance to development activities, or which contradicts static and dualistic notions of traditional and modern - Anthropology of Development 51 domains, are just two examples. As we hope to show too, the relationship between anthropology and development is not necessarily one-way: the study of development has proved to be fertile ground for anthropology, influenced by and feeding into wider debates within the discipline. Since no society is sta tic, change should be inherent in all anthro-poT^icár™ánalysis. However^ this rias not always been the case. Wnlle in ilsliartest phases the discipline was based upon models of evolutionary change, from the 1920s until the 1950s British social anthropology was dominated by the functionalist paradigms of Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown (Grimshaw and Hart, 1993: 14-29). These presented the 'exotic' peoples studied as isolated and self-sufficient; social institutions were functionally integrated and each contributed in different ways to social reproduction. Rather than continually changing according to wider political or economic circumstances, such societies were therefore presented in ahistorical terms, functionally bound together by the sum of their customs and social institutions. By the 1960s and early 1970s, structural-functionalism was increasingly superseded by the structuralism of Levi-Strauss.5 While based on quite different theoretical premisses from those of structural-functionalism, this too was largely uninterested in change, seeking out the binary oppositions which, the structuralists argued, underlie all human culture. Although structural-functionalism arid structuralism were not the only paradigms in anthropology over these periods, and writers such as Leach challenged the static nature of structuralist accounts,2 in general history and economic change were not given much consideration by the mainstream. This tendency continues today in the work of some anthropologists. Indeed, cultural units are often portrayed in ethnography as isolates; if the forces of market or state are mentioned, they are presented as autonomous forces, impinging from the outside (Marcus and Fischer, 1986: 77). In spite of these trends, individual anthropologists have long been studying the effects of economic change, development projects and global capitalism. Within some branches of anthropology, such -work has always been closely connected to theory: French Marxist anthropology is just one example.3 Meanwhile, recognition of the historical embeddedness of ethnography has been growing in recent decades. This is associated with anthropology's recent bout of self-criticism and reflexivity, and with wider critiques of the way in which Western scholarship has presented timeless, ahistorical 'others' (ibid.: .78). Today, understanding cultural and social 52 Anthropology, Development and the Post-modern Challenge organisation as dynamic, rather than fixed or determined by 'set' essentials, is central to contemporary anthropology. It is widely appreciated Jhat..£uUure ,does_ not _ exist in a vacuum/'lJutls determined by, and in turn determines, historically specific political ancL economic contexts. m this shortchapter we cannot begin to discuss the vast range of anthropological work which places change at the centre of the analysis. Even if we only included research which focuses directly on situations where capitalist forms of production, exchange or labour relations have recently been introduced, the potential range of material is huge. It is not our intention to produce a comprehensive survey of such work, nor do we intend to discuss the many non-anthropological studies of development. Instead, in what follows we provide a quick 'taste' of the ways in which anthropologists have tackled economic change and growth, whether this was deliberately planned or more spontaneous. As we shall see, while not all of this work explicitly questions or challenges the dominant development discourse, some of it does so implicitly. ^general, the anthropology, of development (and by this we mean plannedand unplanned social and economic change) can be looselylirranged around the following themes: j; 1. The social and cultural effects of economic change. '" development projects (and why 'they fail). 17........---------------~~ , 3/ The internal workings and discourses of the 'aid industry'. / Some work covers all these themes; the first two, in particular, are /closely interrelated. Clearly too, the potential applicability of the different analyses varies, Work which addresses the second issue, for example, often aims to affect policy as well as add to academic debate. It is generallysympathetic rather than completely condemnatory oTcfevelopme'nt practice, assuming that the understandings which" it' provides are crucial tools m the struggle to improve devel--9i>menf;^^^ it tends to blur the bouncfarles between academic anH^JjpftSi anthropology. In contrast; ahthro-poTc^Sf^M usually less interested in aiding development practitioners; while their insights may have policy implications, such work rarely ends with practical recom-, mendations. Instead they hope to problematise the very nature of ^ development. As we shall see, the three themes can also be linked, albeit'very loosely, to historical changes within both development and anthropology. /\ntnroyuiu%y uj ^ui-wpM.u.. The social and cultural effects of economic change Although the study of economic change has not always been academically fashionable, individual anthropologists have long been grappling with it. As we saw in the last chapter, the relationship between anthropology, its practical application and questions of change were originally (in British social anthropology at least) entangled with colonial rule, especially in Africa. Malinowski was the first anthropologist to propose a new branch of the subject: 'the anthropology of the changing native' (1929: 36, and cited in Grillo, 1985:9), sending students such as Lucy Mair to Africa to study social change, rather than more abstract theoretical principals, Even Evans-Pritchard - accused today of having remained silent in his famous ethnographic writings on the Nuer about the frequent aerial bombings of their herds as part of the colonial government's 'pacification' programme in the 1930s during his fieldwork - argued in earlier work that the Nuer were in a state of transition, their clans and lineages broken up by endless wars (discussed by Kuper, 1983: 94). Let us start, then, with some of the early work of British anthropologists working in colonial Africa. Rural to urban migration and 'detribalisation' One of the earliest collective efforts to make sense of economic and political change in Africa was embodied by the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute in 1937. While it was originally assumed that the Institute's research would concentrate upon 'traditional' African rural life, the director, Godfrey Wilson, made it clear that he was most interested in urbanisation and its influence on rural life (Hannerz, 1980 :123). In the books which resulted from Wilson's research in Broken Hill (now Zambia) (Wilson, 1941; 1942), he argued that while Central African society was normally in a state of equilibrium, destabilising changes had been introduced which had led to disequilibrium. These changes were mostly the result of the increasing influence of capitalist production within the region: industrialisation, and growing rural-to-urban migration. As in Zambia's Copperbelt, Broken Hill was dominated by the European mining industry, which largely determined African migration to and settlement within it. Because colonial policy discouraged permanent settlement, most of the male migrants working for the mines moved between their villages and the town. Wilson suggested that de-stabilisation might be offset if this policy were reversed and ...........____________-------.^rno^cTitT^y, TjevEiopmenl ancTthe Post-modern Challenge proposed that eventually the changes would be incorporated by the social system, leading once more to equilibrium. Urban migration in Rhodesia, as in other parts of Africa, had a dramatic effect on rural areas. Many villages lost a large proportion of their male labour force, and most migrants could not afford to send back enough remittances to compensate. The work of other anthropologists confirmed this gloomy view of labour migration, linking it with decreasing agricultural output (A. Richards, 1939) and cultural decay (Schapera, 1947). While this perspective was to change in later studies which suggested that rural-to-urban migration in Africa might be a force of modernisation (for a review, see Eades, 1987; 3), other, more contemporary work has taken up similar themes. Colin Murray's analysis of labour migration in Lesotho, for example, shows how rural life has been deeply structured by its dependence on the export of labour to South Africa. Oscillating male migration has generated economic insecurity, marital disharmony and the destruction of traditional kinship relations. In other words, capital accumulated at the urban core takes place at the expense of the rural periphery (Murray, 1981). While this body of work raises questions about the relationship of societies on the 'periphery' to the global political economy, research based in the Copperbelt towns has greatly contributed to anthropological understanding of ethnicity. The^ I^^s^jyingstone Institute, and the continuation of its work under" Max Gluckman at the University of Manchester, focused largely upon social and cultural formsjyvithin the mining towns. Central to mucH pjl^was the issue o£'detribalisation', )he argument that once individuals moved to the towns their triBal bonds became less important being superseded by class or wbrkplacTHfu'iafions. Research showed that this was <&tnecessarib^_rtie caseT)RaaSeJrA i±ibal_ identities and obligations changed, and were used in'different ways in the urban setting. Mitchell's seminal analysis of the Kalela Dance (1956), Epstein's Politics in an Urban African Community (1958) and Cohen's slightly later analysis of Yoruba traders and the use of ethnicity for political and economic interests (1969) raised questions of identity, ethnic conflict and cultural diversity, which are of central interest to anthropologists today. Agricultural change: polarisation While the anthropology of urbanisation in Africa was rooted in prewar colonial policy, studies of rural change in South and South East Asia were largely influenced by post-colonial states' efforts to Anthropology of Development 55 modernise in the 1950s and 1960s. Much of this work indicated that the transition to cash-cropping, mechanisation and the growing importance of wage labour had a range of social effects, not least of which was increasing polarisation and the proletarianisation of the rural poor, It seemed that the 'Green Revolution' and other modernisation strategies were unlikely, at least in the forseeable future, to diminish poverty. These critiques contributed to growing scepticism about the 'trickle-down' effects of economic growth, and added to calls for a shift in policy towards 'basic needs' and the targeting of particularly vulnerable groups. Let us start with Clifford Geertz's account of Indonesian agricultural change, Agricultural Involution (1963a). By providing an historical account of Indonesian agriculture, Geerk, show fed how colonmT^p'offaes encoura^ a., partial cash economy m which peasant farmers were forced to pay taxes to support plantation production for export. This, alongside the policies of the post-independence elite, contributed to growing dualism. The majority of farmers formed a labour-intensive sector in which they were unable to accumulaMcapitai and produced mainly for subsistence, while another sector grew capital-intensive and technologically advanced under colonial management. ^Economic Stagnation in Indonesia has therefore been deeply structured hot only by history and ecology, but al§d by social and cultural factors (^rtzjggajuj545. y*3i[^ multidisciplinary approach, otf\e|:anthrop in a mor,e.,^ have focused uporT the effects of economic change at the micro level. In South Asia?twt>^ 'Ctiste and the Economic Frontier (1958) and Scarlett Epstein's Economic Development and Social Change in South India (1962). In a later work, South India: Yesterday, Today and Tomorroxv (1973), Epstein discusses the effects of the introduction of new irrigation techniques and the growing importance of cash-cropping to two villages in south India. In the village of Wangala, where farmers were increasingly producing for and profiting from a local sugar refinery, the changes had not led to major social readjustment. The village continued to have few links with the external economy and the social structure remained largely unaltered, due to both the flexibility of the local political system and the fact that the economy was still wholly based upon agriculture. In contrast, in the second village, Dalena, which had remained a dry land enclave in the midst of an irrigated belt, male farmers were encouraged to move away from their relatively unprofitable agricultural pursuits and participate in other ways in the burgeoning J" s\nimupuiugy, uevetopment ana tne lJost-moaem challenge economy which surrounded them. Some became traders, or worked in white-collar jobs in the local town. These multiple economic changes led to the breakdown of the hereditary political, social and ritual obligations, the changing status of local caste groups and the rise of new forms of hierarchy. The different changes in each community indicate that processes of capitalist transformation are far from homogeneous, even within the same region. Instead, economic and technological changes inter-relaTe with pre-existing social and cultural forms in a variety of ways, and have diverse consequences. Epstein's work also shows that in both villages social differentiation was increasing. In Wangala, despite the government's abolition of 'untouchability' in 1949, those lowest in the caste hierachy remained in the same position. The gap between the poorest and the richest was, however, growing. Likewise, traditional bonds between employers and labourers were largely intact. In Dalena there had been some compromises over 'untouchability', but at the same time the security of labourers had diminished; the poorest were becoming increasingly temporary and wholly dependent upon their small wages rather than the traditional patronage of their employers. Awide literature supports Epstein's view that the modernisation QLagriculture (the introduction of new technologies, cash-cro|png, wage labour) in South Asia has contributed to. growing rural polarisation. Much of this constitutes'a critique of the Green Revolution, correcting initial claims that the 'package' of agricultural innovations would cure all hunger. Again, the effects of the innovations depend partly upon pre-existing social relations. Harriss' study of social changes in North Arcot, south India, for example, shows1 that while farmers are increasingly linked to external markets and government institutions, traditional patron clientage is reinforced (J. Harriss, 1977). Meanwhile, the poorest are worse off, for alongside the new technology has come increasing competition over scarce resources, together in some cases with displacement of labour by the new technology (Farmer, 1977). These effects, added to the non-adoption of many parts of the package, have been noted across the world (Pearse, 1980). ; Modernisation is thus not nearly so simple as many theorists during the 1950s and 1960s had assumed. While writers such as Epstein were not engaged in the critical deconstruction of 'development' which was to emerge several decades later in the work of post-modernist anthropologists, their ethnography vividly demonstrated the flaws in the conventional developmental thinking of the time. They also contributed to wider debates within anthropology; Anthropology oj Development o/ for example, Bailey and Epstein were just two of many anthropologists working in South Asia on the changing nature of caste and kinship institutions during this period 4 Capitalism and the 'world system' As notions of modernisation and the 'trickle-down' effects of economic growth were being increasingly questioned by both anthropological findings and the evident failure of many development policies, other researchers were turning their attention to the relationship of local communities and cultures to the global political economy. This can be linked to the growing dominance during the 1970s of theories of dependency, and especially to Wallerstein's world system theory (Wallerstein, 1974), as well as the use of Marxism in the 1970s and 1980s by some anthropologists (for example, Bloch, 1983). Rather than analysing development in terms of the transformation of otherwise untouched or 'traditional' communities by economic or technological innovations, the emphasis here was more upon the ways in which societies on the 'periphery' 'KaBlon^'been^integrate J'info capitalism, and on the cultural expressions of economic and polity and/or resistance. Such work places indigenous experiences and expressions of history at the centre of the analysis; colonialism and neo-coldnialism are often key^Qjhis? It is worth noting that much of this research was earned out in Latin America, where dependency theory originated. Like dependencyjK^^^ raised by.this approach are less easlly.v'translated -into,national or regional policy. It critiques the basis of development discourse, rather than attempting to work within it. A classic attempt to fuse jieo-Marxist political economy with antliropptogicar perspectives is Er|c .Wolf's, Europe and-the People ^Jp^^stoxfyl^Sl), This'is an ambitious attempt to place the history of the world's peoples within the context of global capitalism, showing how the history of capitalism has tied even the most apparently remote areas and social groups into the system. In it, Wolf argues tiHat concepts such as the mode of production involve sodaTand.cultural, as well as technical, aspects. Since he concentrates oh the macro-level His analysis of culture is rather limited, however (Marcus and Fisher, 1986: 85). As others have pointed out too, the spread of European capitalism is far from being the only history to be told of the 'people without history' (Asad, 1987). Similar themes are taken up in Worsley's The Three Worlds: Culture and World Development (1984), which provides further analysis of the ______-—~„r*ryuiogyt Uevelopment and the Post-modern Challenge relationship between local cultural expressions and the exploitative workings of global capitalism. The integration of political economy and history into ethnographic analysis opened important doors in anthropology during the 1980s, contributing to some of the most exciting work to be produced in recent decades. In this, the mediation between structure and experienced practice is central, indicating the diverse ways in which people struggle to construct meaning and act upon the forces which often subjugate and engulf them. Comaroff's Body 'of Power, Spirit of Resistance (1985), an analysis of the interrelationship between history and culture among the Baralong boo Ratshidi, a people on the margins of the South African state, is a classic example of such an approach. David Lan's Guns and Rain (1985), an ethnography of rural revolution in Zimbabwe, is another example. Drawing more directly from neo-Marxist theories of dependency, two important studies by anthropologists working in Latin America indicate both the extent to which groups are linked into global capitalism, and the ways in which this is interpreted and culturally resisted. Michael Taussig's The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America (1980) is an account of the cultural as well as economic integration of Columbian peasants and of Bolivian tp miners into the money economy and proletarian wage labour. T^e Columbian peasants who seasonally sell their labour to plantations present the plantation economy and profits made from it as tied to the capitalist system, and thus to the devil. Plantations are conceptualised as quite separate from the peasants' own land; in the former, profit-making requires deals to be made with the devil, whereas in the latter it does not. In the Bolivian tin mines, workers worship Tio (the* devil), who Taussig argues is a spiritual embodiment of capitalism and a way of mediating pre-capitalist beliefs with the introduction of wage labour and industrialisation. Similar themes are explored in June Nash's We Eat the Mines and the Mines Eat Us (1979). Again drawing on Latin American dependency theory and on Marxist analysis of ideology and class consciousness, Nash explores the cultural and social meanings given to capitalist exploitation at the periphery. Taussig's and Nash's work concentrates' largely upon local ideologies of capitalist integration, without directly questioning models of dependency and global exploitation. Other anthropologists, however, have added to the growing critique of dependency theory and its eventual fall from grace during the 1980s. In Norman Long's research in the Mantaro Valley of central Peru, for example, he found that neb-Marxism"only offered limited insights (Long, 1977). Instead, his findings challenged dependency theorists' Anthropology of Development 59 assumptions that integration into global capitalism could only lead to stagnation oh the periphery. In his research he found both growth ariH'''diversification in the'Mahtaro Valley. Indeed, some groups had been highly entrepreneurial, generating considerable small-scale capital accumulation. Local producers had also developed a complex system of economic linkages, which was far from simply determined by the 'centre'. Contrary to the assumptions made by dependency theory, there were no obvious chains of hierarchy linking them to the metropolis, or to the mining corporation. Through anthropological methods (interviews, situational analysis, life history studies, social network methods and so on), Long's research therefore allowed him to indicate the different responses to change of the actors themselves, revealing a far more complex and dynamic situation than structuralist analysis of the macro level could ever allow. Most important, perhaps, is Long's use of the notion of human ajgeric^; the recognition Hiait people acfively engage in shaping their bwn"wofTd^ th^ir acHdhs being wholly pre-ordained by capital or tne intervention of the state (Long and Long, 1992: 33). Similar conclusions had been made by researchers working in squatter settlements in Latin America. Prompted in part by the findings of Mangin, a sociologist, and Turner,6 an architect, various writers argued during the 1960s and 1970s that rather than being 'slums of despair' the settlements were in fact 'slums of hope' (Lloyd, 1979). Invasions of land were carefully planned and people worked together to obtain water, electricity and roads for their settlements, forming committees and gaining a voice through electing local politicians to state and metropolitan bodies. Rather than being passive 'victims' of international and national structures of exploitation, the squatters were active agents, working hard to transform their economic and social standing. Whether or not they were always successful depended to a large degree upon state policies towards squatting. They were not, however, 'marginal'; instead, they were marginalised by wider contexts, even while striving to improve themselves (Perlman, 1976). While stress on the perspectives of actors, rather than the f 'ggleffi to anthro- f pology, such ideas have been widely taken up wi min deyelopmen t / S?wHij|^ it points to.' ^constructive changes which can be made into.policy, and because its /develo^H^^^essage''is^ess^twjl^pp^migtic: people are not: ^JjpJJX fpnsirame!3"^ or the Nvorldi system'; ^ey'are"a'cft^ w nrtLnivyviugy, Lszvtiuptmnt ana me iJost-moaern f^nauenge . merely need to be 'helped to help themselves' (the motto of the British Overseas Development Administration). During the 1980s growing emphasis was put upon the subjects of development projects as 'actors', adding to ideas about participatory development, the 'farmer first' movement and the importance of 'indigenous knowledge', all of which will be discussed in later chapters. For now, however, let us turn to another major contribution of anthropology to the understanding of social and economic change: the analysis of gender relations. The gendered effects of economic change Alongside the first stirrings of feminist anthropology in the early 1970s came the growing recognition that economic development has differing effects on men and women. Increasing interest in the relationship between gender and development was precipated largely by the publication of Ester Boserup's ground-breaking Woman's Role in Economic Development (1970). In this, Boserup pointed out that the sexual division of labour varies throughout the world and that, contrary to Western stereotypes, women often play a central role in economic production. Nowhere is this more true than in Africa, which Boserup contrasts with 'plough economies' whe^, she asserts, women are secluded and play a diminished role in production (an assumption which in fact is largely unfounded). Women's varied productive roles, she argues, are due to population pressure, land tenure and technology. As economies become more technologically developed, women are increasingly withdrawn from production or forced into the subsistence sector, while meii take centre stage in the production of cash crops. These changes are not automatic, but have been influenced,.Jay^etiinpc^tri^ tcqlomal MicleTwnicri assumed that women were not involved iri'aericul-tural production and thus bypassed female farmers m Favour of men. Boserup s work was an important catalyst tor an enormotfs literature on the effects of development on gender relations. Much of this focuses on particular projects and policies,,which we shall discuss in the next section of this chapter. Other researchers looked at the wider relationship between capitalist change and gender. This was not a new debate: as early as 1884 Engels had discussed the relationship between the subordination of women and the development of class relations alongside the privatisation of property, in The Origin of the Family: Private Property and the State. While lying largely dormant in anthropology up until the 1960s, such concepts were eagerly taken up and reworked by a new generation of feminist Anthropology of Development bt anthropologists during the 1970s (for example, Leacock, 1972; Sachs, 1975). While not all academics working on what became known as 'GAD' (gender and development) were anthropologists, much of their work drew heavily on the field of feminist anthropology, which during the 1970s was growing in intellectual credibility and theoretical rigour.7 Not all of this work was directly concerned with economic 'development'; some feminist anthropology, for example, involved the restudy of the subjects of ethnographic classics from a feminist perspective,8 while other work focused on women's supposed universal subordination and its cultural expressions.9 The capitalist transformation of subsistence economies is generally acknowledged as having a negative effect on women.10 Change in land tenure, labour migration and a growing market in land and labour have all contributed to the marginalisation of women from processes of change, relegating them to subsistence production. The-'feminisation.ot subsistence' thesis is explained in two ways (Moore, 1988: 75). First, since women have reproductive as well as productive duties (they must feed, clothe, shelter and emotionally support their families), they are less free to spend time producing cash crops. Thus while men may be able to experiment with new technologies and production for exchange, women must first and foremost produce the subsistence foods on which their households depend. Second, male labour migration leaves women behind to carry the burden of supporting the subsistence sector. While the 'feminisation of subsistence thesis' is in many ways problematic (for example, in many parts of Asia men still play a dominant role in subsistence agriculture), it raises similar issues to that of research on the Green Revolution: economic change has differential social effects. But rather than these differential effects being experienced between households, feminist anthropology indicates that they exist within them. Equality cannot be taken for granted at any level of social organisation (Folbre, 1986). Arm"Whitehead's research'oh the Kusasi in Ghana is an excellent example of these points,.demonstrating that we need to deconstruct concepts of both the household and the sexual division of labour, wrtich~invblves .ngt"jusfdiffereht tasks but also different access to resoj^ces^(Whitehead^3J8^J. Among the Kusai there are two types oTTarm, private and household, and men and women have different access to resources, which they do not pool. The main constraint on productivity is access to labour rather than to land. Productivity depends to a large extent on the degree to which social networks ~ and thus labour - can be mobilised. Men are better able to do this than women: while they can call upon the labour of their wives, -paying"for it with | _____ -___.-^icaiiwruTe "men are often able to commandeer community-wide work parties. As this and other research clearly indicates, projects aimed at increasing productivity thus often have : to negotiate complex economic and social relations which are embedded in the local cultural context. Assumptions cannot be, ' made about the nature of households, the distribution of resources within them, or the social relations of production. The work of feminist anthropologists in analysing the gendered effects of economic change has made a substantial contribution both to development studies and to anthropology. We shall discuss the former in the next section. Within academic anthropology, during ; the 1970s and 1980s feminists pushed a whole new domain of study r onto the anthropological agenda; the cultural, political and economic construction of relations between men and women. This involved radically unpicking various anthropological concepts which had formerly been treated as unproblematic: the household, the 'domestic mode of production' and the division of labour were all deconstructed and reconstituted in far more incisive terms (see, for example, O. Harris, 1981). Feminist anthropology also sounded the final death knell for structural-functionalism: given what it told : us about power, resistance and the cultural hegemony of patriarchy, the notion that societies are functionally integrated arid in equilibrium was clearly no longer credible. The pressure f|pm ferninist : anthropology to deconstruct androcentric categories and assumptions can also be seen as the precursor to the increasingly reflexive nature of anthroplogy in the 1980s and into the 1990s. ' The social and cultural effects of development projects (and why they fail) J Clearly, many of the texts discussed above have been concerned with the issue of social and cultural impacts. Here, however, we shall consider work which focuses specifically upon development projects. Rather than treating them, as external forces which affect ti!£,.?9?iai SrouP or community being-studied, this may involve stud^.S tiie mt^n£*I workings of the projects -%rrv$eives, ao(issue wesHafl return to in the next sechpn. Much^utnot all) of trrisj£qrk llfergely sympathe&c. .t: that planners fail to acknowledge adequately t the importance "and,. .pQíéptM/. PÍ local knowledge. Instead, projects often involve the assumption that Western or urban knowledge is superior to the knówíě^él5Fme~pe^^^ they are regardetl^signnranValtrtó have repeatedly shown, they have their own areas of appropriate expertise. This is tied to the 'farmer first' movement (Chambers et al., 1989). It also raises interesting questions about the interrelationship of different forms of knowledge, which we shall return to in the next section. For now, however, let us consider cases where 'top-down' planning means that not enough is known about the culture or conditions of an area or target group before a project is embarked upon. Development projects often fail because of the ignorance of planners rather than the ignorance of the beneficiaries. This might involve a range of factors, such as local ecological conditions, the availability of particular resources, physical and climatic conditions and so on. The result is inappropriate intervention, which may end in disaster. (An example is the infamous Groundnut Scheme m Tanzania; see Wood, 1950.) The success of all projects depends upon whe^er^r ;RQkthey axe stally ^dquJtiírally.apprQpriate, yet it is TOWXA^Í^^ whicJxtervi to ^ leasts considered. Much literature therefore focuses upon the need for ethnographic knowledge at the planning stage of project ctesign (for example, ffiirri^rM;r1986rPotder;i993)^Agaih/ this perspective is ultimately optimistic: with better planning (and the use of ethnography), it is assumed, development projects will succeed in helping the poor. ....... ........... Mamdani's classic analysis of themilure of the Khanna study) an ajtejr^laintroducebirth control toHíeIričUán village of Manupur, is "V fásanafirťg" "account ~ of^ developmental top-downism and i^ior^ncT^KíSaaní7'T972), Because of the cultural and economic value oHiavmg as many children as_possible, Mamdani argues that popúTationlwbCTář^ toKavémuch success..m.rural mdlaJProeramme planners in the Khanna study, however, assumed that villagers rejection of contraception was due to ignorance, thus completely ignoring the social and economic reaUties.of the village. OňčT'agaan7 anthropological methods and questions, rather than bureaucratic planning, reveal the true constraints on 'successful' 68 Anthropology, Development and the Post-modern Challenge development. While Mamdani is to be congratulated for powerfully illustrating the cultural and economic influences on family planning uptake, he can also be criticised for assuming that local attitudes to family planning are homogeneous. Other work questions this, indicating that men and women often have very different views and that it is men who usually control eventual fertility decisions. This is an area where feminist researchers clearly have much to contribute (for further discussion, see Kabeer, 1994:187-222). Pother's edited collection, Practising Development, takes these issues substantially further. It also clearly reflects changes within developmental practice, wherein notions of participation and 'farmer first' have gained increasing currency in recent years (Pottier, 1993). While all contributions take for granted the need for anthropological insights at the planning stage and show how this is already a common practice for some organisations - for example, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) (Seddon, 1993) and Band Aid (Garber and Jenden, 1993) - most examine how social science perspectives can be effectively incorporated into development programmes. This is not simply a matter of becoming literate in the local culture, as if it were composed of essential and accessible elements. A critical perspective herfe is that 'the social worlds within which development efforts take.sfepe are essentially fluid' (Ppttier, f993:j7). Gatter's Zambian case study, for example, demonstrates how farming practices tend to be systema-tised by development workers, who thus misunderstand their complexity and fluidity (Gatter, 1993). To aVoid such misrepresentations, and make ethnographic knowledge meaningful, the^e must therefore be a continual collection of ethnographic datfc. This research need not necessarily be carried out by expatriate consultants but can be done by trained field staff, especially those in NGOs. Crucially, Pother's collection adopts an approach increasingly emerging in the anthropology of development: that of studying development bureaucracies and institutions in themselves, as well as the discourses which they produce. Let us turn to our third theme. The internal workings and discourses of the 'aid industry7 Rather than simply viewing development as an external force, which acts upon the 'real' subjects of anthropological enquiry (the \_ 'people'), anthrppplogicalaccounts.pi.development are increasingly \ testingits .institutions, political processes and ideologies as-valid sUes of etrmographic enquiry in themselves. While this approach is Antnropotogy oj ueveiopmmt oy not solely confined: to the late 1980s and 1990s, its increasing dominance reflects contemporary trends in anthropology. Before turning to this, let us start with the anthropology of development planning. been, aware of the need to s^olyJhe. internal working of development institutions for some timey^altjip.ugh studies of admmistration are usually focused far more on^the recipients of planned change than, on the 'developers'. Early work in the applied anthropology tradition such as H.G. Barnett's Anthropology in Administration (1956) deal mainly with the practical uses to which anthropological knowledge could be put by administrators, using examples drawn from the author's experience of working in the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, and only occasionally turns its gaze upon the system itself. Cochrane's Development Anthropology (1971) emphasises the need for administrators, under the guidance of anthropologists, to recognise the cultural issues surrounding development in addition to the more familiar economic and technological aspects in which they are trained. Belshaw's The Sorceror's Apprentice (1976) seeks to draw anthropological concerns away from the 'exotic' towards real policy issues in the dominant culture and to counter the tendencies of administrators only to 'know and control'. More recently, and more ambitiously, Robertson's People and the State (1984) attempts to analyse planned development as a"polIfical encounter between the people and the state. Development agencies, he argues, are premissed on the need to turn an unreliable citizenry into a structured public; development interventions are thus the site of contest between the people and bureaucracy (1984: 4). Much of the book recounts the history of planning, from post-revolutionary Russia and colonial planning to the economic planning of contemporary Third World states. Robertson also makes a plea for anthropology to become more centrally involved in development. Although historically anthropology has been weak on state theory, he suggests that it can potentially offer an overview of the whole planning process, thus making a vital contribution to wider understandings of development, like Cochrane, Robertson is interested in the practical uses of anthropology and appears to be optimistic about the potential of planned change. As he concludes: 'anthropology may ultimately prove its worth by helping to explain a confused and lethally divided world to itself, and to indicate humane and realistic prospects for progress' (Robertson, 1984:306). Project and planning ethnography is linked to shifting paradigms within develop menI" studies. Here too, there is increasing recogni- —t-w rfcrof-oriented _ _ _ T _. — ^ -rv-uriu viewr6Tm^ivi3uaractgrs (rather than -passWe~target groups or beneficiaries), and the interfaces between them and bureaucratic institutions, are the focus of study (Long and Long, 1992). Notions of 'farmer first' development, and participation, are influential here. Ona_siightly different level, recognition of the need to understand (and then change) the worldngTof Bureaucracy (in, for example, recent writings on gender and development: Staudt, 1990; 1991) is also important. The authors discusse^'"aT5ove^resent planning as a relevant and important area of anthropological researchT Alfshare - in different degrees - a practical agenda: to improve the planning process, /-usually with helpTrom'aritKropological inputs. In contrast to this, more recent work decom the very notion of %.vej°Pment by an.^feingSasi a jorm^discQurse. This work is not intended to be instrumental for policy-makers; as it critiques the ^pistemological assumptions within which they work. Instead, it has far-reaching implications for the way in which 'development' is conceptualised, pointing to a radical reappraisal of the ways in which global poverty and inequality are conceptualised and tackled. As we shall see, such work has been strongly influenced by post-modern understanding of culture as negotiated, contested and processual. Social realities in these accounts are multiple, and change according to context. To this extent writers do not search for objective 'truths' about development or its effects, but seek to understand pie ways in which it is socially constructed and in turn constructs its subjects. Much of this has been influenced by Foucault's work on'discourse, knowledge and power, which we discuss below. The new foci in the anthropology of development on discourse are linked to the recent debates within anthropology which we discussed in Chapter 1. These question the discipline's portrayal of an ahistorical, exotic 'other' which exists in opposition to the Western self. In contrast, within 'post-moUernljantfcjogplogy all domains are seen as valid subjects for research; instiUttionslinci discourses from the anthropologist's own society become relevant areas of study (Marcus arid Fischer, 1986: 111-13); Xc»,redres.s $ie b.4ince^ of, preyious prientalisrny it: is suggested,, anttropologiftts sho¥!fi.,deconstr.u^t.^uitu^aL^ the ^outh;;or what ftabiho w terrns, ;anthropplogisir^ (1986: 241). Such work can also indicate how power is' gained, and reproduced, at local, national and global levels. While there are many potential fieldwork sites for this, 'development' is an obvious "" : 71 candidate". This might involve studying aid agencies, the categories, knowledges and culture of development, or conducting fieldwork among expatriate groups. The study of development institutions and ideologies also contributes to recent debates on 'globalisation'. This refers to the increasingly interconnected nature of the world through international travel, labour migration and technology such. as telephones, computer networks and TVs which have spread across the world and created global links. Elements of globalisation, it is suggested, link previously isolated cultures and produce new transnational cultures, which transcend national boundaries (Featherstoner 1990: 6). By researching international agencies, the ideas which they procTuce and how these are disseminated and made meaningful at different levels, the lives and culture of development consultants, or social movements such as NGOs or environmental pressure groups which cross-cut geographical boundaries, anthropologists are ideally placed to study the processes of 'globalisation' which are supposedly becoming so important as we approach the twenty-first century. To understand what is m^nt^by-'development discourse', we should start with the work o| Foucault^rguably the most important thinker of the late twentiem^eniTaryrtf T/rg Order of Things (1970), Foucault focuses upon 'fields' of knowledge, such as economics or natural history, and the conventions according to which they were classified and represented in particular periods. While represented as objective and politically neutral, he,thus.._showa.ho.w,,axeas.,of ^owledge^ a^sojpaU^ historically and politically constructed. Discourses of power, while presented as objective and 'natural', actually construct their subjects in particular ways and exercise power over them. Malinowskt s scientific ethnography, tor example, 'daimed to generate objective and scientific accounts of native 'others', which presented them in a particular light and so jus^M^Jj^f^te^ati011- tewMgfe-kte inherentlypolitical., As ■foucault put it: criteria of what constitutes knowledge, what is to ^gcQTucled, and who is qualify to. ta>w involves acts of )ower:r(1971; cited m Scoones and Thompson, 1993:12). ^scourses 1TuTsuD^me&practicest and structures, with very real effects. ErorrUfas,. areas of developmental lyowle^ge ox. expertise can be decQnstructe&aS"^ ^hty, which are more to do wrtfr the exercise of power in particular rus.t£nca.l contexts foan presenting 'pfrjecUye' realities The notion of discourse 'gives us the possibility of singling out "development" as an encompassing social space and at the same time of separating 72 Anthropology, Development and the Post-modern Challenge ourselves from it by perceiving it in a totally new form' (Escobar, 1995: 6). How such discourses interrelate with other structures, the ways in which they are contested and the interface between developmental and other forms of knowledge are just a few important questions generated by this approach. This is an area where the study of development has a major role to play in wider theoretical debates in anthropology, for development projects provide an opportunity for examining the dynamic interplay of different discourses and forms of knowledge (Worby, 1984). Arturo Escobar^ whom we have already cited severalvtirp.es,.is a key 'figure'mine grqyi^g.'t^d of H^Qnstjructog^deyeiopm^tal dr^nVif'gp. Jn a papor pntyished in 1988. for example, he examines the history p| Heyelopment studies and its production and circulation of certain discourses as. integral, to, lie^exexQS.e power; what he calls the 'pplitics of truth' (Escobar, 1988;f 431)-Development practice, he argues, uses a specific corpus of techniques which organise a type of knowledge and a type of power. The expertise of development specialists transcends the social realities of the 'clients' of development, who are labelled and thus structured in particular ways ('women-headed households'/ 'small farmers,' etc.). Clients arethus ^ and can_only manoeuvre within the limits set by it. As he puts it in Encountering Development, 'Development had achieved the status of a certarn^ injhe social imaginary' (Escobar, 1995:5). ArrH-PqljttifijAachine (1990) James Ferguson takes a similar approach by analysing the Thaba-Tseka project in Lesotho. The resulting text demonstrates exciting possibilities for project ethnography. Rather than being concerned with whether development is 'good' or 'bad', or how it could be improved, Ferguson argues that we ^hPn|d analygp thp rel ^nnsh^r^ development jprojects, unrig 1 rr>nfrn1 -an^ thf> rpprnHiiftiftn ot relations OrmegU^tV. 1 nis" cannot be simply explained by models of dependency; structures do not directly answer_ the 'nge^'..of capitalism, but reproduce themselves through a variety of processes and struggles (ibid.: 13). By analysing the conceptual apparatus of planned development in Lesotho and juxtaposing this with ethnographic material from a project's 'target area', he shows how while development projects usually fail in their explicit objectives, they have another often unrealised function: that of furthering the state's power. The Anti-Politics Machine opens with the deconstruction of a ^^SSSEISp^^nTis^ho. Ferguson shows how its amazing inaccuracies and mistakes are not the result of bad scholarship, but of the need to present the country in a particular way. Lesotho is frequently referred to in the report as 'traditional' and isolated, with aboriginal agriculture and a stagnant economy. In reality this is far from the truth, for the country has long been economically and politically intertwined with South Africa. In addition, the report only considers Lesotho at a national level. The implications are thus, first, that development interventions will transform and modernise the country; and, second, that change is entirely a function of the action or inaction of the government. Ferguson argues that discourses are attached to and support ESlfc^fe^^yiiP-?18 O.bid.: 68). Only statements which are useful JsJ^e^evelopment institutions concerned are therefore included in tfrfiict rgpCTrfe;' r.aj&caLQJ.. pessimistic analyses are banished. The discourse is thus dynamically inrerrelaTed with development practice, affecting the actual design and implementation of projects, -rdfcs. In its definition of all proMem^asJteclmical'_the discourse ignores social cono!Itionsf aTentral reason why theproject Falls. Crucially too, development is presented as politically neulraTTInstrumentally, however, the project unintentionally enables the state to further its power over the mountain areas which it targeted. Rather than this being a hidden aim of developmental practice, and the discourse a form of mystification, Ferguson argues that development planning is a small cog in a larger machine; discourse and practice are articu-\ lated in this, but they do not determine it. Plans fail, but while their objectives are not mpfr. they still have instrumental effects, for they . .are parLolalarger machinery of power and^ontrol, ^—1 Considering dey^oPment._, as., „ discourse raises..... important qu^io^s^about the nature.of developmental knowledge and its inlen^^ reality. Aflftj&pjOllogy can have an important role here, first m demonstrating that there are -r^f^y°?^owm^P^us undermining development's fu!^ in showing what happens when airrer^C?™^3J^§!^ meet. In another contribution to the growing 'post-modern' antnropology of development, for example, the relationship, between... scientific ,. and,-local,: knowledge .within 3eve^p0^Jp^cMce,is.explored. As the articles in An Anthropological Critique of Development (Hobart, 1993) indicate, claims to knowledge and the attribution of ignorance are central themes in development discourse. The scientific and 'rational' knowledge favoured by development constructs foreign 'experts' as agents, and local people as passive and ignorant. Rather than presenting local knowledge as homogeneous and systematic, these accounts show that it_is diverse and fluid. These .multiple epistemologies are produced in particular social, political 74 Anthropology, Development and the Post-modern Challenge and economic contexts; instead of. being bodies of facts, what is important is how, rather than what, things_^re_known. This is a diffe7enT~a^5pr^^ discourse, where knowledge is only mentioned as an abstract noun, and those that know are thus stripped of their agency (Hobart, 1993: 21). It is also tied to a growing criKquT priKe /1armeTrrirsV movement, which while providing a necessary corrective to modernisation theory's assumption that traditional beliefs and practice ^are an obstacle to progress, tends to simplify and essentialisejocal knowledge, or assume that, like scientific knowledge, it can be understood as a 'system' (Gatter, 1993; Scoones and Thompson, 1993; 1994). Within these accounts people appear as agents, whose knowledge interacts in a variety of ways with that of development agencies. Richards, for example, shows how rather than being free-standing, indigenous knowledge can be understood as improvised perfor-mance. West African cultivators possess performance skills as well as technical and ecological knowledge, mixing their crops in a certain way, providing food and drumming for their labourers, and so forth. This has been missed by most agricultural research and ijts ensuing 'scientific' expertise, which carries out agricultural experiments in 'seii_cxmditigns, ignoring the vital fact that farmers ■! use their creativity and performance skills in cultivation (P. Richards, 1993). frj^^r^vords, people do not passively receive knmyjedge-or 4jf£c1io^ with jt. Another example of mTs^is'provicied by Burghart (199^wlio setout to study local knowledge of health and hygiene in a HinduWobblers' village in Nepal. Although Burghart assumed thatthere would be a symmetrical exchange of knowlege (his technical knowledge versus their views on hygiene) and that he could construe an ohjertiyg m°