11
ANTHROPOLOGISTS WITHIN DEVELOPMENT
So Mr we have discussed conceptual issues and drawn upon the anthropological and development literature for illustrations of most of our points. In what follows, we discuss some of our own experiences as anthropologists working in what might be termed the 'aid industry', in development agencies such as international donors, private consultancy firms and non-governmental organisations. We will provide some examples of the different forms which tfus type of applied work can take through personal case studies.
These case studies, as well as documenting some of the practical realities faced by anthropologists in the development context, serve to reinforce an important theme which runs through much of this book: that contrary to the impression given in much contemporary analysis, discourses of development are not all the same; nor indeed are they fixed. Instead, they are constantly being contested and are therefore open to change. Many of the issues, we have raised in this book place anthropologists in a potentially strong position to contribute to and influence such change. How this might be done from within the aid industry is the subject of this chapter.
Anthropologists as consultants
In Chapters 2 and 4 we discussed the history of applied anthropology and considered some of the roles played by applied anthropologists in development. In what follows we continue to discuss the activities of professional anthropologists, working largely outside academia, within the development industry. Anthropologists are now employed in growing numbers by development agencies, organisations and private consultancy firms. A discussion of applied anthropology does not therefore simply raise
128
Antnropoiogists witmn uevtiapmem iz.?
questions of what a professional anthropologist might do, but also includes an analysis of the framework in which he or she operates.
The role of anthropologist as consultant originated in the practice of government agencies referring issues of fact or policy to.incle-pendent authorities. Examples of this are the links established between the United States Trust Territory administration and ethnologists at the University of Hawaii, and those between the government of India and the director of its new Department of Anthropology during the 1940s (H.G. Barnett, 1956: 28). Recent years have seen the development of the anthropologist as 'policy professional', alongside other professionals with development-related expertise such as engineers and economists. In the UK, this role has been expanded upon in detail by Alan Rew (1985), an anthropologist who has consistently prioritised this kind of work while maintaining a base within academia. In the US, Allen Hoben (1982) has written on a similar theme. There are an increasing number of professional posts for applied anthropologists outside academia, for example in the UK's Overseas Development Administration (whose newly expanded 'social development advisor' positions, discussed in more detail later in this chapter, are frequently filled by anthropologists), or in actual development projects which may run for periods of several years.
The types of work which professional anthropologists are asked to undertake can vary considerably. They may include applied research to produce supporting data for planned interventions; contributions to the appraisal and evaluation planning of development projects; or attempting to build local participation into the project. Assignments can vary from a short consultancy job lasting a few weeks, to a placement on a project for several years as one of the full-time staff. The anthropologist is usually made a specialist member of a team which may include people from other disciplines, such as engineering, management or economics.
There may be, understandably, an assumption that the anthropologist can bring to bear, a distinctive set of insights and skills to a given series of problems or issues. Anthropologists have sometimes been portrayed as bringing a special, almost magical, ingredient seen as hitherto missing in development.1 Even some anthropologists themselves have been prone to get carried away by this line of thinking, and Cochrane (1976) was moved to write in a moment of great optimism: 'The third world badly needs the kind of expertise that only anthropologists have to offer.' No doubt this reflected the mood of the time, when anthropology seemed to offer quite straightforward possibilities of contributing to the changing devel-
130 Anthropology, Development and the Post-modern Challenge
opment paradigm. But as we shall see, it is extremely difficult to identify specifically what it is, in practical terms, that professional anthropologists do have to offer development.2
One good starting point here is to consider the anthropological approach to collecting information and ideas, which is usually based upon face-to-face contact with people. As we argued in the last chapter, there can be no doubt that anthropological methodologies are receiving more and more attention in development and policy circles. One well-known example of this is the growth of participatory rural appraisal (PRA), which draws on some of anthropology's methodological insights; another is farming systems research (FSR), which seeks to combine the indigenous knowledge and practice of farmers with specialised outsider knowledge in order to improve support for the poor and marginal farmers who usually find their needs ignored by conventional agricultural extension approaches.
But how do professional anthropologists work when they find themselves under the practical constraints of the development workplace? Within the framework of consultancy there is a tremendous pressure on the anthropologist to contribute constructively to interdisciplinary teams and to try to provide reafijstic solutions to problems. Some anthropologists find applied work difficult because they are used to a solitary, self-regulating Work regimen. Others, their interest in anthropology motivated by left-ieaning, anarchist or rejectionist positions, can find themselves reluctant to compromise within mainstream contexts. Aside from the personal feelings of the anthropologist, there are certain methodological compromises which may have to be made by me consultant. The main one is time: whereas most people who have completed a doctoral degree will have spent between one and two years doing their field work, work in the development context may be allotted a few months or even only weeks by the employing agency. While it may be possible to do meaningful work by returning to communities already well-known from previous work, this is less than ideal for an anthropologist asked to work in a completely new context. Such assignments can offer an exciting challenge, but it may prove professionally frustrating and may generate research findings which lack theoretical strength or methodological rigour.
Working within agencies
While some anthropologists work as freelance consultants, others are employed as salaried staff by government or non-governmental
Anthropologists within Development 131
agencies. In the case of these anthropologists, much of the day-today work they have to undertake is administrative. Rather than being hired for their knowledge of any particular society or for their potential as fieldworkers, such anthropologists must bring to their work a set of insights and questions which enable them to critique and advise on existing projects and policy, as well as to help formulate new ideas and strategy within the agency.
Social development advisors (SDAs) employed by the ODA provide a good example of this type of work (for a longer discussion of the role of SDAs within the ODA during the 1980s, see Conlin, 1985). As we shall see, their changing profile within the organisation over recent years also demonstrates how development agendas and practices can change over time.
Like other professional advisors (e.g. economists, engineers and ecologists), SDAs offer advice to desk officers responsible for particular geographical regions and the projects within them. Since they control regional budgets, these adminstrators have considerable power. The SDA remit is to comment on any 'social' issue. How this is defined does of course depend upon one's perspective. One immediate problem is that desk and regional officers without social science training might not recognise a project or policy as having ..social implications when to the SDAs it clearly does. Part of their work is therefore political: to get the administrators on their side.
The work of SDAs might involve, among other things, commenting upon project proposals, producing statements on policy-related issues and participating in missions to projects 'in the field''5 as part of teams of advisors and administrators. As employees of the government they may also end up offering advice on the Overseas Development Minister's speeches!
In many ways SDAs are forced to conform to me. dominant discourse of the ODA. In 1990 this was heavily biased towards economics and to notions of growth and efficiency- Many employees, especially those involved in more technical activities, clearly believed strongly in modernity and the benefits of technological progress. To question these explicitly or to refuse to comply to established practices (particular bureaucratic procedures and assumptions, e.g. the production of a specific style of report and use of a specific language) would, given the balance of power wi thin the ODA, not have much advanced the SDAs' cause. Instead, SDAs worked over the period stealthily to put social issues on the agenda.
To an extent they have been successful. In 1990 the three SDAs employed by the ODA did not have their own separate department, and were headed by an economist. In 1995, however, the number of
™ *vyuiuxy, Ljcouvpment ana the Post-modern Challenge
SDAs employed by the ODA more than trebled, and they now have their own separate Social Development Department. Increasingly social issues are reflected in policy and form part of project appraisals and evaluations. Slowly the balance of power within the organisation is beginning to change. The discourses it produces through its reports, its policy statements and the actual content of meetings is also shifting, albeit only slightly, to more anthropologically informed ways of seeing and doing. This does not necessarily mean that ODA-style development is more empowering and participatory on the ground. Jhe bureaucratic and political constraints are huge. SDAs remain only one small part of a much larger machinery. They too are not completely free of 'top-downism'. What it does indicate, however, is that development is contested and fought over within aid agencies. Consequently it is continually in a state of flux and change.
The compromise between pure and applied
The official origins of applied anthropology led some anthropologists such as Brokensha .(1966) to reserve the term only for work undertaken on behalf of governments in an official capacity. However, this reflects only part of the picture; applied anthropology has always been rather more than this definition allows.' In the US, for example, as we saw in Chapter 2, the private sector as well as government has made use of anthropologists; this trend is growing .as anthropologists are increasingly employed by private consul-. tancy companies and hired by many different types of agency. The growing importance of local, national or international NGOs in development also renders such a definition of applied anthropology . obselete. There are a range of agencies active in agriculture, health, education and infrastructure work with whom anthropologists now come into contact and with whom they may wish to collaborate.
But what is really meant by 'applied' work? Applied anthropology has previously tended to be used only in the case of a specific, formal application of anthropological work to solving particular problems. But it might be argued that all anthropology is in a sense applied since it is concerned - usually - with field level research with communities of real people and tries to reflect the views of those people. At the same time, many anthropologists who do not themselves have any direct mvolvemerit in development Issues' have_neyertheless. contributed theoretical ideas which inform the waXs in which we think about development. Anthropological jnyes-tigafipn does not therefore need to be undertaken with a specific
it
Anthropologists within Development 133
purpose in mind for it to be objectively useful. Even if the original intention behihd^a piece of research was not an applied one, it can Be'dicawn upon subsequently (and used or misused) by practition-ersflnfe and applied all too easily begins to dissolve.
Non-commissioned research may be of practical value to a range of other people beyond academia, including governments, donor agencies or NGOs, regardless of whether or not the work was motivated by practical problem-solving.4 It is also;,in^ortant to dis-S^istajtearjybetween Jhe 'means' j^T^Tf^ids'^of .applied a^SipjSle^ WhaTkinds of outcomes are applied anthropologists trying to achieve in their work, and what control do they have over these outcomes? These que^^^ave led to some interesting theoretical areas of debate/Bastide (1^3^) ^argues that the subject contamsA>a.££rafe any^iiber^I7- science: appjied
af^opoiogy implies the jneansjprcontrolled change, but does riot necessarily contain clear ideas about exactly 'what' these means can c^ir^fowlrds^TKe way out of this 'dilemma, he suggests, is that ^l^rt^M^lfnked to action. Marx's concept of 'praxis' provides an alternative in which it is recognised that value judgements cannot be separated from conceptions of reality. This msight can therefore generate a form of research which is linked to action;
theoreticalknowledge developsat the same timeas practical knowledge, in andoT&elame movement of praxis. Human intervention in social reality is froth action' and science at once, since it permits us at the same time to change the world, and in changing it, to discover it. (Bashde, 1973: 6)
■jWhile there is a sense in which applied anthropology is about ('changing the world', it is unlikely that the anthropologist will have % better idea of how to change it than anyone else, but he or she may ; bring a certain kind of perspective to the problem, one which [involves, arid seeks to represent, the outlooks and views of all those ^involved.
Achieving influence
Applied anthropological work, even when it is of a very high standard, is only as. good as its ability, to.influence, directly or indirectly, those who hold or seek to hold power. An important set of questions surrounds the need for anthropologists to reach the people who make policy decisions. While there are institutions in the UK which undertake policy-related research in development issues (such as the Overseas Development Institute and the Institute
134 Anthropology, Development and the Post-modern Challenge
of Development Studies), these have usually concentrated more on economic than on anthropological matters.
It is well known that anthropologists have not always communicated well with interdisciplinary colleagues or administrators. Strathern (1993: 10) outlines a number of common pitfalls in the Papua New Guinea context which have made the anthropologist's Wprk less relevant and accessible to policy-makers than it should have been. For many years anthropologists used a research methodology which portrayed communities in static terms. The use Of the 'ethnographic present' drew anthropological attention away from examining issues which arise from social change. Another problem ; is the fieldwork 'rite of passage' of the anthropology postgraduate who tends to head for isolated areas of the country where detailed ; ethnographic material can be collected away from the more visible and uncertain complexities of areas experiencing rapid change. This has led to an incompleteness in ethnographic coverage. Added to these factors is the age-old complaint of the time-lag between the completion of fieldwork and writing up the work, which can in any case arrive in a form which is inaccessible to administrators With limited time. Furthermore, Strathern argues, anthropologists fave tended to oppose, a priori, the Papua New Guinea government's approach to development policy, which was growth-oriented and sought to encourage foreign investment at almost any cost.
Recently there has been more discussion about the practical ways in which anthropologists can make their findings more useful to the agencies employing them, the need to write more accessible reports and how to work more effectively within an interdisciplinary telm. (Rew, 1985; Epstein and Ahmed, 1984). There is clearly a long way to go before anthropologists and development practitioners, particularly those primarily concerned with technical or administrative priorities, can learn to communicate with each other easily.
On the other hand, for anthropologists interested in development issues there need be no fixed boundary between the academic and consultancy roles. Many applied anthropologists find that these two areas of work can be mutually reinforcing, since they provide the opportunity for creating links between research, applied work and teaching. For the consultant who remains linked to an academic institution, consultancy work can be strengthened by a periodic return to pure research, during which intellectual batteries can be recharged through less pressured periods of reflection on theoretical issues.
Perhaps the anthropologists who stand the best chance of doing worthwhile development work are those who combine long-term
Anthropologists within Development 135
academic research with shorter, carefully selected forays into applied consultancy. During the consultancy assignments, ideas can be reformulated into forms which are more readily accessible to policy-makers - short reports, workshop presentations and training sessions. But there often remains a significant gulf between the 'applied' and the 'academic' types of information and understanding. Furthermore, many policy-makers simply do not have time to take on lengthy theoretical works and respond far more readily to face-to-face discussions or short briefing documents.
The question of ethics
A discussion of applied anthropology brings into focus some difficult ethical questions. The first of these is the joint issue of accountability and.responsi^|Uty: for whom is the work being underialcen and"to whom'are the findings provided? Information is a source of power in the interactions and conflicts between rich and poor^ and as such quickly becomes highly sensitive. The applied work context illustrates the dangers which can arise, in terms of accountability and quality, if anthropological skills are placed formally at the service of administrators and policy-makers. Unless anthropologists' involvement provides openings for the weaker sections of a local community to increase their influence over the possible outcomes of a development project, he or she may have only contributed to a development project's control over people as the objects rather than the subjects of the 'development process',
A second question is the issue.of qualify. The constraints placed on the work of the applied anffioBCJegLst such as a short^K^scale oTmTne31or a clearjsefof^user^en^y^conchi.sicdis", has teňHecl to lead to methodological or theoretical short-cuts being taken, ^mong some anj£u;Qp&|c.gfe a, tendency to view ^applied
S£S^ While such criticisms are
sometimes valid (and there is no .doubt that poor-quality work can emerge under time-bound, subject-specific conditions), the .. tendency of 'pure' anthropologists to write off work undertaken by their applied colleagues is often unjustified. In the^ end, the quality of work will vary according to the commitment ancí ability of the rgsj^ research c^cjiiipns ^ an agency.
From tr^ more'generai discussion let us now turn to some specific examples of how anthropologists might work within the world of development. These involve important questions about whether or not anthropologists are compromising themselves by
—  —  — ,    oj». - unu im fuai-moaern Challenge
'buying in' to the whole development discourse, as Escobar has forcefully argued in recent years, or whether the discourse itself^can. be changed. The case studies which follow explore the room for manoeuvre which may exist. From these we will try to draw general lessons from our experiences working in the 'aid industry', without going into too much detail concerning the specific country or organisational contexts. This has been necessary partly because we are dealing - we hope frankly - with issues which may be seen as sensitive by those involved. We have followed the tradition in ethnographic writing of preserving anonymity so that the identities of informants can be safeguarded. In consultancy work.,there, may be a further restriction on work undertaken which means that copyright of the material generated remains vvitnV.the^employing agency. This rule can become a serious barrier to information diffusion, and" is frequently used to withhold matenal which relates tofaiiuresor di pfganísaíiohsof yiáuais in a.b^ únděrťá^^^a^EBéráture review recently on the issue of corruption for the Swedish International Development Authority (SIDA), it became clear that a vast amount of data and 4ocumentation resided in a largely unaccessible form as restricted reports carried out by consultants (working for donors, governments and international organisations (lewis, 1992). Nevertheless, we hope that the material presented does not lose its meaning through being unspecific on geographical, cultural or organisational details. We have sought to retain as much of the relevant narrative as possible. Our approach parallels that traditionally adopted by anthropologists writing ethnography: these cases studies represent personal, ethnographic and of ten subjective accounts of experience.
Case 1. Evaluating rural cooperative training
The first case study illustrates the difficulty of communicating with often defensive and potentially hostile informants in the project setting. This involves complex questions of ethics and power which may require careful negotiation. This case study also illustrates how projects can become dysfunctional and take on a logic of their own, growing increasingly out of touch with their 'clients'. The outsider perspective provided by the short-term consultant can be of great value in bringing a sense of proportion and balance, and the sceptical instincts of the anthropologist in particular can be useful in seeing through some of the problems.
Anthropologists within Development 137
A consultancy assignment was undertaken by an anthropologist for a European agency to evaluate a cooperative training programme for farmers. This was being carried out in association with an Asian government's Rural Cooperatives Board (RCB). The study was apparently triggered by a growing realisation on behalf of the foreign donor that no-one who was responsible at any of the different administrative levels of the agency really knew about the progress of the project any more. The foreign consultant who had designed and taken the initial interest in the work had left. No-one had subsequently managed to understand the project in its entirety, especially as it had changed in both personnel and emphases over the years.
Indeed, it almost seemed that staff at both the main and the regional offices were secretly counting on the fact that someone else within the administration had more of a grasp of what had become a very complicated project than they did. A chain of mutually supportive relationships had resulted, although it was becoming apparent that such a fragile project 'status quo' could not be sustained for long. In the end, it was acknowledged by the donor agency that something had to be done. This absence of knowledge about the project was mirrored by a lack of information about the impact of the training on the farmers themselves, and the way in which cooperatives worked (or didn't work) on the ground.
The story of the project is as follows. The RCB is responsible for forming thousands of farmers' cooperatives in villages across the country, a process which has been in motion since the 1960s. A rural cooperative model riad been developed using relatively innovative ideas and became, for a brief period, an international development success story. Groups of village farmers were encouraged to pool their resources, learn cooperative management skills, define their particular needs (production, processing, marketing, etc.) and thereby gain access to subsidised government credit and agricultural inputs, while at the same time learning to solve their economic problems collectively. The government had then taken the basic model and 'scaled it up', with the assistance of foreign donors, so that it covered the whole country. However, the country-wide replication of the project had weakened its effectiveness during the 1970s, since it had been stretched beyond the control of its founders and their constant care, inspiration and attention.
Several academic studies over the years had indicated the weaknesses of the cooperative system, which tended to be dominated by richer farmers and viewed instrumentally as a means of securing subsidised inputs rather than as a system of mutual
138 Anthropology, Development and the Post-modern Challenge
economic advancement. Combined with this, a burgeoning NGO sector had evolved which was successfully developing alternative models of rural development that implicitly highlighted the RCB's weaknesses. Nevertheless, the government had now developed a national framework for strengthening farmers' activities, and most of the main bilateral aid agencies had judged support to the RCB, with its mandate for rural cooperatives, as a priority.
For several years, the donor agency had been funding a team of expatriate cooperative specialists to strengthen the RCB's staff training capability, by training the training staff and developing appropriate training materials. The aim was to promote a more participatory training ethos than the 'top-down' tradition embodied in traditional government approaches. This training was to begin at the managerial level of the RCB's administrative hierarchy, the objective being to assist the training message to spread through regional and local level administrative structures.
The project had been functioning for six years by the time this particular review was commissioned. There had been reviews of some of the other aspects over the years, and although the anthropologist attempted to track some of them down, none were initially made available to him. It seemed that the various actors involved had managed to build up relationships of mutual interdependence based on a common interest in seeing the project continue, while objective information about the project's progress was juggled between them so that no single group in the end took responsibility for the deficiencies which were becoming apparent to many associated with the project.
The anthropologist's job ultimately involved -trying to assess the impact of the training at the village level by talking to farmers about the usefulness of the training they had received. But before this was possible, it was necessary to make sense of the project's history, personnel changes and shifts in emphasis through the various phases of its existence. The experience of walking into the project office was not unlike other anthropological encounters, in which one is faced simultaneously with the dual tasks of explaining or justifying one's presence and trying to make sense of alien language, locations, codes of behaviour and power structures. The project staff had not requested that the study take place and remained unsure, even suspicious, of its objectives and justification.
Spatially, the city-based office illustrated the boundaries of a hierarchy with clearly marked distinctions in status between different project staff. Each expatriate consultant sat at a desk in a large open-plan office, around which clustered, on drawn-up chairs,
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people known as 'local consultants', whom it quickly turned out acted in most cases more as personal assistants to the foreigners, or as go-betweens between them and the government. There were also differences among the expatriates, based on length of service to the project. One of the longest serving team members had mysteriously moved his office and entourage across the hall to an entirely separate suite, where a new project title had been pasted on the door; little communication apparently took place between the new and old offices. The anthropologist was informed that this team member was no longer technically part of the project, although he seemed to be still working on the same set of problems. Was the anthropologist supposed to talk to him or not?
One of the first lessons the anthropologist learned was that while it is natural for everyone concerned to feel a little defensive when the evaluator arrives, several responsive strategies are open to project staff. Some are friendly and open from the start, while others adopt an aloof stance and treat initial tentative or necessarily ill-informed . enquiries with ill-disguised disdain. Others patiently reply at length in terms designed to confuse rather than clarify. Some are openly: hostile, while still others are never available for comment. Another approach is to fend off enquiries with piles of long, detailed and not necessarily relevant reports. Some behave towards outsiders very differently outside the office in a social context, where much of the interesting, complex or 'difficult' information can emerge. All of this behaviour was immediately recognisable from village fieldwork undertaken a few years earlier ...
During the next two months the anthropologist conducted research with the town-based consultants and other staff as informants and supervised a grassroots study with local farmers and cooperative staff. The results were very disturbing. The training activities seemed to have reached very few farmers. Moreover, many of the cooperatives which the project existed to service existed only in name. While some staff remained indifferent or hostile, nevertheless the anthropologist built up good relationships with others. Everyone had their own Version' of the events and the facts of the project. Despite the emerging evidence of lack of impact, many could find it easy to ignore, avoid responsibility for or, more interestingly, explain this failure without necessarily questioning the project and its usefulness. One member of the team actually took it upon himself to 'wine and dine' the anthropologist one night and explain that it might be good for him (in terms of the anthropologist's career).if he wrote a positive report. When the anthropologist
. _r-.-Cf3l ^.^wytnctu una me rost-moaern Challenge
made it obvious that this would not be possible, relations became very bad with this particular (quite powerful) individual.
In the end the anthropologist discussed the report with project staff before leaving, and no serious factual objections were raised. The project was phased out soon afterwards, partly as a result of the report, but also due to growing evidence from other sources that all was not well. In the end the anthropologist heard informally that his report was apparently received quite well by the donor concerned, but he was never invited to give detailed feedback or to defend particular points against criticism, apart from a short debriefing on his way home. The ritual of undertaking the study seemed not to require it. It would be interesting to know how many people actually read the report.
- There are difficult ethical choices in work of this kind. It is tempting for the anthropologist evaluator to attempt perfection in judging the realities of a poor project, forgetting that there are rules (the project objectives) against which a project should be judged, rather than judging it against 'pure' principles. Another temptation
- especially if one is in need of work - is to be as positive as possible, which may, in the short term at least, be the path of least resistence.
r
Points for discussion
Power is hierarchical in development projects: between expatriate and local staff, external consultants and local personnel, project staff and local people or 'clients'. Ethical questions arise continually during applied consultancy work. Does the anthropologist want to spoil the qhances of another, similar job, by giving a project a negative write-up? Will it be a useful academic career move to publish a paper which 'rubbishes' a project even if it is slightly overstated? Or is it tempting to err on the side of caution, provide a clean bill of health for a project and hope for more work of this kind? There may be different objectives for consultancy reports and academic papers which lead to the taking of different positions with the same material according to context. This can sometimes appear to be hypocritical.
Projects can run for considerable periods of time without effective evaluation or objective assessment. Various interests (donors, implementors, staff factions) can combine to support continuation without due regard to results, or with an overopti-mistic belief that, regardless of structural limitations, positive results will eventually be demonstrable.
Anthropologists within Development
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1.
2.
3.
The anthropologist's knowledge of the wider agrarian country context conflicted with the primarily desk-based outlook of the planners. The latter preferred to concentrate on the theoretical existence of farmers' cooperatives, and on the sets of interests whose well-being depended on an assumption that the cooperatives were in existence and functioning. Although by questioning this the anthropologist came into conflict with project staff (who sometimes said, 'You may be right, but it's not our job to question that side of things'), an overall perspective was provided which allowed a fuller investigation of the problems.
The skills needed for project-based work such as this generated many of the usual methodological problems in an anthropologist's relationship to different informants, their expectations and reasons for 'slanting' certain types of information.
Case 2. Disaster prevention - cyclone shelters, community participation and NGOs
Our second case study is an illuminating tale of gof^develqpmen-ttal intention and bad project design. It illustrates the need to consider social _issues_ from the very_ beginning^of a project's life-cycle; ensuring mat ^communitydevelopment^ takes place is as complex and time-consuming as constructing buildings, perhaps even more so. It has to be carefully planned, rather than added on as a last minute appendage, as is so frequently the case in large-scale technical projects. This case study is, sadly>^Jgsjsnin^aw=notto' rjun^^rjrjsjejij^ development". It indicates not only the conslraints ^Tpenencea^Dy developmental anthropologists, but also those facing the wider success of many large-scale projects.
Background
After a disastrous cyclone injjy»=jate^JJgQs^in which many thousands of people were killed, donors rushed to provide aid for the construct] ont of cycloneshejtersjn^^ a small,
higWyj30gu]^tei^^ m tne tropics-
As in so many natural disasters in the South, many lives might have been saved r^d..a^ropiiate^rey^tatiye and rescue systems been in operation: better warning systems, infrastructure and, crucially in this case, cyclone shelters. While a substantial number of cyclone
142 Anthropology, Development and the Post-modern Challenge
shelters existed when the cyclone struck, many people did not use them even though, in theory at least, they had been warned that a cyclone was likely (cyclones can usually be predicted several days in advance).
There were several reasons for this. First, many people had underestimated the seriousness of the cyclone warning, Uvm^sTfiey3^fi in a climate where in particular seasons cyclones are a regular threat. Second, many others either chose not to use their local shelters, or were denied access to them. Some of the existing shelters were in very bad shape, shaking in the wind, with crumbling walls and broken stairways; in these cases, it seemed safer to stay away from the buildings rather than enter them. In other instances, people did not leave their houses for fear of looting. Many women stayed behind with their children, for the shelters were perceived as 'public' spaces where they might be harrassed by men. Within the context of local gender relations, in which purdah (veiling) is a cultural i4eal, this was tragically common. Lastly, some of the shelters were either occupied by particularly powerful families (who denied access to others), locked, or being used for storing grain or cattle and thus impossible to use. Again, the local context of economic and social differentiation, factionalism and; patron-clientage helps explain why some groups had earlier gained control of the shelters. Clearly, while cyclones are primarily climatic, social and cultural factors play a large role in determining what happens before, during and after them. ;
While there is little which development agencies can do to prevent cyclones from occurring, measures to limit their destruction are not simply technical. Cyclone-resistant shelters certainly have to be built, but various other steps need to be taken to ensure that people use them. These can be summarised as follows:
1. Shelters must be socially appropriate: their design must take into account cultural factors such as purdah by providing separate rooms and latrines for women.
Shelters must be sited appropriately, e.g.: close to settlements so that people do not have to walk long distances to reach them. People must be aware of the existence and purpose of the shelter. Shelters must be seen locally, as shared community buildings, which everyone has access to. Perceived 'ownership' may vitally influence whether or not the shelters are used in an emergency.
One way of ensuring points 3 and 4 are achieved is to put the buildings to other uses when there is no emergency. Ideally, these should involve as many different groups as possible. Since socially
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marginalised groups (e.g. the landless, women, migrant labourers) are those most likely to be denied access during a cyclone, these activities might be best targeted at them.
5. The buildings must be regularly maintained. This should be done by the community, again in order to give people a sense of 'ownership', but also to achieve the long-term sus taxability of maintenance activities.
The provision of cyclone shelters clearly involves a host of social issues. To ensure their use by all groups during a cyclone, the projects must also be as participatory as possible; ideally, the building of shelters should be integrated into wider, 'community development' type programmes.
The cyclone shelter cum primary school project
In the immediate aftermath of the cyclone, many donors and NGOs were keen to build cyclone shelters in the worst affected areas of the country. This programme, funded by a large multilateral donor, involved the construction of a proposed 200 shelters in specified regions of the coastal area. As agreed by the national government, the shelters would also double as government-run primary schools, many of which had been destroyed in the recent disaster. Combined with this, the financing memorandum signed by the donor and the government proposed that the buildings would be used by local NGOs to ensure wider community use of the buildings and participation in their maintenance. The NGOs, it was hoped, would also be involved in disaster preparedness training. While it was not specified how this would take place, it was assumed that the NGOs involved would promote schemes to generate income for building maintenance, and carry out appropriate training programmes. They would also share the building with the government-run primary school.
The implementation of the project was contracted out to a European engineering firm, which we shall call Smith and Company. It had local counterparts within the 'Project Implementation Unit', who were hired and employed by the national government. Although Smith and Company had long-term overseas experience, this was wholly in construction. None of its employees had background knowledge of the country concerned, of social development or of NGOs. This was not perceived by the company as a problem, for when the contracts it won from donors demanded social inputs, it simply hired short-term external consult-
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ants. In the firm's eyes, the project was primarily to do with building shelters. The subsequent use of these, their impact on local groups and issues of 'development' were not seen (at least by the team leader) as relevant. As the team leader ingenuously put it: 'We're here to make money, not for development.'
Smith and Company was, however, contractually obliged by the donor to carry out the 'social component' of the project. Within the project design, which had been written by the donor, two months were provided for an expatriate social consultant and four months for a local social consultant. The terms of reference for these were extremely vague, for the team leader lacked sufficient knowledge of 'social development' or NGOs to know what might be required. Indeed, as he later confided to the expatriate consultant, for the first six months of the project he was not even sure what an NGO was. Upon arriving to carry out the job, the expatriate social consultant was told: 'Do whatever you think is appropriate.' A de facto version of these invisible terms of reference was to:
♦ assess the viability of collaborating with local NGOs in the use of the cyclone shelters; and
• set up mechanisms for contracting socialv development activities to local NGOs. 1.
This was an enormous task. Since the project involved 200 shelters, in theory this could have meant collaborating with 200 different NGOs. While in some coastal areas there were already several well-respected NGOs working within local communities, in others there were few, if any. Even if only the larger, national level NGOs with a greater geographical spread were involved, the logistics of assessing them and negotiating and coordinating their involvement were mind-boggling, especially in a context where there was little national coordination of NGOs and the spirit was more one of competition than cooperation.
NGOs could be invited to submit project proposals, but there was little to prevent these from being bogus. As one might expect, whenever donors are offering comparatively large sums of money, it is not uncommon for some organisations to overestimate their own capacity and capabilities in order to access funds. On top of this, the government had an ambivalent attitude towards NGOs, and for the first 18 months of the project the Ministry of Education, which first and foremost saw the buildings as primary schools rather than cyclone shelters, refused to cooperate.
Although the objectives of the project were laudable on a superficial level, in reality its design was therefore highly naive, reflecting
Anthropologists within Development 145
the donor's ignorance of local conditions and of what collaborative work with NGOs might involve. Even if large numbers of NGOs were to be integrated into the project, there were no procedures in the design for monitoring and evaluating their work. Nor had the future sustainability of their programmes been considered. The project intended to fund them in their 'community development' activities for three years, after which time its work would be considered finished and Smith and Company would wind down its operations. Yet, unlike the construction of buildings, 'community development' cannot be carried out in a few brief months. Instead, the work of the best NGOs can never be short-term: simply setting up a savings group or providing functional education can take several years, especially if the organisation has no pre-existing contacts in the community concerned. Taking things further involves even more time.
Combined with this, the project objective of community 'participation' was preposterous. The selection of sites and shelter design was already nearing completion during the social consultant's first input. There was clearly no opportunity for local people to participate in these processes. Suggestions that they might be involved in the supervision of contractors' work, as had been the case in the cyclone-shelter building programmes of some of the more radical NGOs, were not taken seriously by the Project Implementation Unit ' While included as a buzz word in the project design, participation ; was simply not possible given that project objectives and schedules had been prepared far in advance.
The social consultants had a total of six months to do their work. While the local sociologist might have been invaluable, he was unfortunately entirely unsuitable, having been recruited by engineers who had not known what qualities to look for. In effect, then, the bulk of the work was left to the expatriate consultant, who had two months to do a job which needed at least a year, should have been started before the building of the shelters and would certainly need to continue after the construction was completed.
After completing his first month's input, the expatriate consultant had compiled a list of suitable NGOs working in one area of the proposed project. He had visited as many of these as possible, but since the list only included seven shelter sites this was only the tip of the iceberg. Initial 'feelers' had been put out as to whether organisations might be interested in participating in the project. The least reputable or experienced had jumped at the chance of funding, while the best had indicated that they did not have the capacity to expand further, let alone for so many shelters. The Project Imple-
146 Anthropology, Development and the Post-modern Challenge
mentation Unit, however, was keen for NGOs to take on as many sites as possible, for this would make project administration far easier. It also insisted that it should dictate to the NGOs what activities they would carry out, The Smith and Company team leader, whose previous experience had been wholly in the commercial sector, saw them very much as potential employees contracted to do a specific job and was aghast that they did not necessarily 'jump' when called.
In his report to the project, the consultant recommended that the only way in which NGO involvement might be successfully implemented was to employ a full-time local consultant to assess NGO proposals, negotiate their involvement and help monitor work. Although the donor readily agreed to this suggestion, one year later this had been repeatedly refused by the Ministry of Education. After the consultant's input had ended, the team leader, left without advice, initiated discussions with a large, semi-governmental organisation with a presence in the coastal area and a national reputation for corruption. Since this was the only organisation which could deal with such a large-scale project, this appeared to be the only option left. J,
The Primary Schools cum Cyclone Shelters Project is a case par excellence of bad planning, assuming that the donors were sincere in their desire to integrate local communities in the use and maintenance of their shelters. It is an example of how in so many capital-intensive projects, social usage is perceived by the 'developers' as marginal. There was plenty of scope for creative; anthropological input, but it should have been at the beginning of the project. Matters would also have been helped had the Project Implemention Unit not been composed entirely of expatriate engineers, with no local experience or knowledge of social issues. Much time was spent by the beleaguered team, leader learning what NGOs were, and what they did. Like many of Smith and Company's employees, his commitment to their aims was minimal, for he saw his work in terms of profit and construction.
Points for discussion
1. Should anthropologists collaborate with private consultancy companies who quite openly admit that their presence in Southern countries is only for profit? While the obvious answer might be 'no', we should bear in mind that an anthropologist can play an educative role within such companies, helping to open colleagues' eyes to the social implications of their work.
Anthropologists within Development 147
2. Does an anthropological presence legitimise a project which.in reality involves very little social development or participation? In this case, the answer is probably 'yes'. However, it would be too cynical to suggest that this was the original intention of the donors, who genuinely hoped that by including a paragraph in their project design they would have a 'community development' style project.
How might similar scenarios be avoided? Let us turn to our last case study, an example of the potentials unleashed by anthropological involvement from the outset.
Case 3. The fish farm - 'the tail wagging the dog'?
Our third case study highlights the tensions between the 'technical fix' aspects of many projects and the types of 'soft' information that are of interest to anthropologists. It concludes with an example of the productive 'fusing', after some initial difficulties, of these two sets of emphases.
In recent years the government, donors and NGOs in an Asian country discovered that while agriculture was nearing optimum conditions in terms of local resource utilisation and deployment, the inland fisheries sector appeared to offer considerable potential for improving resource utilisation, increasing production of scarce animal protein and improving food availability for the population. Increasing fish production through aquaculture (the culturing of fish in ponds)„eame to be seen as an important route for increasing food production and thereby addressing the issue of poverty.
Fish have long been an important part oi the local diet, since the country contains a vast river delta and is water-logged for much of the year. Declining natural availability and increasing population pressure have, however, led to strains on the availability of wild fish and the prevailing 'extensive' system of farming. Aquaculture, which is just beginning to be practised intensively, is seen as a viable solution to this deficit Hshcan.be spawned artificially in hatcheries, introduced into ponds in the form of small 'fingerlings' 5 or 8 centimetres long (sometimes known also as 'fry'), and then grown to food fish size for sale or consumption within about six months.
Since this more intensive approach to growing fish is still relatively new, the development agencies have worked to try to support its growth with technical advice and assistance. In particular, one European government agency developed a multi-million pound project based around the construction of a large,
«.......^w^^/ Lszvewpment ana me Post-modern Challenge
high-technology fish hatchery which it was hoped would provide a vast supply of hatchlings for local fish farmers and growers in an area with very limited natural supply. Although limited amounts of hatchlings had hitherto been available from the rivers, this level of availability had become plainly inadequate for present needs.
The idea quickly gained support and a project was planned with the participation of the government's Fisheries Department. An old and disused hatchery was located and a plan was developed to upgrade it into a large, multi-pond production unit offering many different species of fish to local farmers, coupled with advice on extension, help with gaining access to inputs and credit facilities. The design was drawn up rather quickly by the planners, without much reference to local people, and without sufficient understanding of either the constraints under which they were producing their fish or the potential value of local knowledge.
As work progressed, expatriate and local project staff began learning more about the local economy and ecology. Some of this 'on the job' learning began to contradict certain assumptions implicit in the project design. For example, the aquaculture which was being conducted locally (albeit on a fairly smap scale) was supported by a complex network of relationships andttransactions, involving both rich and poor people, who benefited disproportionately from the participation in the networks.
In order to explore further the issues which were coming to light, a series of social research studies were commissioned by the donor, involving researchers from a UK university working in collaboration with a local research organisation. A number of t&ese studies were undertaken using an anthropological methodology based upon participant observation and semi-structured interviews. These began to reveal a range of 'hidden' issues which it became clear were of great importance to the success of the project
In particular, while the planners had assumed that the benefits of increased fish production would 'trickle down' to those in the community with low incomes, such a view was hard to sustain. The complex network of producers, intermediaries and traders included both wealthy members of the local rural elites and landless people with few assets and low incomes. The local markets through which inputs for aquaculture were bought and sold were far from perfect. Instead, there were cartels controlling the movement of hatchlings and fingerlings around the country, and forms of 'tied' credit (e.g. in which an agreement bound the less powerful credit-taker to an obligation to sell produce back to the credit-giver at a disadvanta-
r      Anthropologists within Development 149
* geous price) which restricted the ability of buyers and sellers to shop t      around for the best prices.
" Furthermore, the planners' assumptions about technical solutions
t to local problems had taken little account of local knowledge, which was found to be .highly developed in certain rather surprising ways. y For example, while the high-technology solution to fish seed trans-*■ portation required the use of oxygen canisters and plastic bags, local I traders had long been using an indigenous system involving r aluminium or clay cooking pots and the maintenance of the ; required oxygen levels using a highly skilled - if tiring - hand I       splashing technique. Without the knowledge or help of Western
• 'experts', local fish seed traders were moving vast qualities of fin-■ ' gerlings around the country on Irains, buses and rickshaws, r       sometimes over distances of more than 160 kilometres, using this
I       sophisticated system of locally evolved techniques. : The work of the anthropologist therefore significantly broadened
i     I the knowledge base and the perspective of the project, bringing to light details which had remained 'hidden' to the planners. Perhaps, the social scientists began to argue, there were good reasons why i    X there were no successful hatcheries in this part of the country and 1       these reasons had been largely overlooked by the planners. Some |       local people were saying that the water was too rich in iron, which ?       made fish breeding difficult, a fact that was starting to be confirmed by the scientists themselves. Perhaps the trading and transportation network which existed was capable of bringing fingerlings into the area by itself and could meet demand effectively, in which case the local production centre was not necessary. At worst, if the hatchery achieved its target output, all the low-income, long-distance fish traders might be made redundant and would lose important income-generating opportunities, thus neutralising or even contradicting the poverty-focused intentions of the project.
Many of these findings were greeted unenthusiastically by project staff, who were faced with the prospect of a relatively straightforward technological intervention (build a hatchery, train local people in its use, produce more fish for everyone) turning into a rather more complicated and less clear-cut venture, Some project staff began to complain privately that the social scientists were getting in the way of the project and that having them around was like 'the tail wagging the dog'. Again, technology was assumed to be the point of the excercise.
At this point, considerable negotiation skills were needed on both sides to overcome misunderstandings and professional pride. For example, it was tempting for the anthropologist to criticise the
150 Anthropology, Development and the Post-modern Challenge
donors for leaving the social science research until after the project had already been designed and started. This had been a serious mistake, but one which too many professional careers rested upon to allow the error to be openly admitted. The fisheries scientists thought the social research tended towards naivety and negativity, and pounced eagerly upon examples of social scientists' ignorance of specialised technical information whenever it was presented. This was a debate which concerned the 'types' of knowledge considered necessary for development.
The work of the social scientists was eventually used constructively in order to reorient the project in innovative and interesting ways. It was decided to try to encourage the relatively poor fish-fry traders to broaden their resource base by selling advice (after relevant training from project staff) about fishpond cultivation and management to fish farmers as well as selling fish fry, an idea which they found interesting and potentially useful. This fry trader extension strategy was an idea that had emerged from discussions between local staff, farmers and researchers, taking an indigenous system (the network of relationships between fish-seed traders and pond operators) and providing a group of actors in that system with training in pond culture practice. Ethnographic investigation had shown that technical knowledge of fish production was in short supply, since fish culture of this kind was a relatively new activity. This training could then feed into a ready-made distribution and extension system, since it had been learned that pond-owners often asked the fingerling traders for advice on fish culture issues, evep. though most traders were unable to provide it adequately. '
Points for discussion
1. A recurring problem is the non-involvement of anthropologists in the initial planning stages of projects.
2. Anthropological knowledge can be particularly useful in understanding many of the hidden difficulties underlying a set of planner's assumptions, many of which may be biased towards technology rather than towards people.
3. By opening up avenues for discussion with local people, and identifying some of the potentially contradictory interests and needs of different classes and groups, better decisions can be made about responding to felt needs and targeting what the project has to offer to specific categories of person.
4. Far more can be achieved by building upon existing systems than by importing and imposing new technologies and ideas
Anthropologists within Development 151
from outside. For example, locally adapted and highly skilled fish-seed transportation systems, while archaic and 'low-tech', were not a priority for change, whereas particular types of scarce knowledge, which the project could quite easily supply, were in considerable demand. 5. Negotiations with project staff can be just as sensitive as discussion with other 'informants'. Anthropologists may end up being far less sensitive with these people than they are with their more 'traditional' informants (see case 1 on rural cooperative training).
Conclusion
We hope that these case studies illustrate the range of problems and potentials in store for anthropologists who take the professional route and engage in practical development work. Each one raises a set of questions, which can be debated at length. However, we would like to end this chapter with some concluding thoughts about the role of the applied anthropojojg^^
'ajggliei ar^^ojQgy' -and replacing it with 'a much broader noaS^COTtextually defined professional activity', partly because itm>jesses.::whatoughm
inpractice. Furthermore, as soon as one moves aw;ay from a narrow *lfelgli8h of applied rolesTthe "distinction between 'appUed' and 'pure' anthropology begins, to breakdown, A more accurate and realistic assessment of the anthropologist's potential in development work might be based upon the discipline's ability to 'see beyond' what is initially assumed and explore the complexity of social and economic situations.
Many of those dicussing anthropology and development have reached similar kinds of conclusions. Belshaw (1976) stresses the idea of the anthropologist's wider social responsibilities and deploys the metaphor of the 'sorceror's apprentice' to argue his case. The anthropologist is without a 'firm technique' or distinct craft, b ^^lSe^SSr%b^pAy~^ "advisory role'aimed at moderating the ^^^C^^yo^mmn^d' 6&eis'wi£'''power, to unlealrtlfbrces over'which; in late twentieth-century society, we can _ ScpecHe^^ control. Hoben (1982: 366) is less
cTfarhatic; But argues that "the discipline's, theoretical
contribution lies in the elucidation of means-end relationships, rather than in the choice of ends themselves'.
152 Anthropology, Development and the Post-modern Challenge
Rarely are anthropologists able to agree either among themselves or with development practitioners on a single course of unproblem-atic action, but they are well equipped to point out the significance of complex, often hidden, relationships; by so doing, they can provide unique and potentially valuable contributions. Following . from this, Grillo (1985: 21), suggests that the essence of the anthropological perspective is that it is holistic, in which 'units of study are conceived as complex wholes consisting of a multiplicity of related elements'. Despite the interesting work of anjtocj^olc^^ theorist^ perspective usually
retains a significant local dimension, or^leastorie wrucK'Beeins with individual perceptions and outlooks and then seeks to draw connectipns and links between experience^ an^^ider^ealities. Anthropologists can describe How"people "act, think and feel aTtRe world changes.
Despite its important methodological contributions to development work, anthropology remains primarily a 'way of seeing' rather than a specific set of skills or a fopUdt. One of trie''rriaih'wa^of applying anthropology, as Wolf (1964) points out, is therefore to teach this distinctive outlook and ideas more widely, to people working in other fields. Nowhere is the heed more pressing than in the world of development, where prevailing discourses are perhaps now more open to renegotiation and change than ever before.
7  BEYOND DEVELOPMENT?
By now it should be clear that anthropology's relationship to development is riven with contradiction). While on the one hand anthropologists have for many generations worked within governmental and non-governmental organisations, demonstrating how much the discipline has to offer in terms of improving the work of developers, other anthropologists are engaged in a radical critique of the very notion of development, arguing that as a concept it is morally, politically and philosophically corrupt. As we have seen, these different and often conflicting positions have a long history and to an extent simply represent the diversity of views that one would expect to find among any group of individuals: there is no reason why anthropologists and their opinions should be homogeneous.
In the post-modern/post-structuralist context of the 1990s, however, the two approaches appear to be further apart than ever. In this concluding chapter we shall suggest that this need not necessarily be the case. Indeed, while it is absolutely necessary to unravel and deconstruct 'development', if anthropologists are to make politically meaningful contributions to the worlds in which they work they must continue to make the vital connection between knowledge and action. This means that the use of applied anthropology, both within and outside the development industry, must continue to have a role, but in different ways and using different conceptual paradigms than previously.
This ,'involved anthropology.' is undoubtedly fraught with danger. In this sense it is perhaps the most testing and problematic domain for individual anthropologists to work in, whether as detached critics or as consultants hired by aid agencies. But this should not mean that they shun practical involvement, although they may need to be careful about what form it takes. Anthropologists should also not expect involvement to be easy. If they have any
153
154 Anthropology, Development and the Post-modern Challenge
collective responsibility it is endlessly to question and problematise their positions, to be uncomfortable, and with their questions to make others uncomfortable. This is a source of creativity, as well as a form of political engagement. It is also, however, a perilous path to take.
Unpicking development
As Ferguson (1990: xiii) has pointed out:
Like 'civilisation' in the nineteenth century, 'development' is the name not only for a value, but also for a dominant problematic or interpretive grid through which the impoverished regions of the world are known to us. Within this intepretive grid, a host of everyday observations are rendered intelligible and meaningful.
Laying bare the assumptions behind such 'interpreiive.grids', and thus, indicating the relationship between knowledge, discourse and the reproduction of power, is one of the most important tasks of the contemporary anthropology of development, a project which has-burgeoned in recent years. j For example, Hobart (1993:4) has written about the ways in which.' development problems are conceptualised in relation to Western, 'world-ordering knowledge', while the state of 'ignorance' is not' simply the absence of knowledge, but a state of being which is ascribed by those with power to those without As we saw in the fish. traders' case study described in Chapter 6, while foreign aquaculture ; experts deal in a.typeof. technical knowledge which sees the blanket K application of high-technology solutions to problems of fish-seed transportation, local knowledge represents the situation rather differently. People are constituted as actively seeking solutions to the problems of maintaining oxygen levels in water, and their solutions are rooted in practice rather than in theory. Although traders knew that they needed to oxygenate the water by hand to keep their fish alive, they did not have a scientific explanation as to why this should be done. Such activity is more akin to a set of 'performance skills' with a high level of improvisation involved (P. Richards, 1993), than to a coherent or permanent system of local knowledge.
The new anthropology of development can also be used to deconstruct the knowledge of developers as well as those 'to be developed'. Although often caricatured as simply involving 'scientific rationality', this is also more complex, in much the same way that 'indigenous knowledge' is. As our case studies indicate, development plans are often far from rational, and relationships
Beyond Development? 155
within development institutions are as hierarchical, unequal and culturally embedded as any of the societies usually studied by anthropologists. The interface between developers and those to be developed is not simply a case of binary oppositions: modern ('scientific') versus traditional ('indigenous') thought. Instead, the paradigms within which developers work are as contextually contingent, culturally specific and contested as those of the social groups whom they target. What must not be lost sight of, however, is that discourses of development are produced by those in power and often result (even if unintentionally) in reproducing power relations between areas of the world and between people.
These perspectives help anthropologists turn a highly critical eye on the assumptions which lie behind those who speak of 'development' in both the resource-rich Northern countries and the economically poor countries of the South. They help reveal how the language used in the North to describe the Third World is not neutral, but reflects the continuing inequalities arising from the histories of colonisation, the need for Northern states to maintain their position of economic dominance and the limited vision that those in richer countries may have of the global future. It also becomes clear how development has been institutionalised, and the people who work within its projects professionalised. Important issues are raised concerning the production and uses of knowledge, about the legitimacy or otherwise of the 'experts' who provide advice, about the level of participation of local people in projects and about the intended and unintended economic and political consequences of the whole development enterprise as it is carried out across the world.
Anthropology and development: moving on
Discomforting, but nonetheless crucial, questions are also asked about the involvement in development work of anthropologists, who are frequently accused of 'buying in' to the dominant discourse and thus perpetuating global inequality even while attempting to 'do good'. As one of its fiercest critics, Arturo Escobar (1991,674-7), puts it:
Development institutions are part and parcel of how the world is put together so as to ensure certain processes of ruling. Under these conditions, development anthropology almost inevitably upholds the main tenets of development... for all its claim to relevance to social problems, to cultural sensitivity ... [development anthropologyl ... has done no more than
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recycle and dress in more localised fabrics, the discourses of modernisation and development.
Such perspectives are vital in the ongoing task of rethinking and thus remaking the world. As we have stated, anthropologists must continue to ask difficult questions of themselves and of others. But as well as showing that the very concept of development and all of its discursive paraphernalia (including the role of development anthropology) is deeply problematic, anthropologists in and of development should also be producing ideas on how to change it. For them to criticise the inability of 'development' to deliver is relatively easy; understanding and supporting the alternatives are more difficult.
Why should anthropologists remain involved? Reading through some of the texts produced by post-structuralists it might appear that the problems of Southern countries are simply a construct, a figment of the post-colonial imagination, and a justification for the continuing domination of the South by the North. It is certainly true that every effort must be made to move beyond perceiving the 'Third World' in crude and debilitating stereotypes which negate the agency, dynamism and self-reliance of those who are labelled 'the poor'. It should also be recognised that the 'ThirdjWorld' - if this is to be understand in terms of marginalisation -s also exists within the North; witness the scandal of homelessness1 and social deprivation within the cities of Britain and the US. Lastly, those from materially richer societies need to recognise the degree to which their views are embedded within their own cultural assumptions. *
Yet while it is important to acknowledge that not "everyone perceives the world in the same terms,, global inequalities and poverty cannot simply be explained away as culturally relative. The first problem with this stance is that it relies upon the notion of bounded and separate cultures, all of which have their own internal logic; in this view there are clearly no universals. Recent discussions of globalisation challenge such ideas .(Featherstone 1990; Hannerz, 1992). Indeed, it is increasingly recognised that the world and its cultures are highly interconnected. People are not simply separated by the invisible and impermeable walls of culture. Although there is of course great diversity among societies, there are also great similarities.
Second, while as an ideological position cultural relativism may be 'politically correct', it can lead to complacency, at both an individual and a state level. It may also negate the struggles and per-
Beyond Development? 157 ceptions of those fighting to change conditions within their societies, who may request and welcome the solidarity of outsiders. In these cases, the relativism of post-modernist approaches is in danger of collapsing into depoliticised irresponsibility. As Micaela di Leonardi (1991: 24) comments:
In other words, there is no place for any morally evaluative or politically committed stance within the disintegrating logic of post-structuralism. It is fundamentally nihilist ... Ironically, given its sometime association with radical political stances, post-structuralism does not challenge the status quo in an increasingly retrograde era.
Similar issues have been hotly debated within feminism. While the 'politics of difference' (the recognition of the diversity of feminist voices and experience and, by extension, the critique of white, Western feminists' representations) has been central to debates within feminist theory in recent years, some feminists worry that an ideal of endless difference might cause feminism to self-destruct. For the feminist movement to have any meaning, there must therefore be post-modern 'stopping points' (Nicholson, 1990:8), a recognition that there are globalised structures of dominance and subordination. These are not simply a construct (Bordo, 1990:149).
Another major problem with the deconstructionalist stance is that it makes active involvement in processes of change difficult, for the terms in which such change is thought of are themselves suspicious, as is any Northern involvement in Southern societies. Those from the North1 therefore become silenced, unable to act beyond producing hostile critiques of the work of those who are involved. But if this is all they do, their contribution becomes reductive: they detract while adding nothing. Although unpicking 'development' is clearly a political as well as an academic act, the irony of post-structuralism is that it can thus also be inherently depoliticising.
If anthropologists are to retain a commitment to improving the world they therefore need to move beyond deconstruction, taking with them its critical insights, but leaving behind the political apathy that it sometimes evokes. There are moral absolutes in the world; people are not merely atomised individuals, endlessly fragmented by diversity, with wholly different perceptions and experiences. People have a right to basic material needs; they also have a right to fulfil their individual potential, whether this involves becoming literate, retaining their cultural identity or their freedom, having the means to generate an income, or whatever. Yet many millions of people throughout the world are denied these rights. We therefore make no apologies for arguing that professionally as well
ft
158 Anthropology, Development and the Post-modern Challenge
as personally anthropologists should be actively engaged in attempting to change the conditions which produce poverty, inequality and oppression.
One way in which anthropologists can move forward is to shift their focus away from development and on to relations of poverty and inequality. This means that there is still an important role for anthropologists working within development, for from their positions as participants they can continually insist that inequality and poverty - as social relationships - remain at the top of the agenda. As we have argued throughout this book, they can also work on the institutions concerned, whether these are donor agencies, governments or NGOs, insisting that the development discourse itself changes. After all, discourse is a product of those who produce it; it does not simply exist in a vacuum. Anthropologists can therefore be active agents in radically reformulating it. To consider further how this might be done, and the inherent dangers of applied work, let us return to the role of anthropologists in development.
Working from within ';
As insiders in the aid industry, anthropologists can play a part in ensuring that the issues of equity and participation within the 'development process' (as opposed to the simpler, more measurable notions of economic growth and technological change) are uppermost in the approaches and practices of those working in development. These are in many ways 'anthropological' issues, for the traditional subject matter of anthropology - small-scale, low-income rural communities - has generated a wealth of information about how the different elements of a society fit together, and how, by extension, things could be improved. As we have argued throughout this book, anthropologists ask crucial questions regarding people's access to resources and the differential effects of change. It is vital that these questions stay on the developers' agenda, for, as we have seen, many planners have limited insight into the effects of their work; they need to be constantly reminded that change is inherently social.
One role that anthropologists can play is therefore to keep the developers under control. Mair wrote in her study of anthropology and development that one of the main roles of the social anthropologist is to 'beg the agents of development to keep their eyes open' (1984:13) and to represent the interests and the discontent of those people passed over by the new order(s) created by economic
Beyond Development? ' 159 progress. But Mair's view remains to some extent one of the anthropologist mediating between the developer and the developed along the inevitable path of progress. When she points out that the anthropologist can usefully warn developers of 'resistance likely to be met' (ibid.: 4), this is a far cry from the anthropologist as, ideally, a full participant in questioning development itself or facilitating the participation of people in those processes.
Anthropology has other types of contributions to make beyond being a mediator between the developers and those to be 'developed'. Anthropologists are trained sceptics: they tend to argue that situations and ideas are usually more complicated than is immediately apparent; they believe that no fact or detail is too trivial to be considered; they may prefer quality to quantity; they are rarely ready to offer conclusions or advice in terms of a straightforward course of action. All these qualities are of course of immense value in informing planned change, but they sit uneasily within the timeframes and priorities of the world of development practice. To some development practitioners, anthropologists are therefore an administrative nightmare, because the knowledge and ideas in which they deal seem to have very little practical applicability and, worse still, can raise endless problems. Yet the uneasiness and frustration sometimes created by the presence of an anthropologist can be harnessed in development work and is arguably anthropologists' greatest strength, if it can be deployed constructively.
As we have seen, anthropology can be used in the project setting for a number of purposes. Anthropologists are well equipped to monitor the process of project implementation, which in effect is the task of monitoring social change. To do this, a combination of national and expatriate anthropologists, with both men and women involved, will be able to draw on their different skills and perspectives in order to present different, though mutually reinforcing, analyses of events. Anthropologists in the course of monitoring need to assess whether three-way communication is taking place between planners, implementors and population. This is needed to make projects needs-based and to reduce ethnocentric assumptions.
Anthropologists are trained to see beyond the immediate formal relationships which might exist. While their questions might appear irrelevant to technocrats, they often probe beyond what is immediately apparent. Are the project boundaries drawn too narrowly? For example, are there new or adapting sets of patron-client relationships which are being fed by the project and its resources? What are the distributional effects of the project? Finally, survey data can be supplemented with case studies, which capture dynamism and
complexity and therefore add dimension to more static data collection.
On a direcdy practical level, anthropology has helped to provide a model, through its traditional participatory fieldwork methodology, of information gathering which is more sensitive to people. This not only improves the quality of the information needed by policy-makers and practitioners, but can increase the opportunities for local people to contribute more directly to the evolution of policies and programmes. The use of anthropological methodology in participatory techniques such as PRA is an example. In turn, anthropologists can question and thus help redesign such techniques, ensuring that they do not ossify into rigid exercises which have lost their meaning.
If anthropologists are to become involved in development work in the South, a number of practical issues need to be considered. Before turning to the question of ethics, let us consider these.
How should anthropologists become involved?
There are various practical issues anthropologists should consider before deciding whether to take part in project-based work, as well as compromises which need to be made once a decision to participate has been taken. One important indicator or warning sign which the anthropologist should look out for when considering a practical involvement is the history of a project. Has it been drawn up with the participation of an anthropologist, or is the anthropologist part of an attempt to 'fix up' a project which has run into trouble?
When working in a team, or with other organisations or government agencies, the anthropologist may need to keep in mind the lack of wider knowledge or misconceptions which can exist about anthropology during the work. An important part of such work will be a preparedness to discuss anthropological ideas and outlooks with members of an interdisciplinary team or with project staff or administrators. As we have argued, anthropology is a way of looking at social realities, of looking behind apparently simple situations, and as such can be of value to non-specialists.
The anthropologist needs to be aware of the difference between the way academic anthropology is written up and presented and the more immediate requirements of project or agency reports and . documents. Reports will have to be well structured, so that relevant sections can be read separately by those who wish to access information quickly. They should be clearly written, with unfamiliar anthropological terms avoided unless necessary (in which case they
Beyond Development? 161 must be explained simply), and focused clearly on the specific questions which are being asked by the agency or project, Most anthropologists will generate new sets of questions and issues (unanticipated by their employers); these can then be outlined and addressed after the initial required points have been answered.
It is also important to be constructively critical: it makes little sense if the anthropologist fails to take responsibility for the practical implications of critical points. If certain assumptions or ideas have been shown to be false, alternatives can often be suggested which will create more appropriate courses of action. Many project staff will be pleased to experiment with new ideas, but will be frustrated by relentless negativity. A knowledge of the administrative culture in which many development initiatives take place is an essential prerequisite for this type of applied work.
The ethics of involvement
There can be little doubt that anthropologists can do much to change and improve the work of developers. Their involvement, however, remains deeply problematic. While setting out to reformulate and change from within, the danger is that anthropologists become profoundly compromised. No discussion of anthropology and development can therefore ignore the difficult issue of ethics, an underlying theme throughout the book.
One of the most complex questions for anthropologists concerns on what terms to get involved in development work. Little can be done if the project has been poorly designed or based on unfounded assumptions, and the 'legitimising role' of the anthropologist may indeed make matters worse rather than better. The involvement of the anthropologist will always be a matter of individual conscience, but informed choices can be made by asking some preliminary questions. At what stage is the anthropologist being asked to participate in a project? How much time will the anthropologist have to undertake the research? How much credibility will be given to the findings? By participating in development, does the anthropologist simply become part of the prevailing discourse and help to oil the
'anti-politics machine'?
Another set of ethical issues surrounds the roles of expatriates and nationals. This can lead to the loss of scarce local employment opportunities, and in the longer term may have implications for the development and strengthening of local educational and research institutions. Foreign anthropologists need to ask whether or not there is a critical research tradition in the country where the anthro-
162 Anthropology, Development and the Post-modern Challenge
pologist is working, and how the anthropologist's work contributes to strengthening or weakening what exists. Expatriate researchers can easily undermine the work of local practitioners by taking jobs or by using local workers in subordinate positions. Foreign anthropologists need to take responsibility for developing, through their work, the abilities of local researchers to carry out applied and other research. The 'fly in, fly out' expert role is one most anthropologists would wish to avoid, except to provide general support, as such activities can weaken the practice of local research.
For example, in Bangladesh the recent Flood Action Plan (a multi-million dollar project which may be larger than any other development project in the world) has in recent years absorbed large numbers of expatriate and local social scientists in its numerous consultancy studies. This means that a significant part of the country's research agenda is being determined by foreign donors, while a sizeable proportion of Bangladesh's few trained social researchers are 'tied up' with one set of issues. Many other important issues go unresearched and may continue to do so for some time to come. This raises important questions regarding the cooption of research by v developers, and the encompassment of anthropological findings j, within the development discourse. V
Cooption by developmental discourse
The increasing use of anthropological research by developers is to be applauded, but we must beware of our work being forced into narrow, institutionally defined boundaries, thus becoming part of ■■ the discourse which we should be objectively criticising, Since they may be funding it, the danger is that developers can dictate what type of research is carried out, and on what terms. White, for example, has pointed out how in Bangladesh research has been mostly funded by aid agencies. This means that writings about Bangladesh are largely concerned with a particular set of issues: rural poverty, the social and economic position of women and, of course, development (White, 1992: 15-25). Yet there is far more to Bangladesh than the sum of these issues (Gardner, 1995:22).
In their insistence that research should be practically 'useful', developers usually presuppose that they know already what the most important issues are. But as we have seen, some of the most interesting anthropology of development does not simply ask questions about policy; it examines change within its wider context. By insisting that the research agenda concentrates on certain issues and that findings are presented in a certain way, development may
Beyond Development? 163
therefore absorb anthropology - potentially its most radical critic -into the dominant development discourse, which, give or take a few adjustments, remains unchanged.
This has already happened to various important concepts, which have been appropriated for development and watered down to the point of a grotesque parody. The use of the term 'participation' is a good example of the dangers, since it can easily be 'coopted' by those with power and influence. A recent World Bank report (quoted by Paul, 1991: 2) illustrates the terms on which notions of participation have been accepted. Like WID/GAD, the main rationale for the use of participatory methods by the World Bank appears to be that they will increase the 'efficiency' of projects:
Donors and recipients have given too little attention to socio-cultural factors and have not been sufficiently aware of the important role that the poor themselves can play in initiatives designed to assist them. Evidence supports the view that involving the poor in the design, implementation, and evaluation of projects in a range of sectors would make aid more effective. Involvement of'women has contributed to the attainment of objectives in many agricultural development projects in Sub-Saharan Africa; participation of local community organisations has improved performance in many urban poverty projects; organisations of beneficiaries in aid-supported irrigation schemes have made important contributions to the maintenance and operation of project works; and involvement of organised groups of low-income borrowers has facilitated repayment of loans in small-scale credit programmes.
Clearly, participation all too easily slips into empty rhetoric, can serve the interests of the status quo and can readily lend itself to the fate of being 'veneered'.
likewise, the insights of anthropologists working on gender relations have, in some cases, been reformulated to fit into the dominant discourse, thus becoming depoliticised and institutionally 'safe'. By creating posts for WID officers, or adding WID to the list of policy commitments, institutions may feel that they have dealt with the problem, when in reality the changes are little more than cosmetic. Concepts may also get taken up, formalised to fit into the discourse, and thus simplified and changed. Gender training, for example, which is widely used by institutions such as the British ODA in the training of its own employees as well as government and NGO workers in projects which it funds throughout the world, may be easily misinterpreted as a simple formula for understanding gender. While attempting to provide tools to help planners, by presenting women in terms of three roles ('reproductive', 'productive' and 'community management') and simplistically
IDO
/\mnropotogy, Development and the Post-modern Challenge
readily accessible to the non-anthropologist and can be used by development practitioners and indeed everyone. While anthropology shows up the limitations of the popularly used survey methodology for reflecting social and economic realities, what can it offer instead?
The provision of PRA training provides an opportunity for public servants and NGO staff to examine their assumptions and their modes of working in order to make them more people-centred. Even if development projects were to disappear overnight, every society has ongoing relationships and situations in which people interact with outsiders and experts. For example, the agricultural extension worker from the local government office can either lord it' over the farmers, relying more on status than on an interest in understanding their possible needs, or she or he can work towards developing a more equal relationship in which a two-way exchange of information takes place, putting her or himself at the service of the clients. A nurse in a local health centre can either patronise his or her patients, or can take time to listen to their needs and develop lasting, two-way relationships. Such methodologies may be adapted or distorted or abused in the process, as when PRA becomes a means of legitimising existing practices wit|i only cursory consultation or forced participation. But ultimately there is no 'proper' way of doing things. More broadly, this type bf knowledge and methodology is also useful in its deployment in critical, oppositional, questioning roles, in questioning ethnocentric assumptions and economism.
Meanwhile, many grassroots organisations have been working anthropologically for several decades, without the inyolvement of experts. As we have seen, NGOs have developed approaches which may be changing the ways in which development is conceived and practised. Their fieldworkers may be drawn from the local community and may provide a sympathetic and accountable link with events and resources locally and more widely. They may be engaged in work which makes outside anthropologists less relevant, but both can have something to learn from each other. Social movements are also potential vehicles for change which may express local aspirations and initiatives. So far, few anthropologists have been involved in such initiatives as either researchers or activists, but this does not mean that potential roles do not exist, although the anthropologist may have to take sides and abandon some customary (and often illusory) detachment.
For the moment at least, the rhetoric of development and to some extent its practice is moving in directions which bring it closer to
Beyond Development? 167
what might be termed 'anthropological' territory. While a backlash against the participatory model of development cannot be ruled out in future years, it is to be hoped that such changes within development discourse will provide ideas which will feed back into anthropology's own processes of reflection and soul-searching. While the development arena provides anthropologists with a site that is rich in potential for analysing the ways power is exercised and change achieved in the post-modern world, it may also simultaneously contribute, as Johanssen has hinted (1992), to the reimagining of anthropology itself, as local political realites are moved centre-stage.
Conclusion
It would be ridiculous to suggest that anthropology holds all the solutions- Although it may be able to contribute to problematising and changing aspects of development discourse, there are far wider issues involved over which individual anthropologists and their methods have little influence. Ultimately, for the quality of people's lives in poorer countries to improve, global conditions must change. Poverty andjnequality are products of a range of global conditions, oT^wnlich^developmerit discourse is only one part. International tracfe, waf7'pólíHcár oppression and' so on are alTof central juS^ÍQEKrS""^^^^^^ traditionally Have had little tpv say about these: wrule'they řřmy^c^měhTupon their social and cultural consequences, with a few exceptions they are less practised in anajy^irig^e^ Instead, they tend to
concentrate on the 'micro level' and on face-to-face relations.
Anthropology's contribution to positive post-developmental change is therefore part of a larger effort. But this does not mean that it is not worthwhile. As we have argued throughout the book, development discourse is centralto Kóiytíie world is represented and coflír^ílWďtíý 'fflioée "wíM,:tfře'mbst power, and anthropology has n^cinQ^^^cV^t-it- As Wé havě^seen,'it tells us that any causal, ^|ffieeřmgmócíěl of social change is bound to exclude and indeed repress the richness and diversity of people's lives. We have argued that anthropology offers no simple formula for bringing about positive change.^thropologvjcjrmotb^^ tools to be applied aT%éaiSlo.en(Is7.
Instead/anthropology promotes an attitude and an outlook: a stance which encourages those working in development to listen to "other people's stories, to pay attention to alternative points of view and to new ways of seeing and doing. This outlook continually
168 Anthropology, Development and the Post-modern Challenge
questions generalised assumptions that we might draw from our own culture and seek to apply elsewhere, and calls attention to the various alternatives that exist in other cultures. Such a perspective helps to highlight the richness and the diversity of human existence as expressed through different languages, beliefs and other aspects of culture. Anthropology tries to show the interconnectedness of social and economic life .and the complex relationships which exist between people under conditions of change. Finally, anthropology encourages us to dig as deeply as possible, to go beyond what is immediately apparent, and to uncover as much of the complexity of social and economic life that we can.
The relationship between anthropology and development will never be a straightforward one. Anthropology cannot simply be put at the service of development or of 'the people', whoever they might be. What anthropology has to offer.is a continuous questioning of the processes, assumptions and agencies involved in development. But while they do this, and while they stimulate others to do the same, anthropologists have a role to play in unpicking, analysing and changing development practice over time. There is therefore^ scope for anthropology to take part in this 'gra^ualis^ because the problems which development has thrown up, as well as the problems which development seeks to solve, will not be changed or disappear overnight. We do not see the point of simply wishing them away or rejecting them as invalid.
Clearly anthropologists have a choice. We have tried to show in this book the ways in which anthropology exposes the limitations of ; so much which is done in the name of development - its ethnocen- * trie assumptions, its expression of the imbalance of power, its self-delusion, its economic biases - while at the same time offering ideas for challenging constructively the world of development and suggesting how this can be changed. Arejhese changes possible, or il.a,n. .!nv?lvccl anthropology only ever, going .to. reproduce neo-c9I9niaj discourses? Should we reject, the.project of development altogether? We are less pessimistic man.this,rejectionisj.position allows, and can see important roles for the anthropologist in reconstructing ideas and practice in order to overcome poverty and improve the quality of life across the WoirTcT
NOTES AND REFERENCES
Chapter 1: Anthropology, development and the crisis of modernity
1.. In this perspective development discourse is comparable to 'orientalism' - the term used by Edward Said to-describe the West's ideological control over Eastern 'others' by representing them in particular ways (Said, 1978). This is discussed in more detail later in the chapter.
2. By 'Western' we refer to ideologies primarily generated in Europe and the 'New World': North America, Australia and New Zealand. Western thought is not, however, confined to these geographical areas alone.
3. See glossary.
4. Escobar argues that economics has been key to development discourse. This too can be understood as the product of culture and within development functions hegemonically (1995: 62).
5. For further discussion of the process of labelling and targeting, see Escobar, 1995:154-92.
6. Nevertheless, the recent Pergau Dam scandal in Malaysia has kept many of these issues in the public arena and reminds us that they are still in many ways open questions. The UK government allegedly provided aid for a large infrastructural project which contradicted the ODA's poverty-focused aid objectives and led to the transfer of development assistance to a country generally considered not poor enough to qualify. The reason seems to have been to promote sales of British-made military equipment.
7. Texts which explore these debates are Mosley, 1987; Madeley, 1991; and Cassen et al., 1986.
8. See Hoogvelt, 1982; Larrain, 1989; Long, 1977.
9. For a detailed analysis of the Groundnut-Scheme, see Morgan, 1980: 226-319.
10. Other central theorists include Cardosa and Immanuel Wallerstein (for detailed discussion of these ideas, see Larrain, 1989:111-33).
11. This refers to attempts to explain the world through all-encompassing theories or paradigms, such as modernity, structuralism or Marxism. Lyotard, for example, speaks of the replacement of grand narratives by
169
" sjtunrufjutogy, uevetopment and the Post-modern Challenge
more localised accounts of reality, thus centrally recognising difference of experience rather than homogeneity (Lyotard, 1984).
12. For further discussion, see McGrew, 1992.
13. As noted above, these categories are in themselves problematic.
14. See, for example, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Human Development Report, 1990.
15. See glossary; for a more detailed discussion, see Kuper, 1983.
16. Provoked by texts such as Asad's edited work, Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter (1973).
Chapter 2: Applying anthropology - an historical background
1. Some of the more recent literature has therefore used the term 'development anthropology' to describe this type of work (Hoben, 1982; Epstein and Ahmed, 1984). However, we consider development anthropology to be a rather wider category which includes a theoretical critique of development issues - we discuss these in the next chapter.
2. However, evolutionist ideas again became popular in US anthropology after the Second World War and, as we have seen, lived on in the modernisation theories of economic development and cultural change propagated by Rostow (1960b) and others, who talked of 'stages of growth'.
3. Kuper quotes a colonial administrator, Sir Philip Mitche^ who wrote that anthropologists asserted that 'they only were gifted,with understanding, busied themselves with enthusiasm about all the minutiae of obscure tribal and personal practices [from which studies] resulted a number of painstaking and often accurate records... of such length that no-one had time to read them and often, in any case, irrelevant, by the time they became available, to the day to day business of government' (Kuper, 1983:107). Such a comment is not too dissimilar)from those sometimes still heard today from non-anthropologist practitioners working in development.
4. This was not always the case, however. M. Harris (1991: 336) recounts how the founder of Mozambique's liberation movement, Dr Eduardo Mondlane, received a PhD in sociology and anthropology from Northwestern University, Illinois, and was influenced by the idea of combining social science and political action.
5. Angela Cheater's (1986) introduction to anthropology is a good example of a new practical approach developed in the Zimbabwean context.
6. This remains an area of concern in any dicussion of anthropology and development: who is paying for research and why? The issue is returned to in Chapter 5.
7. One example is the Anthropology in Action Workshop, part of the British Association for Social Anthropology in Policy and Practice (BASAPP).
Notes and References 171
8. This distinction is now regarded as being problematic by many anthropologists today. For example, categories once believed to be scientific or objective can often be shown to be governed by more arbitrary definitions (see Clifford and Marcus, 1986:180).
9. While working recently on an Asia-wide research project on agricultural technology and NGOs, a series of participatory workshops - at which David Lewis was one of the facilitators - created opportunities for NGO workers (some of whom were themselves farmers) to discuss their agendas with senior government officials away from home within a relatively neutral environment.
Chapter 3: The anthropology of development
1. For an account of structuralism in British social anthropology, see Kuper, 1983.
2. In, for example, his Political Systems of Highland Burma (1954).
3. See Bloch, 1983.
4. See also Vatuk, 1972; Breman, 1974.
5. An early example of such an approach is Peter Worsley's The Trumpet Shall Sound, an analysis of Melanesian cargo cults, which Worsley argues developed as a reaction to white colonisation during the Second World War (Worsley, 1957).
)   6. See Mangin, 1967; Turner, 1969.
7. For a summary, see Moore, 1988.
8. Such as Weiner's re-evaluation of the Trobriand islanders (1976).
9. For example, Rosaldo and Lamphere, 1974; Reiter, 1975; Ortner and Whitehead, 1981.
10. See, for example, Afshar, 1991.
11. For a wider discussion of this literature, see Kabeer, 1994.
12. While WID refers to women's role in development, GAD refers to the relationship between development and socially constructed gender relations, thus recognising historical and cultural particularities of women's (and men's) social roles and statuses.
13. For a summary of policies aimed at gender relations within development, together with a discussion of gender training, see Moser, 1993 and Kabeer, 1994.
14. Which Escobar calls an 'exemplar of development' (1995:163).
15. For a critique of discourses of WID, see Kabeer, 1994; Phillips, 1994.
Chapter 4: Subverting the discourse - knowledge and practice
1. Examples might be the reduction of anthropological knowledge of gender relations into training packages such as the 'triple roles framework' (Kabeer, 1994: 294-8), or the solidification into bureau-cratically manageable 'indigenous knowledge systems' of complex cultural differences in ways of seeing and understanding.
172 Anthropology, Development and the Post-modern Challenge
2. For example, Wolf, 1982; Worsley, 1984.
3. Adapted from Lewis and McGregor, 1992.
4. Adapted from Madeley, 1991: 33-8.
5. As Sen (1981) has argued, famine is not the result of objective scarcity, but a failure in people's entitlement to food, which is always mediated through social and political relationships.
6. Adapted from M. Foster, 1989.
7. Adapted from Rozario, 1992.
8. £1 = approximately 50 taka in 1995.
9. Adapted from Mair, 1984: 110-13.
10. Adapted from ITDG, 1992.
11. We shall be discussing notions of participation in detail in Chapter 5.
12. Personal communication from Proshika workers to Katy Gardner, March 1993.
13. NGOs are discussed in more detail in Chapter 5.
14. Bilateral aid refers to situations where there is only one donor country involved. Multilateral aid involves more than one country and is implemented by multilateral agencies such as the World Bank. ,
15. Adapted from K. Gardner, forthcoming. )
16. Such criteria tend to be quantitative: i.e., so many hospitals built, so" many nurses employed. Measuring the success of social policies such ap; 'empowerment' is extremely difficult, however.
17. As we shall also suggest, such terms need to be treated with some caution.
Chapter 5: New directions - practice and change
1. This discussion refers primarily to national or local NGOs in the Southt rather than 'Northern' NGOs working in development but based in Europe or North America.
2. See Farrington and Lewis (1993), Bebbington and Thiel (1993), and Wellard and Copestake (1993) for discussion and case studies of NGOs and agriculture in Asia, Latin America and Africa respectively.
3. Adapted from Rahman, 1993.
4. Some of these issues are discussed in the Guatemalan context in an interesting paper by Turbyne and McGregor (1994).
5. Adapted from Jennings, 1990.
Notes and References 173
recruit personnel for quite a large interdisciplinary research project and produced a complex organogram showing about 20 different research posts from nutritionists to water engineers, with a social anthropologist apparently in charge of the whole team. When he was asked what exactly the anthropologist would be doing, he thought for a while and said, 'You know, I've often wondered this, but what exactly does a social anthropologist do?' He seemed to hold an opinion of the anthropologist as a general manager who would keep the project together. Although we report this as an example of the haziness surrounding perceptions of anthropologists' precise skills and potential roles in development, on reflection perhaps this consultant did have the right idea about the best place for an anthropologist after all...
3. ODA jargon is curiously full of sporting metaphors, a reflection perhaps of the public school backgrounds of many of its employees: 'up and running', and 'at close of play' are two other examples.
4. Conversely, some anthropologists have complained that development administrators have ignored freely available work which has potential project relevance. An anthropologist working in Nepal recently told us that, as far as he knew, a large UK project near his fieldwork location had paid no attention to his work, which contained discussions of several highly relevant issues.
Chapter 7: Beyond development?
1, Whatever the criteria for this are. It should be recognised that people's positioning as 'Northern' or 'Southern' is often far from fixed.
2. For a critique, see Kabeer, 1994:264-305.
Chapter 6: Anthropologists within development
1. This is quite ironic when one considers the ambivalence with which applied anthropologists are often looked upon by their more 'academic' colleagues.
2. A conversation a few years ago in Bangladesh illustrates quite well the confusion which sometimes exists about anthropologists and their role. A senior consultant had been flown out for a few weeks in order to
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