The anthropology of development is a term applied to a body of
anthropological
Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of be ...
work which views development from a ''critical'' perspective. The kind of issues addressed, and implications for the approach typically adopted can be gleaned from a list questions posed by Gow (1996). These questions involve anthropologists asking why, if a key development goal is to alleviate poverty, is poverty increasing? Why is there such a gap between plans and outcomes? Why are those working in development so willing to disregard history and the lessons it might offer? Why is development so externally driven rather than having an internal basis? In short, why is there such a lack of planned development?
This ''anthropology of development'' has been distinguished from ''
development anthropology
Development anthropology refers to the application of anthropological perspectives to the multidisciplinary branch of development studies. It takes international development and international aid as primary objects. In this branch of anthropolo ...
''. Development anthropology refers to the
application of anthropological perspectives to the
multidisciplinary
Interdisciplinarity or interdisciplinary studies involves the combination of multiple academic disciplines into one activity (e.g., a research project). It draws knowledge from several other fields like sociology, anthropology, psychology, ec ...
branch of
development studies
Development studies is an interdisciplinary branch of social science. Development studies is offered as a specialized master's degree in a number of reputed universities around the world. It has grown in popularity as a subject of study since the e ...
. It takes
international development
International development or global development is a broad concept denoting the idea that societies and countries have differing levels of economic or human development on an international scale. It is the basis for international classificatio ...
and international
aid as primary objects. In this branch of
anthropology
Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of be ...
, the term development refers to the social action made by different agents (
institutions
Institutions are humanly devised structures of rules and norms that shape and constrain individual behavior. All definitions of institutions generally entail that there is a level of persistence and continuity. Laws, rules, social conventions a ...
,
business
Business is the practice of making one's living or making money by producing or buying and selling products (such as goods and services). It is also "any activity or enterprise entered into for profit."
Having a business name does not separ ...
,
enterprise
Enterprise (or the archaic spelling Enterprize) may refer to:
Business and economics
Brands and enterprises
* Enterprise GP Holdings, an energy holding company
* Enterprise plc, a UK civil engineering and maintenance company
* Enterprise ...
,
states, independent
volunteers) who are trying to modify the economic, technical, political or/and social life of a given place in the world, especially in impoverished, formerly colonized regions.
Development anthropologists share a commitment to simultaneously critique and contribute to projects and institutions that create and administer Western projects that seek to improve the economic well-being of the most marginalized, and to eliminate poverty. While some theorists distinguish between the 'anthropology of development' (in which development is the object of study) and development anthropology (as an applied practice), this distinction is increasingly thought of as obsolete.
Early approaches to development
Some describe the anthropological critique of development as one that pits
modernization
Modernization theory is used to explain the process of modernization within societies. The "classical" theories of modernization of the 1950s and 1960s drew on sociological analyses of Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim and a partial reading of Max Weber, ...
and an eradication of the indigenous
culture
Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups ...
, but this is too reductive and not the case with the majority of scholarly work. In fact, most anthropologists who work in impoverished areas desire the same economic relief for the people they study as policymakers, however they are wary about the assumptions and models on which development interventions are based. Anthropologists and others who critique development projects instead view Western development itself as a product of Western culture that must be refined in order to better help those it claims to aid. The problem therefore is not that of markets driving out culture, but of the fundamental blind-spots of Western developmental culture itself. Criticism often focuses therefore on the cultural bias and blind-spots of Western development institutions, or modernization models that: systematically represent non-Western societies as more deficient than the West; erroneously assume that Western modes of production and historical processes are repeatable in all contexts; or that do not take into account hundreds of years of colonial exploitation by the West that has tended to destroy the resources of former colonial society. Most critically, anthropologists argue that
sustainable development
Sustainable development is an organizing principle for meeting human development goals while also sustaining the ability of natural systems to provide the natural resources and ecosystem services on which the economy and society depend. The ...
requires at the very least more inclusion of the people who the project aims to target to be involved in the creation, management and decision-making process in the project creation in order to improve development.
Pre-WWII: Rhodes-Livingstone Institute
The British government established the
Rhodes-Livingstone Institute in 1937 to conduct social science research in British Central Africa. It was part of the colonial establishment, although its head, anthropologist
Max Gluckman, was a critic of colonial rule. Gluckman refused to describe colonialism as a simple case of "culture contact" since it was not a case of cultures mutually influencing each other, but of the forced incorporation of Africans into a foreign social, political and economic system. The anthropologists of the Institute were core members of what came to be known as the "
Manchester school" of anthropology noted for looking at issues of social justice such as apartheid and class conflict.
Culture of poverty
The term "subculture of poverty" (later shortened to "culture of poverty") made its first prominent appearance in the ethnography ''Five Families: Mexican Case Studies in the Culture of Poverty'' (1959) by anthropologist
Oscar Lewis. Lewis struggled to render "the poor" as legitimate subjects whose lives were transformed by
poverty
Poverty is the state of having few material possessions or little income. Poverty can have diverse . He argued that although the burdens of poverty were systemic and therefore imposed upon these members of society, they led to the formation of an autonomous subculture as children were socialized into behaviors and attitudes that perpetuated their inability to escape the underclass. In sociology and anthropology, the concept created a backlash, pushing scholars to abandon cultural justifications and negative descriptions of poverty, fearing such analysis may be read as "
blaming-the-victim
Victim blaming occurs when the victim of a crime or any wrongful act is held entirely or partially at fault for the harm that befell them. There is historical and current prejudice against the victims of domestic violence and sex crimes, such as ...
."
Modernization Theory and its critics
The most influential modernization theorist in development was
Walt Rostow, whose ''The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto'' (1960) concentrates on the
economic
An economy is an area of the production, distribution and trade, as well as consumption of goods and services. In general, it is defined as a social domain that emphasize the practices, discourses, and material expressions associated with th ...
side of the modernization, and especially the factors needed for a country to reach
"take-off" to self-sustaining growth. He argued that today's underdeveloped areas are in a similar situation to that of today's developed areas at some time in the past, and that therefore the task in helping the underdeveloped areas out of poverty is to accelerate them along this supposed common path of development, by various means such as investment, technology transfers, and closer integration into the world market. Rostow's unilineal evolutionist model hypothesized all societies would progress through the same stages to a modernity defined by the West. The model postulates that economic growth occurs in five basic stages, of varying length:
[">W.W. Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960), Chapter 2, "The Five Stages of Growth-A Summary," pp. 4-16]
# Traditional society
# Preconditions for take-off
# Take-off
# Drive to maturity
# Age of High mass consumption
As should be clear from the subtitle of his book, Rostow sought to provide a capitalist rebuttal to the unilinear Marxist growth models being pursued in the newly independent communist regimes in the second and third world; an effort that would lead to the "
Green revolution
The Green Revolution, also known as the Third Agricultural Revolution, was a period of technology transfer initiatives that saw greatly increased crop yields and agricultural production. These changes in agriculture began in developed countrie ...
" to combat the "
Red revolution".
George Dalton and the substantivists
George Dalton applied the substantivist economic ideas of
Karl Polanyi to economic anthropology, and to development issues. The substantivist approach demonstrated the ways in which economic activities in non-market societies were
embedded in other, non-economic social institutions such as kinship, religion and political relations. He therefore critiqued the formalist economic modelling of Rostow. He was the author of "Growth without development: An economic survey of Liberia" (1966, with
Robert W. Clower) and "Economic Anthropology and Development: Essays on Tribal and Peasant Economies" (1971).
Dependency theory
Dependency theory arose as a theory in Latin America in reaction to
modernization theory
Modernization theory is used to explain the process of modernization within societies. The "classical" theories of modernization of the 1950s and 1960s drew on sociological analyses of Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim and a partial reading of Max Weber, ...
. It argues that resources flow from a "periphery" of poor and underdeveloped states to a "core" of wealthy states, enriching the latter at the expense of the former. It is a central contention of dependency theory that poor states are impoverished and rich ones enriched by the way poor states are integrated into the "
World-system" and hence poor countries will not follow Rostow's predicted path of modernization. Dependency theory rejected Rostow's view, arguing that underdeveloped countries are not merely primitive versions of developed countries, but have unique features and
structures of their own; and, importantly, are in the situation of being the weaker members in a world market economy and hence unable to change the system.
Immanuel Wallerstein's "world-systems theory" was the version of Dependency theory that most North American anthropologists engaged with. His theories are similar to Dependency theory, although he placed more emphasis on the system as system, and focused on the developments of the core rather than periphery. Wallerstein also provided an historical account of the development of capitalism which had been missing from Dependency theory.
'Women in development' (WID)
Women in development (WID) is an approach to development projects that emerged in the 1970s, calling for treatment of women's issues in development projects. Later, the
Gender and development (GAD) approach proposed more emphasis on gender relations rather than seeing women's issues in isolation. The WID school grew out of the pioneering work of
Esther Boserup. Boserup's most notable book is ''The Conditions of Agricultural Growth: The Economics of Agrarian Change under Population Pressure''. This book presents a "dynamic analysis embracing all types of primitive agriculture." Drawing on Boserup, the WID theorists pointed out that the division of labour in agriculture is frequently gendered, and that in societies practicing
shifting cultivation
Shifting cultivation is an agricultural system in which plots of land are cultivated temporarily, then abandoned while post-disturbance fallow vegetation is allowed to freely grow while the cultivator moves on to another plot. The period of cu ...
, it is women who conduct most of the agricultural work. Development projects, however, were skewed towards men on the assumption they were "heads of households."
Development discourse and the creation of the 'underdeveloped' world
A major critique of development from anthropologists came from
Arturo Escobar's seminal book ''Encountering Development'', which argued that Western development largely exploited non-Western peoples. Arturo Escobar views
international development
International development or global development is a broad concept denoting the idea that societies and countries have differing levels of economic or human development on an international scale. It is the basis for international classificatio ...
as a means for the
Occident
The Occident is a term for the West, traditionally comprising anything that belongs to the Western world. It is the antonym of ''Orient'', the Eastern world. In English, it has largely fallen into disuse. The term ''occidental'' is often used to ...
to keep control over the resources of its former colonies. Escobar shows that between 1945 and 1960, while the former colonies were going through
decolonization
Decolonization or decolonisation is the undoing of colonialism, the latter being the process whereby imperial nations establish and dominate foreign territories, often overseas. Some scholars of decolonization focus especially on separatism, in ...
, development plans helped to maintain the third world's dependency on the old
metropole
A metropole (from the Greek '' metropolis'' for "mother city") is the homeland, central territory or the state exercising power over a colonial empire.
From the 19th century, the English term ''metropole'' was mainly used in the scope of ...
. Development projects themselves flourished in the wake of WWII, and during the cold war, when they were developed to
1. stop the spread of Communism with the spread of capitalist markets; and
2. create more prosperity for the West and its products by creating a global consumer demand for finished Western products abroad.
Some scholars blame the different agents for having only considered a small aspect of the local people's lives without analyzing broader consequences, while others like
dependency theory
Dependency theory is the notion that resources flow from a " periphery" of poor and underdeveloped states to a " core" of wealthy states, enriching the latter at the expense of the former. A central contention of dependency theory is that poor ...
or Escobar argue that development projects are doomed to failure for the fundamental ways they privilege Western industry and corporations. Escobar's argument echos the earlier work of
dependency theory
Dependency theory is the notion that resources flow from a " periphery" of poor and underdeveloped states to a " core" of wealthy states, enriching the latter at the expense of the former. A central contention of dependency theory is that poor ...
and follows a larger critique more recently posed by Foucault and other
poststructuralists
Post-structuralism is a term for philosophical and literary forms of theory that both build upon and reject ideas established by structuralism, the intellectual project that preceded it. Though post-structuralists all present different critiques ...
.
The World Bank and the development regime
The
World Bank Group
The World Bank Group (WBG) is a family of five international organizations that make leveraged loans to developing countries. It is the largest and best-known development bank in the world and an observer at the United Nations Development Gr ...
consists of multiple institutions including the
International Development Association (IDA), the
International Finance Corporation (IFC), the
International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), and the
Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA).
IDA credits as well as
IBRD loans support both development projects, and structural adjustment programs alike.
The
IDA of the
World Bank Group
The World Bank Group (WBG) is a family of five international organizations that make leveraged loans to developing countries. It is the largest and best-known development bank in the world and an observer at the United Nations Development Gr ...
was created in 1960, per urgent request of U.S. President
Dwight D. Eisenhower. The
IDA gave the
Bank
A bank is a financial institution that accepts Deposit account, deposits from the public and creates a demand deposit while simultaneously making loans. Lending activities can be directly performed by the bank or indirectly through capital m ...
the resources and mandate it required to address the issues of the poorest countries and their citizens. This institution served as a channel for the more economically stable nations of the world to assist those with less financial stability by providing long-term loans at no interest to the most economically challenged among developing countries.
The
IDA's concessional financing by 138 countries is mainly exclusive to countries that have a per capita income of $400 or less (no more than about $900) and lack the financial means to borrow from the
IBRD, the main lending institution of the
World Bank
The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and grants to the governments of low- and middle-income countries for the purpose of pursuing capital projects. The World Bank is the collective name for the Inte ...
.
Loans issued by the
IDA carry maturity dates of 35 or 40 years from the date of issue, with a 10-year grace period on the principal repayment.
In the fiscal year of 1989, total lending for the
World Bank
The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and grants to the governments of low- and middle-income countries for the purpose of pursuing capital projects. The World Bank is the collective name for the Inte ...
was approximately $23.06 billion.
Per present day, more than 2.5 billion people, more than half of the developing world representing 79 countries, have the eligibility to borrow from the
IDA. Since its creation in 1960, the
IDA remains the single largest source of donor funding for social services at a basic level; including health, clean water, sanitation, education, and infrastructure to the world's impoverished nations.
In the 1950s, many of these nations were newly independent from
colonial rule, therefore suffering from economic and political instability and an inability to afford development loans on the typical terms offered by the
World Bank
The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and grants to the governments of low- and middle-income countries for the purpose of pursuing capital projects. The World Bank is the collective name for the Inte ...
. Utilizing the same criteria to evaluate loans as the
IBRD facility of the
World Bank
The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and grants to the governments of low- and middle-income countries for the purpose of pursuing capital projects. The World Bank is the collective name for the Inte ...
, the
IDA's development regime pursues funding projects that protect the environment and build needed infrastructure. They also aid the betterment of conditions supporting the development of private industries, and support reforms that function to liberalize countries' economies. Since its establishment in 1960, the
IDA has lent $106 billion to 106 countries to fund the basic needs of billions of poverty-stricken peoples.
IDA lending for Fiscal Year 1989 (FY89) totaled at $4.9 billion in credits and broken down by region: 48% to
Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...
, 44% to
Asia
Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an are ...
, and 8% to
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
, the
Middle East
The Middle East ( ar, الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabian Peninsula, Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Anatolia, Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Pro ...
, and
Latin America
Latin America or
* french: Amérique Latine, link=no
* ht, Amerik Latin, link=no
* pt, América Latina, link=no, name=a, sometimes referred to as LatAm is a large cultural region in the Americas where Romance languages — languages derived ...
.
IDA lending for FY89 by sector approximates as follows: 29%
agriculture
Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people ...
; 24% structural and sector adjustment lending; 16%
transport
Transport (in British English), or transportation (in American English), is the intentional movement of humans, animals, and goods from one location to another. Modes of transport include air, land ( rail and road), water, cable, pipelin ...
ation and
telecommunication
Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than that ...
s; 10%
energy
In physics, energy (from Ancient Greek: ἐνέργεια, ''enérgeia'', “activity”) is the quantitative property that is transferred to a body or to a physical system, recognizable in the performance of work and in the form of ...
; 9%
education
Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty ...
; 5%
population
Population typically refers to the number of people in a single area, whether it be a city or town, region, country, continent, or the world. Governments typically quantify the size of the resident population within their jurisdiction usi ...
,
health
Health, according to the World Health Organization, is "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity".World Health Organization. (2006)''Constitution of the World Health Organ ...
, and
nutrition
Nutrition is the biochemical and physiological process by which an organism uses food to support its life. It provides organisms with nutrients, which can be metabolized to create energy and chemical structures. Failure to obtain sufficient ...
; 4%
water supply
Water supply is the provision of water by public utilities, commercial organisations, community endeavors or by individuals, usually via a system of pumps and pipes. Public water supply systems are crucial to properly functioning societies. Th ...
and
sewage
Sewage (or domestic sewage, domestic wastewater, municipal wastewater) is a type of wastewater that is produced by a community of people. It is typically transported through a sewer system. Sewage consists of wastewater discharged from reside ...
.
Success of the IDA
On a major scale, the global development community has been impacted by the
IDA, with success rates that compare favorably with both
public
In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociology, sociological concept of the ''Öf ...
and
private sector
The private sector is the part of the economy, sometimes referred to as the citizen sector, which is owned by private groups, usually as a means of establishment for profit or non profit, rather than being owned by the government.
Employment
The ...
investments around the world. Thirty-two countries that borrowed from the
IDA have resulting growth and development beyond the point where they have lost their eligibility to use
IDA funds, granting them "graduate" status from the
IDA.
The Concerns of the IDA
Members of the
IDA community, including the
IDA's most avid supporters, have raised criticisms concerning
IDA policies, effectiveness, and resources. There is much room for improvement in the
IDA's track record, namely for its support in
Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...
.
A number of policy reforms instituted by a number of
African countries
This is a list of sovereign states and dependent territories in Africa. It includes both fully recognised states, states with limited or zero recognition, and dependent territories of both African and non-African states. It lists 56 sovereign state ...
had failed to obtain desired results. The specific failures lay in the decline in export prices coupled with the emerging restrictions on the import of African goods, done by some of the industrialized countries. The
World Bank
The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and grants to the governments of low- and middle-income countries for the purpose of pursuing capital projects. The World Bank is the collective name for the Inte ...
providing service to
Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...
by enhancing its pursuit in its current development strategy proved insufficient in placing its nations on a secure path of development.
The development of underdevelopment
Governmentality: Development as 'anti-politics machine'
At a critical juncture in the early nineteenth century the state began to connect itself to a series of groups "that in different ways had long tried to shape and administer the lives of individuals in pursuit of various goals" rather than simply extend the absolutist state's repressive machinery of social control.
Michel Foucault
Paul-Michel Foucault (, ; ; 15 October 192625 June 1984) was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic. Foucault's theories primarily address the relationship between power and knowledge, and ho ...
's work on the prison, the clinic, and the asylum – on the development of "
bio-power" – analyzed the plurality of governing agencies and authorities who developed programs, strategies, and technologies that were deployed to optimize the health, welfare and life of populations. He referred to this process with the neologism, "
governmentality
Governmentality is a concept first developed by the French philosopher Michel Foucault in the later years of his life, roughly between 1977 and his death in 1984, particularly in his lectures at the Collège de France during this time.
Governmenta ...
" (governmental rationality). One of the last of these new applied sciences was the "development apparatus", the post-world war extension of colonial rule after the independence of third world states.
James Ferguson James Ferguson may refer to:
Entertainment
* Jim Ferguson (born 1948), American jazz and classical guitarist
* Jim Ferguson, American guitarist, past member of Lotion
* Jim Ferguson, American movie critic, Board of Directors member for the Broadc ...
utilized the governmentality framework in "The Anti-Politics Machine: "Development," Depoliticization and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho" (1990), the first in many similar explorations. Ferguson sought to explore how "development discourse" works. That is, how do the language and practices used by development specialists influence the ways in which development is delivered, and what
unintended consequences does it foster. He found that development projects which failed in their own terms could be redefined as "successes" on which new projects were to be modelled. The net effect of development, he found, was to "de-politicize" questions of resource allocation, and to strengthen bureaucratic power. In his analysis of a development project in Lesotho (South Africa) between 1978 and 1982, he examined the following discursive maneuvers.
Ferguson points out that a critical part of the development process is the way in which the object of development is defined. In defining this object, it is severed from its historical and geographic context, and isolated as a "Less-Developed Country." In the case of Lesotho, its history as a grain exporting region was ignored, as was its current role as a labour reserve for the South African mines. Not wanting to deal with the apartheid South African regime, development agencies isolated the "independent" Lesotho from the regional economy in which it was entrapped in their project rationales and reports. Artificially taken out of this larger capitalist context, Lesotho's economy was described as "isolated," "non-market" and "traditional" and thus a proper target for aid intervention.
Ferguson underscores that these discourses are produced within institutional settings where they must provide a charter for governmental intervention. Any analysis which suggests the roots of poverty lie in areas outside the scope of government are quickly dismissed and discarded since they cannot provide a rationale for state action. And since the capitalist economy is one such area which has been ideologically set outside the scope of governmental action, the discursive creation of a deformed 'native economy' creates the required opening for that intervention.
Ferguson writes that it is not enough to note development's failures; even the project managers initially recognized it as a failure. If that was all Ferguson had done, his book would not have had the influence it did. Asking if development is a failure is asking the wrong question; it ignores the "instrument effects" of what the projects DO do. In other words, we should ask what NON-economic functions does development serve? His answer:
# It's an "anti-politics machine"; it makes blatantly political decisions about the allocation of resources appear to be "technical solutions to technical problems". Important questions such as the reallocation of land to a limited number (leaving them relatively wealthy, and others in poverty) are rephrased as a "necessity for the sustainable commercial management of livestock." A large proportion of men are deprived of their retirement savings.
# "Integrated development" served to strengthen the presence of a repressive government in an isolated and resistant area. Development projects are dependent upon local governments for implementation, and rarely challenge the nature of that government. The resources they supply frequently serve state needs more than local needs.
# It perpetuates the migrant labour system. The project neglected to look at Lesotho in the regional economy with South Africa. Lesotho was a labour reserve for Apartheid-era South African mines. The men of Lesotho were not farmers, but unemployed workers and retirees. Real commercial farming was never a possibility without large subsidies. The project thus served to preserve a pool of cheap labour for South Africa in a time when international sanctions against Apartheid were hitting its economy.
The Limits of Governmentality
Ecogovernmentality
Ecogovernmentality, (or Eco-governmentality), is the application of Foucault's concepts of
biopower and
governmentality
Governmentality is a concept first developed by the French philosopher Michel Foucault in the later years of his life, roughly between 1977 and his death in 1984, particularly in his lectures at the Collège de France during this time.
Governmenta ...
to the analysis of the regulation of
social interactions with the natural world. The concept of Ecogovernmentality expands on Foucault's genealogical examination of the state to include ecological rationalities and technologies of government. Following
Michel Foucault
Paul-Michel Foucault (, ; ; 15 October 192625 June 1984) was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic. Foucault's theories primarily address the relationship between power and knowledge, and ho ...
, writing on ecogovernmentality focuses on how
government agencies, in combination with producers of expert knowledge, construct "The Environment." This construction is viewed both in terms of the creation of an object of knowledge and a sphere within which certain types of intervention and management are created and deployed to further the government's larger aim of managing the lives of its constituents. This governmental management is dependent on the dissemination and
internalization of knowledge/power among individual actors. This creates a decentered network of self-regulating elements whose interests become integrated with those of the State.
Work done by Arun Agrawal on local forest governance in India, is an example of this method of analysis. He illustrates how the production of specific types of expert knowledge (the economic productivity of forests) coupled with specific technologies of government (local Forest Stewardship Councils) can bring individual interest in line with those of the state. This, not through the imposition of specific outcomes, but by creating frameworks that rationalizes
behavior
Behavior (American English) or behaviour (British English) is the range of actions and mannerisms made by individuals, organisms, systems or artificial entities in some environment. These systems can include other systems or organisms as we ...
in particular ways and involve individuals in the process of problem definition and
intervention.
Agricultural development: the "Green Revolution"
The term "Green Revolution" was first used in 1968 by former
United States Agency for International Development
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government that is primarily responsible for administering civilian foreign aid and development assistance. With a budget of over $27 b ...
(USAID) director
William Gaud, who noted the spread of the new technologies:
See also
*
Development anthropology
Development anthropology refers to the application of anthropological perspectives to the multidisciplinary branch of development studies. It takes international development and international aid as primary objects. In this branch of anthropolo ...
*
Development criticism
Postdevelopment theory (also post-development or anti-development or development criticism) holds that the whole concept and practice of development is a reflection of Western-Northern hegemony over the rest of the world. Postdevelopment thought ...
*
Development studies
Development studies is an interdisciplinary branch of social science. Development studies is offered as a specialized master's degree in a number of reputed universities around the world. It has grown in popularity as a subject of study since the e ...
*
Food sovereignty
Food sovereignty is a food system in which the people who produce, distribute, and consume food also control the mechanisms and policies of food production and distribution. This stands in contrast to the present corporate food regime, in which ...
*
Impact of microcredit
*
Weapons of the weak
References
Sources
*{{cite book , first=Karin , last=Van Marle , title=Sex, Gender, Becoming: Post-apartheid Reflections , year=2006 , url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zbvFLBTaZS0C&pg=PA125 , publisher=PULP , isbn=0-9585097-5-1
Further reading
*
Escobar, Arturo, 1995, ''Encountering Development, the making and unmaking of the Third World'', Princeton: Princeton University Press.
* Gardner, Katy and
David Lewis, 1996, ''Anthropology, Development and the Post-Modern Challenge'', Chicago, IL: Pluto Press.
* Isbister, John, 1998, ''Promise Not Kept: The Betrayal of Social Change in the third World.'' Fourth Edition. West Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press.
*
Olivier de Sardan J.-P. 1995, ''Anthropologie et développement : essai en socio-anthropologie du changement social''. Paris, Karthala.
* Schuurman, F.J., 1993, ''Beyond the Impasse. New Direction in Development Theory''. Zed Books, London.
Anthropology
Development studies