\n<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Development has been seen as a mechanism of social <\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Escobar has been one of the major effects in Development Anthropologists Some of the 1.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/span>Social Development Advisors (SDA). <\/span><\/p>\n 2.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/span>Consultants<\/span><\/p>\n 3.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/span>Research officers<\/span><\/p>\n 4.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/span>Counsellors<\/span><\/p>\n 5.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/span>Advocacy role<\/span><\/p>\n Apart from Anthropologists Anthropologists By the 1960s In The <\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Anthropologists have long made practical contributions to Although the study of economic There are several anthropological Clifford Geertz (1963a) focus on Epstein (1962) in Economic Development and Social Change in With increasing integration among A classic attempt to fuse Drawing more directly from During 1970s a new generation of feminist minded One of the most common criticisms Tony Barnett\u2019s (1977) The Gezira Scheme: An Illusion of Barbara Rogers (1980) in The Domestication of Women <\/i>argues that Day (1981) in a work on Closely related to Considering development as a \n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\nchange which is a) associated with postwar reconstruction of\u00a0 <\/span>underdeveloped areas of the world, b) a
\nmechanism of\u00a0 <\/span>domination of south by
\nnorth, i.e. neo colonialism, and c) something that has a close link with
\ncapitalism\u2019s need for new markets. Famous anthropologist Arturo Escobar (1991)
\nattacked anthropologists working in development for failing to react to changes
\ntaking place within anthropology, for questionable methodological practices and
\n\u2013most damningly \u2013 for reproducing discourses of modernisation and development.
\nIn a later work Escobar (1995) suggests that development makes anthropological
\nencounters with third world others possible \u2013 just as colonialism once did. Rather
\nthan challenging it, anthropologists overlook the ways in which development
\noperates as an arena of cultural contestation and identity construction. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
\nthe development linked discourses of anthropology which then divided into two
\nmajor approaches. One approach has been development anthropology, <\/b>and
\nthe other became anthropology of development. <\/b><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nDevelopment
\nanthropology: Anthropologists working in development<\/span><\/span> field<\/span><\/h2>\n
\nanthropology refers to the role played by the anthropologists in the field of executing
\ndevelopment projects. The role anthropologists play in facilitating economic
\ngrowth, designing and implementation of specific policies and plans whether at
\nthe level of the state, donor agencies or indigenous social movements. These
\ncan have either positive or negative or both on the people who experience them.
\nDevelopment is a series of events and actions, as well as a particular disxourse
\nor ideological construct. <\/span><\/b><\/p>\n
\nare now employed in growing numbers by development agencies, organisations and
\nprivate consultancy firms. A discussion of applied anthropology does not
\ntherefore simply raise questions of what a professional anthropologist might
\ndo. The type of work which professional anthropologists are asked to undertake
\ncan vary considerably. They may include applied research to produce supporting
\ndata for planned interventions; contributions to the appraisal and evaluation
\nplanning of development projects; or attempting to build local participation
\ninto the project. Assignments can vary from a short consultancy job lasting a
\nfew weeks, to a placement on a project for several years as one of the
\nfull-time staff. \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
\nimportant positions that anthropologists are occupying in development agencies
\nare:<\/span><\/p>\n
\nthe strict routine duties of anthropologists in development agencies, they are
\nincreasingly becoming a mediator between the developers and those to be
\n\u2018developed.\u2019 Anthropologists are trained sceptics: they tend to argue that
\nsituations and ideas are usually more complicated than is immediately apparent;
\nthey believe that no fact or detail is too trivial to be considered; they may
\nprefer quality to quantity; they are rarely ready to offer conclusions or
\nadvice in terms of straightforward course of action. <\/span><\/p>\n
\nare well equipped to monitor the process of project implementation, which in
\neffect is the task of monitoring social change. To do this, a combination of
\nnational and expatriate anthropologists, with boith men and women involved,
\nwill be able to draw on their different skills and perspectives in order to
\npresent different, though mutually reinforcing, analyses of events.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nare involved in project design, appraisal and evaluation by national and
\ninternational NGOs and aid agencies. Since the second world war the notion of
\nthe project has become central to mainstream development activity, whether centred
\non large scale infrastructural work such as building of a dam or bridge or
\nsofter areas such as health or education provision. Projects tend to pass
\nthrough a series of staged activities, often known as the project cycle. <\/span><\/p>\n
\nand 1970s, the World Bank and United Nations were promoting what they termed
\n\u201cIntegrated Rural Development\u201d, in which conventional planning methods were
\ncast aside in favour of a measure of community participation in setting needs
\nand a more comprehensive approach to tackling problems on a number of sectoral
\nfronts simultaneously. <\/span><\/p>\n
\nconsequence, a number of anthropologists were employed in carrying out impact
\nstudies among the local community to whether or not prohect\u2019s objectives have
\nbeen met. <\/span><\/p>\n
\nappearance of what has been termed \u2018advocacy anthropology\u2019 by its practitioners
\n(Miller 1995) has involved itself with the efforts of indigenous people to gain
\nmore control over their lives (Escober 1992). <\/span><\/p>\n
\nplanned change and policy. However, many have also studied development as a
\nfield of academic enquiry in itself. These studies have challenged the dominant
\ndevelopment discourses, its key assumptions, representations, and paved for
\nalternative ways for development. This is known as the anthropology of
\ndevelopment. It sees development linked policies as cultural constructs and
\naims to explore their impact both theoretically and empirically. Major issues
\nwhich call for an anthropology of development include:<\/b><\/p>\n\n
The social and cultural effects of
\neconomic change<\/span><\/a><\/h3>\n
\nchange has not always been academically fashionable, individual anthropologists
\nhave long been grappling with it. There are several works anthropological in
\nnature which focus on the social and cultural effects of economic change.<\/p>\nRural to urban migration and
\ndetribalisation:<\/span><\/a><\/h5>\n
\nstudies in Africa focusing on the influence of urbanism over rural life. Wilson
\n(1941, 1942) argues that while Central African society was normally in a state
\nof equilibrium, destabilising changes in African society was brought by
\nincreasing influence of capitalist production within the region, and growing
\nrural to urban migration. Richards (1939), Schapera (1947) focus on many
\nvillages which lost their male labour force, most migrants could not sent
\nenough resource for their families, and there was a large scale \u2018cultural
\ndecay.\u2019 Murray (1981) focus on oscillating migration resulting in marital
\ndisharmony, in other words the capital accumulated at the urban core was at the
\nexpense of rural periphery. <\/p>\nAgriculture change: polarisation<\/span><\/a><\/h5>\n
\nthe Indonesian agriculture change in Agriculture
\nInvolution.<\/i> With a historical reference of Indonesian agriculture, Geertz
\nshows that colonial policies encouraged the development of a partial cash
\neconomy in which peasant farmers were forced to pay taxes to support plantation
\nproduction for export. In consequence, majority of farmers could not produce
\nsurplus. <\/p>\n
\nSouth India <\/i>and in 1973 South India:
\nYesterday, Today and Tomorrow <\/i>discusses the effects of the introduction of
\nnew irrigation techniques and the growing importance of cash cropping. In the
\nvillage of Wangala, where farmers were increasingly producing for and profiting
\nfrom local sugar refinery, the changes had not led to major social
\nreadjustment. The village continued to have limited link to outside economy and
\nsocial structure remained unaltered. In contrast in the second village Dalena,
\nwhich had remained a dry land enclave in the midst of an irrigated belt, male
\nfarmers were encouraged to move away from the relatively unprofitable
\nagricultural pursuits and participate in other ways in the burgeoning economy
\nwhich surrounded them. Some became traders, or worked in white-collar jobs in
\nthe local town. These multiple economic changes led to the breakdown of the
\nhereditary political, social and ritual obligations, the changing status of
\nlocal caste groups and the rise of new forms of hierarchy.<\/p>\nCapitalism and \u2018world systems\u2019:<\/span><\/a><\/h5>\n
\nthe worlds, researchers increasing focus on relationship of local communities
\nand cultures to the global political economy. This can be linked to the growing
\ndominance during the 1970s of theories of dependency, and especially to
\nWallerstein\u2019s World Systems Theory (Wallerstein, 1974), as well as the use of
\nMarxism in the 1970s and 1980s by some anthropologists, for example Bloch,
\n1983. The emphasis is now on the ways in which societies on the periphery had
\nlong been integrated into capitalism, and on the cultural expressions of
\neconomic and political dependency and\/or resistance. <\/p>\n
\nneo-Marxist political economy with anthropological perspectives is Eric Wolf\u2019s
\n(1982) Europe and people without history.
\n<\/i>This is an ambitious attempt to place the history of the world\u2019s peoples
\nwithin the context of global capitalism, showing how the history of capitalism
\nhas tied even the most apparently remote areas and social groups into the
\nsystem. <\/p>\n
\nNeo-Marxist theories of dependency, an important study by anthropologist
\nworking in Latin America is by Michael Taussig\u2019s (1980) The devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America. <\/i>This is an
\naccount of the cultural as well as economic integration of Columbian peasants
\nand of Bolivian tin miners in the money economy and proletarian wage labour.
\nThe Columbian peasants who seasonally sell their labour to plantations present
\nthe plantation economy and profits made from it as tied to the capitalist system
\nand thus to the devil. Plantations are conceptualised as quite separate from
\nthe peasants\u2019 own land; in the former, profit making requires deals to be made
\nwith the devil, whereas in the latter it does not. In the Bolivian tin mines,
\nworkers worship Tio (the devil), who Taussig argues is a spiritual embodiment
\nof capitalism and a way of mediating pre-capitalist beliefs with the
\nintroduction of wage labour and industrialisation.<\/p>\nGender issues:<\/span><\/a><\/h5>\n
\nanthropologists like Sachs (1975), Leacock (1972) started working on what
\nbecame known as GAD (Gender and Development). Some feminist anthropologists
\nfocus on the restudy of the subjects of ethnographic classics from a feminist
\nperspective. The feminisation of subsistence has been one of the major
\narguments of these anthropologists. Moore (1988) for example showed that:<\/p>\n\n
\n duties they are less free to produce cash crops. Thus while men could
\n experiment with new technologies and production for exchange, women must
\n first and foremost produce the subsistence foods on which their household
\n depend.<\/li>\n
\n burden of supporting the subsistence sector. <\/li>\n<\/ol>\nThe social and cultural effects of
\ndevelopment projects<\/span><\/a><\/h3>\n
\nmade by anthropologists of development planning is that it is done in a
\n\u2018top-down\u2019 manner. Planning is done at a distant office, and hence, often the
\nplan does not match the local requirements. Robert Chamber\u2019s (1983) Rural Development: Putting the Last First <\/i>is
\na seminal statement of this position and draws heavily upon the insights of
\nanthropology. Chambers attacks the biased preconceptions of development
\nplanners, most of whom have only a very shaky understanding of rural life in
\nso-called developing societies (Chambers, 1983, 1993). The only solution as
\nChambers argues is to \u2018put the poor first\u2019 and, most importantly, enable them
\nto participate in projects of their own design and appraisal.<\/p>\n
\nDevelopment <\/i>is a classic critique of top-down development. Gezira scheme
\nwas a massive project of developing irrigation facility for cotton production
\nin Sudan. Despite of apparent well being of Sudanese people the project failed,
\nstagnated, and became dependent. Barnett argues that the workers were not allowed
\nto have more land or sell it. The Gezira board was paternalistic and
\nauthoritarian, based on British effort to control \u2018black\u2019 labourers. This meant
\nthat cultivators had few incentives to be innovative, and the entire cotton
\nproduct was dependent on foreign markets. <\/p>\n
\nWestern development planners make a range of Western and thus patriarchal,
\nassumptions about gender relations in developing countries. It is often
\nassumed, for example that farmers are male, that women do not do heavy
\nproductive work and that nuclear families are the norm. Through andocentric and
\nbiased research such as the use of national accounting procedures and surveys
\nwhich assume that men are household heads, women become invisible. Women are
\nthus systematically discriminated against, not least because there is
\ndiscrimination within the development agencies themselves. The answer Rogers
\nargues, is not simply more projects for women, for these often produce a \u2018new
\nsegregation\u2019 in which women are simply trained in domestic science or given
\nsewing machines for income generation. Instead, gender awareness must be build
\ninto planning procedures, a process which will necessarily involve reform of
\nthe development institutions involved. <\/p>\n
\nirrigation projects in the Gambia shows that by assuming that men controlled
\nland, labour and income, the projects failed to increase national rice
\nproduction and increased women\u2019s dependency on men. Within the farming system
\nof Mandinka, crop production is traditionally dominated by collective
\nproduction for household consumption (maruo)<\/i>,
\nbut also involves separate cultivation by men and women on land they are
\nallocated by the household head in return for their maruo <\/i>labour (Kamanyango<\/i>).
\nCrops from this land are the property of the male or female cultivators.
\nHowever, under rice irrigation projects sponsored by Taiwan (1966 \u2013 74), Taiwan
\n(1973 \u2013 76), and China (1975 \u2013 79), only men were given Kamanyango <\/i>rights to irrigated land. In other irrigated plots
\ndesignated as maruo, <\/i>men increasingly
\nused women\u2019s skilled collective labour, but were able to pay them low wages
\nbecause of the lack of other income generating opportunities available to
\nwomen. Women\u2019s traditional rights were thus systematically undermined by the
\nprojects, a process which had started during the colonial period, when once
\nmore the reciprocal rights and duties of farming were undermined by policies
\nwhich encouraged male farmers to produce cash crops and failed to recognise the
\ncentral role of female producers. <\/p>\nAnthropology of Success and failure:<\/span><\/a><\/h3>\n
\nanthropological critiques of top-down planning is the criticism that planners
\nfail to acknowledge adequately the importance, and potential of local knowledge.
\nInstead, projects often involve the assumption that western or urban knowledge
\nis superior to the knowledge of the people to be developed. They are regarded
\nas ignorant, although the anthropologists have repeatedly shown, they have
\ntheir own areas of appropriate expertise. Development projects often fail
\nbecause of the ignorance of planners rather than the ignorance of the
\nbeneficiaries. This might inolve a range of factors, such as local ecological
\nconditions, the availability of particular resources, physical and climatic
\nconditions and so on. Mamdani\u2019s classic analysis of the failure of the Khanna
\nstudy, an attempt to introduce birth control to the Indian village of Manupur,
\nis a fascinating account of developmental to-downism and ignorance (Mamdani,
\n1972). Because of cultural and economic value of having as many children as
\npossible, Mamdani argues that population programmes are unlikely to have much
\nsuccess in rural India. The programme planners in the Khanna study, however,
\nassumed that villagers\u2019 rejection of contraception was due to \u2018ignorance\u2019, thus
\ncompletely ignoring the social and economic realities of the village. Similarly
\nAbhijit V Banerjee and Easther Duflo (2011) report the rural Indian villagers\u2019
\nsense of insecurity to be one of the reasons for bigger families. They argue
\nthe children in rural India is seen as investment for old age pension, i.e. the
\nmore you have children the more the chance that you will be taken care of in
\nold age. Once again, anthropological methods and questions, rather than
\nbureaucratic planning, reveal the true constraints on successful development.<\/p>\n
\ndiscourse much in the manner Foucault argues in his Order of things <\/i>(1970) that fields of knowledge, their
\nclassification and hierarchic presentation in different periods is socially,
\nhistorically and politically constructed and are therefore neither objective
\nnor neutral. Considering development as discourse raises important questions
\nabout the nature of developmental knowledge and its interface with other
\nrepresentations of reality. Anthropology can have an important role here;
\nfirst, in demonstrating that there are many other ways of knowing, and second,
\nin showing what happens when different knowledges meet. In another contribution
\nto the growing postmodern anthropology of development, for example, the
\nrelationship between scientific and local knowledge within development practice
\nis explored. <\/p>\n