Research
with policy and practice: Applied aspects
Introduction:
Some of the
anthropologists were interested in using their knowledge for practical purposes
from the beginning. The branch of the discipline became known as ‘applied
anthropology.’ From the 1930s onwards, many academic anthropologists
collaborated – formally or informally – with professionals engaged in public
administration, social work and agriculture. One of the main areas in which
these ‘applied’ anthropologists have long been active is that of development. The
relationship between anthropology and development has long been one fraught
with difficulty, ever since Bronislaw Malinowski advocated a role for
anthropologists as policy advisers to African colonial administrators and
Evans-Pritchard urged them instead to do precisely the opposite and distance
themselves from the tainted worlds of policy and ‘applied’ involvement (Grillo
2002).
Development: definition and context
Development
refers to a process of change through which an increasing proportion of a
nation's citizens are able to enjoy a higher material standard of living,
healthier and longer lives, more education, and greater control and choice over
how they live. Development is generally believed to rest on rising levels of
labor productivity, which can be achieved through the application of science,
technology, and more efficient forms of economic and managerial organization.
Virtually all government leaders profess commitment to promoting development
understood in this way. Leaders, policy makers, and academics disagree,
however, about the relative importance of technical, economic, and political
barriers to development and hence about priorities in achieving it.
‘Development’ in
its modern sense first came to official prominence when it was used by United
States President Truman in 1949 as part of the rationale for post-War
reconstruction in ‘underdeveloped’ areas of the world, based on provision of
international financial assistance and modern technology transfer. Development
has subsequently been strongly associated primarily with economic growth.
However, there has also been a growing recognition that while the well-being of
an economy may form a precondition for development it is not a sufficient one,
and that attention too has to be paid to issues such as income and asset
redistribution to reduce inequality, support for human rights and social
welfare, and the sustainable stewardship of environmental resources. The Human
Development Index developed by the United Nations Development Programme at the
start of the 1990s has attempted to address such concerns, at least in part, by
combining gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, life expectancy and a
measure of educational attainment.
Arturo Escobar
argues that as a set of ideas and practices ‘development’ has historically
functioned over the twentieth century as a mechanism for the colonial and
neo-colonial domination of the south by the north.[i] The
use of the term ‘development’ has historical predisposition. Some of the most
important of these are shifting global relations after the World War – II, the
decline of colonialism, the cold war, the need for capitalism to find new
markets, and northern nations’ faith in science and technology (Escober, 1995).
Those using the term and working within development institutions are therefore
helping to reproduce neo-colonial power relations even while many believe
themselves to be engaged in processes of empowerment or the redistribution of
the world’s riches.
Theories of development:
Like any major
fields of social sciences, development theory too was dominated by grand
theories. However, like other grand theories none of the development related
theories have stood up well to the onslaught of 1990s post modernism. Today,
there is no single theoretical model which is commonly used to explain
development, nor is there any one solution to the problems of underdevelopment.
Indeed, contemporary understandings tend to draw from a variety of theoretical
sources and suggest a variety of strategies.
Modernisation:
Modernisation
theory is a collection of perspectives which, while at their most
intellectually influencial in the 1950s and 1960s , continue to dominate
development practice today. As Norman Long puts it, modernisation visualises
development in terms of progressive movement towards technologically more
complex and integrated forms of modern society (Long and Long, 1992). The theoretical
backdrop is essentially evolutionary in nature. Countries are envisaged as
being at different stages of a linear path that leads ultimately to an
industrialised, urban and ordered society. Much emphasis is put on rationality,
in both economic and moral sense. The approach is rooted from 19th
century theorists such as Morgan, Tylor and 20th century theorists
like Durkheim, Simmel and more recently such theorists like Rostow (1960) where
it is argued that the forms of growth already experienced in the north are
taken as a model for the rest of the world.
Criticism:
Modernisation as
both a theory and a set of strategies is open to criticism on virtually every
front. Its assumption that all change inevitably follows the western model is
both breathtakingly ethnocentric and empirically incorrect, a fact which
anthropologists should have little difficulty in spotting. Indeed,
anthropological research continuously shown that economic development comes in
many shapes and forms, we cannot generalise about transitions from one type of
society to another. While modernisation theorists argue that local cultures and
peasant economies are resistant to change, several studies by Ahmed (1992),
Long (1992), Mair (1984), Hill (1986) have found that these societies do
change, and they do know better what is good for them, which calls for taking
local understanding in development projects.
The most
fundamental criticism of theories of modernisation, however, is that they fail
to understand the real causes of underdevelopment and poverty.
Dependency theory:
While
modernistaion theory fails to understand the real causes of underdevelopment
and poverty, one of the first groups to explain these issues in terms of
political and historical structures was the Economic Commission of Latin
America (ECLA). With the work of A. G. Frank (1969), the notions of dependency
and underdevelopment gains immense importance. Drawing from Marxist concepts of
capitalism as inherently exploitative, dependency theorists argue that
development is a essentially unequalising process : while rich nations get
richer, the rest inevitably get poorer. One model which i used to describe this
process is that of the centre and periphery (Wallerstein, 1974). This represent
north as the centre, or ‘core’ of capitalism, and the south as its periphery.
Through imperial conquest, it is argued, peripheral economies were integrated
into capitalism, but on n inherently unequal basis. Supplying the raw
materials, which fed manyfacturing industries in the core, peripheral regions
became dependent upon foreign markets and failed to develop their own
manufacturing bases.
Dependency
theory therefore, understands underdevelopment as embedded within particular
political structures. I this view the improvement policies advocated by
modernisation theory never work, for they do not tackle the root causes of the
problem. Rather than development projects which ease the shor-term miseries of
underdevelopment, or support the status quo, dependency theory suggests that
the only solution possible is radical, structural change.
Criticism:
One of the main
problems with dependency theory is that it tends to treat peripheral states and
populations as passive, being blind to everything but their exploitation. While
it is certainly important to analyse the structures which perpetuates
underdevelopment, however, we must also recognise the ways in which individuals
and societies strategise to maximise opportunities, how they resisit structures
which subordinate them and, in some cases, how they successfully embrace
capitalist development.
The age of post-modernity:
Intellectually,
post-modernism involves he end of the dominance of uitary theories of progress
and belief in scientific rationality. Objective truth has been replaced by
emphasis on signs, images and the plurality of viewpoints: there is no single,
objective account of reality, for everyone experiences things differently.
Postmodernism is thus characterised by a multiplicity of voices.
In the
abandonment of generalised and deterministic theory, there is an increasing
tendency to focus upon specific groups and issues, e.g. women, the landless,
the displaced, etc., a more reflecive attitude todards aid and development and
a new stress upon ‘bottom up’, grassroots initiatives. These perspectives were
already emerging in the 1970s, when stress upon basic needs rather than macro
level policy aimed at industrialisation, was increasingly fashionable within
aid circles. Instead of being radical, these strategies are inherently
populist. As part of general trend which places people more directly on the
developmental stage, they are closer to liberal ideologies of individualis,,
self reliance and participation.
Theories of Development (brief introduction, meant for my college students)
Development practices: a historical overview
With the increasing recognition of the
importance of taking a more context specific approach of development approaches
of development has been changed. For example, the world development report 2000/2001 points that “not only
development and inequality are global issues, but also that measures undertaken
since World War II have failed to deliver broad based development in many
developing countries.
However, the present approach of
development, inspired by the sentiment of postmodernism has gone through a
number of stages.
Before
1950s:
The key issue was the likely political and
economic trajectories of underdeveloped or developing countries then emerging
from colonial rule. The approach of nation building through comparative
politics and law was mostly emphasised. The result was the rapid development in
institutions comparable across the globe.
1950s and 1960s:
Modernisation
theory, a specific way of thinking about development, gained credence with many
Western governments, international financial institutions (IFIs) and analysts.
It was based on an assumption that problems of poverty and human development
would be solved by adequate investments in physical capital and infrastructure.
However, despite the injection of huge quantities of foreign aid in many
developing countries, many didnot see much in the way for development. It was
increasingly recognised that internal policies and politics are responsible for
the gap between expected result and actual outcome of the fund injections.
1970s and 1980s:
This era has
seen a shift to a focus upon a ‘basic needs’ strategy. It was more relevant to
ensure that all people have basic necessities, including clean water, primary
health care and elementary education. In the 1980s the aim of building ‘human
capital’ as supplanted by an ideologically-driven developmental shift linked to
changes in the developmental thinking of the key aid-providers: western
governments and IFIs, whose policies coalesced around the theory and practice
of what were known as ‘structural adjustments programme’ (SAP).
This way of
thinking reflected the intellectual dominance in the 1980s of neo-liberalism, an economic and
political philosophy ideologically underpinning the pro-market ideology and
monetarist ideas of contemporaneously influential governments. This concept
advocates that developmentalluy, the state’s role should be downgraded and
diminished – while that of private capitalists and entrepreneurs should be
upgraded and augmented.
The 1990s to present:
The ideas of
neo-liberal approach was at its zenith in 1989 – 1991 when cold war came to an
end and the Eastern European communist bloc collapsed. However, neo-liberal
strategy was criticised as it is argued that only government has the power to
alter prevailing socio-economic realities through the application of
appropriate policies and programmes and by constructing appropriate
institutions. In other words, the market is not very good at allocating
resources fairly; only governments can do that, and they need a range of
appropriate institutions to accomplish their goals. But whether they are able
to this or not is strongly linked to the varying amounts of pressure put on
governments by competing societal
interests.
However, with
repeated failure of the grand approaches to development, now more local and
bottom up approach of development related decision making is preferred. The
basic needs strategy is re-emphasised as United Nations declares Millennium
Development Goals in septemer 2000. These are:
·
Eradicate extreme poverty or
hunger
·
Achieve universal primary
education
·
Promote gender equality and
empower women
·
Improve maternal health
·
Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and
other disease.
·
Ensure environmental
sustainability
·
Develop a global partnership
for development.
Anthropologists
with their methodological training of studying small communities through
fieldwork are at better position to deal local problems locally at micro level.
However the disciplinary debate for or against change and intervention makes it
a difficult choice either to go for or go against the discipline’s application
in promoting or engineering social change.
Anthropologists, social change and cultural relativism:
Early
anthropologist were engaged in debating two major sets of theoretical issues
which bore directly on on the practical application of anthropological
knowledge. The first of these was the notion of change itself. Within
anthropology, social change was initially debated between diffusionists, who see
change as gradually spreading across cultures from a common point and
evolutionists whose ideas rested on the assumption that all societies, if left
alone, would evolve through broadly similar stages. With the growth of
functionalism, anthropology began to concern itself more with the means through
which societies maintained themselves than with the ways in which they changed.
The tendency to study societies as if they were static remained strong in the
period up to Second World War, but was challenged by anthropologists interested
in what was termed ‘culture contact’ in the colonial territories. Gradually
anthropological work began to take account of the historical context of
communities and explanations of social and political change, in contrast to influential
but ahistorical ethnographic monographs such as Evans-Pritchard’s The Nuer and Malinowski’s Argonauts of the Western Pacific.
Beattie (1964)
finds a vintage point during this period as increasingly change came to be seen
as inseparable from society itself, and the reisation and acceptance of this by
anthropologists underpin a continuing relationship between anthropology and
development.
A second
obstacle towards the development of applied anthropology is the issue of cultural relativism. Relativism raised
the problems of ethics. If culture is to be understood on its own terms as Ruth
Benedict has convincingly done in her book patterns
of culture, what business did members of one culture have telling those of
another what to do? As Eric Wolf (1964) points applied anthropology itself by
definition is a reaction against cultural relativism, since it does not regard
the culture that is applying anthropology as the equal of the culture to which
anthropology is to applied.
However, this
debate is ongoing in anthropological academia between those who favour more
open ended theoretical development through long-term field work and those who
prefer seeing anthropology as a tool for social engineering.
Importance of anthropology in development: Anthropology of development
Anthropologists have long made practical
contributions to planned change and policy. However, many have also studied
development as a field of academic enquiry in itself. These studies have
challenged the dominant development discourses, its key assumptions,
representations, and paved for alternative ways for development. Major issues
which call for an anthropology of development include:
- The social and cultural effects of economic change
- The social and cultural effects of development projects
The social and cultural effects of economic change
Although the
study of economic change has not always been academically fashionable,
individual anthropologists have long been grappling with it. There are several
works anthropological in nature which focus on the social and cultural effects
of economic change.
Rural to urban migration and detribalisation:
There are
several anthropological studies in Africa focusing on the influence of urbanism
over rural life. Wilson (1941, 1942) argues that while Central African society
was normally in a state of equilibrium, destabilising changes in African
society was brought by increasing influence of capitalist production within the
region, and growing rural to urban migration. Richards (1939), Schapera (1947)
focus on many villages which lost their male labour force, most migrants could
not sent enough resource for their families, and there was a large scale
‘cultural decay.’ Murray (1981) focus on oscillating migration resulting in
marital disharmony, in other words the capital accumulated at the urban core
was at the expense of rural periphery.
Agriculture change: polarisation
Clifford Geertz
(1963a) focus on the Indonesian agriculture change in Agriculture Involution. With a historical reference of Indonesian
agriculture, Geertz shows that colonial policies encouraged the development of
a partial cash economy in which peasant farmers were forced to pay taxes to
support plantation production for export. In consequence, majority of farmers
could not produce surplus.
Epstein (1962)
in Economic Development and Social Change
in South India and in 1973 South
India: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow discusses the effects of the
introduction of new irrigation techniques and the growing importance of cash
cropping. In the village of Wangala, where farmers were increasingly producing
for and profiting from local sugar refinery, the changes had not led to major
social readjustment. The village continued to have limited link to outside
economy and social structure remained unaltered. In contrast in the second
village Dalena, which had remained a dry land enclave in the midst of an
irrigated belt, male farmers were encouraged to move away from the relatively
unprofitable agricultural pursuits and participate in other ways in the burgeoning
economy which surrounded them. Some became traders, or worked in white-collar
jobs in the local town. These multiple economic changes led to the breakdown of
the hereditary political, social and ritual obligations, the changing status of
local caste groups and the rise of new forms of hierarchy.
Capitalism and ‘world systems’:
With increasing
integration among the worlds, researchers increasing focus on relationship of
local communities and cultures to the global political economy. This can be
linked to the growing dominance during the 1970s of theories of dependency, and
especially to Wallerstein’s World Systems Theory (Wallerstein, 1974), as well
as the use of Marxism in the 1970s and 1980s by some anthropologists, for
example Bloch, 1983. The emphasis is now on the ways in which societies on the
periphery had long been integrated into capitalism, and on the cultural
expressions of economic and political dependency and/or resistance.
A classic
attempt to fuse neo-Marxist political economy with anthropological perspectives
is Eric Wolf’s (1982) Europe and people
without history. This is an ambitious attempt to place the history of the
world’s peoples within the context of global capitalism, showing how the
history of capitalism has tied even the most apparently remote areas and social
groups into the system.
Drawing more
directly from Neo-Marxist theories of dependency, an important study by
anthropologist working in Latin America is by Michael Taussig’s (1980) The devil and Commodity Fetishism in South
America. This is an account of the cultural as well as economic integration
of Columbian peasants and of Bolivian tin miners in the money economy and
proletarian wage labour. The Columbian peasants who seasonally sell their
labour to plantations present the plantation economy and profits made from it
as tied to the capitalist system and thus to the devil. Plantations are
conceptualised as quite separate from the peasants’ own land; in the former,
profit making requires deals to be made with the devil, whereas in the latter
it does not. In the Bolivian tin mines, workers worship Tio (the devil), who
Taussig argues is a spiritual embodiment of capitalism and a way of mediating
pre-capitalist beliefs with the introduction of wage labour and
industrialisation.
Gender issues:
During 1970s a new generation of feminist
minded anthropologists like Sachs (1975), Leacock (1972) started working on
what became known as GAD (Gender and Development). Some feminist
anthropologists focus on the restudy of the subjects of ethnographic classics
from a feminist perspective. The feminisation of subsistence has been one of
the major arguments of these anthropologists. Moore (1988) for example showed
that:
- Since women have reproductive as well are productive duties they are less free to produce cash crops. Thus while men could experiment with new technologies and production for exchange, women must first and foremost produce the subsistence foods on which their household depend.
- Male labour migration leaves women behind to carry the burden of supporting the subsistence sector.
The social and cultural effects of development projects
One of the most
common criticisms made by anthropologists of development planning is that it is
done in a ‘top-down’ manner. Planning is done at a distant office, and hence,
often the plan does not match the local requirements. Robert Chamber’s (1983) Rural Development: Putting the Last First is
a seminal statement of this position and draws heavily upon the insights of
anthropology. Chambers attacks the biased preconceptions of development
planners, most of whom have only a very shaky uinderstanding of rural life in
so-called developing societies (Chambers, 1983, 1993). The only solution as
Chambers argues is to ‘put the poor first’ and, most importantly, enable them
to participate in projects of their own design and appraisal.
Tony Barnett’s
(1977) The Gezira Scheme: An Illusion of
Development is a classic critique of top-down development. Gezira scheme
was a massive project of developing irrigation facility for cotton production
in Sudan. Despite of apparent well being of Sudanese people the project failed,
stagnated, and became dependent. Barnett argues that the workers were not
allowed to have more land or sell it. The Gezira board was paternalistic and
authoritarian, based on British effort to control ‘black’ labourers. This meant
that cultivators had few incentives to be innovative, and the entire cotton
product was dependent on foreign markets.
Barbara Rogers
(1980) in The Domestication of Women argues
that Western development planners make a range of Western and thus patriarchal,
assumptions about gender relations in developing countries. It is often
assumed, for example that farmers are male, that women do not do heavy
productive work and that nuclear families are the norm. Through andocentric and
biased research such as the use of national accounting procedures and surveys
which assume that men are household heads, women become invisible. Women are
thus systematically discriminated against, not least because there is
discrimination within the development agencies themselves. The answer Rogers
argues, is not simply more projects for women, for these often produce a ‘new
segregation’ in which women are simply trained in domestic science or given sewing
machines for income generation. Instead, gender awareness must be build into
planning procedures, a process which will necessarily involve reform of the
development institutions involved.
Day (1981) in a
work on irrigation projects in the Gambia shows that by assuming that men
controlled land, labour and income, the projects failed to increase national
rice production and increased women’s dependency on men. Within the farming
system of Mandinka, crop production is traditionally dominated by collective
production for household consumption (maruo),
but also involves separate cultivation by men and women on land they are
allocated by the household head in return for their maruo labour (Kamanyango).
Crops from this land are the property of the male or female cultivators.
However, under rice irrigation projects sponsored by Taiwan (1966 – 74), Taiwan
(1973 – 76), and China (1975 – 79), only men were given Kamanyango rights to irrigated land. In other irrigated plots
designated as maruo, men increasingly
used women’s skilled collective labour, but were able to pay them low wages
because of the lack of other income generating opportunities available to
women. Women’s traditional rights were thus systematically undermined by the
projects, a process which had started during the colonial period, when once
more the reciprocal rights and duties of farming were undermined by policies
which encouraged male farmers to produce cash crops and failed to recognise the
central role of female producers.
Anthropology of Success and failure:
Closely related
to anthropological critiques of top-down planning is the criticism that
planners fail to acknowledge adequately the importance, and potential of local
knowledge. Instead, projects often involve the assumption that western or urban
knowledge is superior to the knowledge of the people to be developed. They are
regarded as ignorant, although the anthropologists have repeatedly shown, they
have their own areas of appropriate expertise. Development projects often fail
because of the ignorance of planners rather than the ignorance of the
beneficiaries. This might inolve a range of factors, such as local ecological
conditions, the availability of particular resources, physical and climatic
conditions and so on. Mamdani’s classic analysis of the failure of the Khanna
study, an attempt to introduce birth control to the Indian village of Manupur,
is a fascinating account of developmental to-downism and ignorance (Mamdani,
1972). Because of cultural and economic value of having as many children as
possible, Mamdani argues that population programmes are unlikely to have much
success in rural India. The programme planners in the Khanna study, however,
assumed that villagers’ rejection of contraception was due to ‘ignorance’, thus
completely ignoring the social and economic realities of the village. Similarly
Abhijit V Banerjee and Easther Duflo (2011) report the rural Indian villagers’
sense of insecurity to be one of the reasons for bigger families. They argue
the children in rural India is seen as investment for old age pension, i.e. the
more you have children the more the chance that you will be taken care of in
old age. Once again, anthropological methods and questions, rather than
bureaucratic planning, reveal the true constraints on successful development.
Considering
development as a discourse much in the manner Foucault argues in his Order of things (1970) that fields of
knowledge, their classification and hierarchic presentation in different
periods is socially, historically and politically constructed and are therefore
neither objective nor neutral. Considering development as discourse raises
important questions about the nature of developmental knowledge and its
interface with other representations of reality. Anthropology can have an important
role here; first, in demonstrating that there are many other ways of knowing,
and second, in showing what happens when different knowledges meet. In another
contribution to the growing postmodern anthropology of development, for
example, the relationship between scientific and local knowledge within
development practice is explored.
Anthropologists in development:
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 questions of what a professional anthropologist might
do. The type 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.
Some of the
important positions that anthropologists are occupying in development agencies
are:
1. Social Development Advisors (SDA).
2. Consultants
3. Research officers
4. Counsellors
5. Advocacy role
Apart from
the strict routine duties of anthropologists in development agencies, they are
increasingly becoming 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 straightforward course of action.
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 boith 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
are involved in project design, appraisal and evaluation by national and
international NGOs and aid agencies. Since the second world war the notion of
the project has become central to mainstream development activity, whether centred
on large scale infrastructural work such as building of a dam or bridge or
softer areas such as health or education provision. Projects tend to pass
through a series of staged activities, often known as the project cycle.
By the 1960s
and 1970s, the World Bank and United Nations were promoting what they termed
“Integrated Rural Development”, in which conventional planning methods were
cast aside in favour of a measure of community participation in setting needs
and a more comprehensive approach to tackling problems on a number of sectoral
fronts simultaneously.
In
consequence, a number of anthropologists were employed in carrying out impact
studies among the local community to whether or not prohect’s objectives have
been met.
The
appearance of what has been termed ‘advocacy anthropology’ by its practitioners
(Miller 1995) has involved itself with the efforts of indigenous people to gain
more control over their lives (Escober 1992).
Anthropological methodologies in development:
The traditional
methodology of social anthropology is what is known rather vauely as ‘participant
observation’: that is, the principle of living within a community for a
substantial period of time – ‘fieldwork’, which might be expected to take one
or two years – and immersing oneself in the local culture, work, food and
language, while remaining an unobtrusive as possible. Many of the earliest
anthropologists recorded their observations in a field diary, taking copious
notes on all aspects of life, to be written up later as a monograph or
ethnographic text, and without necessarily having a sense of the particular
research questions they wished to address until they were well into their period
of study or even until after they had returned home.
The blandness of
participant observation as a technical methodological term in the 1960s and
1970s was gradually addressed by the growing body of more defined data
collection techniques which anthropologists began to use under the general
category of participant observation: case study collection, questionnaire
surveys, structured and semi-structured interviewing, even computer modelling
and the supplementing of qualitative material with quantative data.
Nevertheless, participant observation has retained its centrality to the work
of many anthropologists, and anthropologists have in general retained their
fondness of qualitative rather than quantitative data.
Applied anthropologists
have drawn upon a number of key insights from wider anthropology in order to
equip themselves for their work. In terms of research methodologies, the main
change is that participant observation my normally now be undertaken within a
tightly circumscribed time-frame, with a set of key questions replacing more
open-ended blank notebook approach. Furthermore, the applied anthropologists knows
that his or her findings will be appreciated far more if they can be presented
concisely and made to include at least an element of quantification.
Use of participation:
Like many of the
currently fashionable development buzz words, the precise meaning of
participation is elusive. Adnan et al. (1992)
argue that meanings of participation can be broken down into three broad
categories:
- Participation is simply process in which information about a planned project is made available to the public. This may involve listening to people, more structured survey, or a formal dialogue regarding project options.
- Participation may include project-related activities rather than mere information flows. This might involve using labour from the community, or a longer-term commitment by local groups to maintain services or facilities or even to plan for their future use.
- There are people’s own initiatives. These fall outside the scope of the project agenda. They are therefore, some argue, the only true form of participation, for they are not imposed from the outside. If mobilisation comes from the poorer sections of the community, it also truly empowering.
Participatory Rural Appraisal:
The work of Robert
Chambers has been extremely influential in this regard, in its attempts to
counter excessively formalistic approaches to ‘data collection’ by development
workers and professionals. Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) and its variants
aim to enable rural people to plan and enact solutions to problems by analysing
their own knowledge of local conditions, facilitated by outsiders. This
approach (Chambers, 1992) has drawn upon insights borrowed from social
anthropology such as:
- The idea of learning in the field as ‘flexible art rather than rigid science’
- The need to learn in the field, informally, through conversations and relaxed observation.
- The importance of the research’s attitudes, behaviour and rapport with local people.
- The emic/etic distinction, an anthropological concept drawn from linguistics, which contrasts the indigenous reality of social actors with the observer’s perception of that reality
- The validity and potential value of indigenous knowledge.
PRA therefore involves training researchers to go to villages and
spend time talkling to groups of people ‘in situ’, encouraging them to express
local problems and potential solutions in their own terms. Care is taken to
represent as many different sets of interests as possible, and the focus in on
mutual learning between researcher and informant.
Participatory research action:
It is aloose
group of methodologies undertaken by agencies – such as NGOs – in areas of Asia
and Africa. It assumes that the main objective of develkopm,ent is the
fulfilment of the human urge for creative engagement, and does not therefore
focus on poverty alleviation, ‘basic needs’ or structural change as the
immediate goals to be tackled.
In practice,
typically catalytic initiatives are brought about by educated outsiders, free
of party and political allegiances, who encourage groups of people to get
together to discuss the reason for their poverty and engage in their own social
investigation. Group building follows, combined with discussion of prioritised
actions which can be undertaken to address the principal causes of their
poverty. External resources can be provided for support, but are not regarded
as precondition for problem solving. The aim is to generate a ‘progressive action-reflection
rhythm’ or ‘people’s praxis’.
Farming systems research:
Local knowledge
is seen as often situated in practice and in real situations. The emergence of
farming systems research in late 1970s reflects many of the concerns that
concentrate on local solutions from local knowledge for local problems. FSR
focuses on the small farm as a basic system for research and development and
attempts to bring about the strong involvement of farmers themselves in every
stage of the research and development process (Conway, 1986). The farmer’s
decision making is treated as being rational rather than guided, as was often
supposed, by ignorance or conservatism. The objective is to improve the
relevance and appropriateness of research, and this includes the participation
of social scientists alongside biological scientists. FSR is also emphatically
holistic, treating decisions and procedures for on crop within the wider
farming system and its economic, social and environmental components.
Aid agency/ aid industry/ donors:
Development aid or development cooperation
(also development assistance, technical assistance, international aid, overseas
aid, official development assistance (ODA), or foreign aid) is financial aid
given by governments and other agencies to support the economic, environmental,
social and political development of developing countries.
Donors today tend to give most aid to
countries which they previously colonised: British give most aid to South Asia
and Africa., while the Dutch are heavily involved in South East Asia, for
example. Despite of several initial beginnings during colonial period, the real
start of the amin processes of aid transfer is usually taken to be the end of
the Second World War when major multilateral agencies were established. The IMF
and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (later to become
World Bank) were set up during the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944, while the
Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) was created as a branch of United Nations
in 1945. In contrast what became known as ‘bilateral
aid’ which was a transfer from one government to another, ‘multilateral aid’ came to involve a
number of different donor acting in combination, none of whom directly controls
policy. However, from the outset of donors such as World Bank were heavily
influenced by the US and tended to encourage centralised, democratic
governments with a strong bias towards the free market (Robertson, 1984).
Meanwhile, various bilateral agencies were also established by the wealthier
nations. These are the governmental organisations such as the United States
Agency for International Development (USAID), or British Overseas Development
Administration (ODA), both of which are involved in project and programme aid
with partner countries.
Further reading:
Gardner, K., and
Lewis, D., (1996). Anthropology
Development and Post-modern Challenge. London: Pluto Press.
Most of this note is taken from Gardner and Lewis's book. This is still the best book on development and anthropology so far I have seen.
O'Driscoll, E. (2009). Applying the 'uncomfortable science: the role of anthropology in development. Durham Anthropology Journal. click here
Raghabendra Chattopadhyay, Bhaskar Chakrabarti and Suman Nath. (2010). Village Forums or Development Councils: People’s participation in decision-making in rural West Bengal, India. Commonwealth journal of local governance. click here
[i] In this perspective
development discourse is comparable to ‘orientalism’ – the term used by Edward
Said (1978) to describe the West’s ideological control over the Eastern
‘others’ by representing them in particular ways.
