ENCOUNTERING DEVELOPMENT: THE MAKING AND UNMAKING OF THE THIRD WORLD

BYARTURO ESCOBAR

PUBLISHED IN 1995, BY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY

PRESENTED BY

SAJJAD HAIDER

DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY

QUAID-I-AZAM UNIVERSITY

ISLAMABAD

2017

SLIDESHARE.NET/SAJJADHAIDER786

BRIEF INTELLECTUAL BIOGRAPHY OF ARTURO ESCOBAR

I was born and grew up in Colombia. Trained initially in science and engineering, I became concerned towards

the end of my undergraduate degree in Cali with questions of hunger and development, which took me into the

social sciences and, eventually, anthropology. After completing an interdisciplinary PhD in Development

Philosophy, Policy and Planning at the University of California at Berkeley, I taught at various places in the US. I

have also taught for short periods in Colombia, Ecuador, Argentina, Finland, Spain and England, and conducted or

participated in workshops on development and ecology in Colombia, Mali, Denmark, England, and Mexico. My

main academic works are: Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (1995; also

available in Spanish and Chinese; 2nd. Ed. 2011); Territories of Difference: Place, Movements, Life, Redes (2008),

and the collections of essays in Spanish, El final del salvaje. Naturaleza, cultura y política en la antropología

contemporánea (1999) and Más allá del Tercer Mundo. Globalización y diferencia (2005). I have co-edited a

number of volumes of social movements, women and place, the World Social Forum, and globalization and the

decolonial option.

Source: http://aescobar.web.unc.edu/biography/

See Also: http://anthropology.unc.edu/person/arturo-escobar/

Image source:

CONTENTS OF THE BOOK

Chapter No 01

Introduction: Development and the Anthropology of Modernity

Chapter No 02

The Problematization of Poverty: The Tale of Three Worlds and Development

Chapter No 03

Economic and the space of Development: Tales of Growth and Capital

Chapter No 04

The Dispersion of Power: Tales of Food and Hunger

Chapter No 05

Power and Visibility: Tales of Peasants, Women and the Environment

Chapter No 06

Conclusion: Imagining a Post- development Era

INTRODUCTION: DEVELOPMENT AND THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF MODERNITY

Chapter No ONE. Sections

Start ( Introduction and Background)

Orientalism, Africanism, and Developmentalism

Deconstructing Development

Anthropology and the Development Encounter

Overview of the Book

UN’S VISION OF DEVELOPMENT IN 1951: OPENING STATEMENT OF THE BOOK

There is a sense in which rapid economic progress is impossiblewithout painful adjustment. Ancient philosophies have to bescrapped; old social institutions have to disintegrate; bonds of caste,creed and race have to burst, and large numbers of persons whocan not keep up with progress have to have their expectations of acomfortable life frustrated. Very few communities are willing to paythe full price of economic progress.United Nations

Department of Social and Economic Affairs, Measures for theEconomic Development of Underdeveloped Countries, 1951

PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES, HARRY TRUMAN, CONCEPT OF “FAIR DEAL” FOR THE ENTIRE WORLD ON JANUARY 20, 1949.

More than half the people of the world are living in conditions approachingmisery. Their food is inadequate, the are victims of disease. Their economic lifeis primitive and stagnant. Their poverty is a handicap and threat both to themand to more prosperous areas. For the first time in history humanity possessesthe knowledge and the skill to relieve the suffering of these people……I believethat we should make available to peace-loving peoples the benefits of ourstore of technical knowledge in order to help them realize their aspirations fora better life…What we envisage ( vision) is a program of development based onthe concepts of democratic fair dealing……Greater production is the key toprosperity and peace. And the key to greater production is a wider and morevigorous application of modern scientific and technical knowledge.

TRUMAN’S DOCTRINE & CHARACTERISTICS OFADVANCED SOCIETIES

Trueman’s doctrine: a new era of understanding and managing world economic affairs

An ambitious intent indicating the characteristics of advanced societies:

High level of industrialization and urbanization

Technicalization of agriculture

Rapid growth of material production and living standards

Widespread adoption of modern education and cultural values

Capital, Science & Technology main ingredients of massive revolution for American’s dream of peace and abundance for the world

FACTORS BEHIND US DREAM OF PEACE AND ABUNDANCE

This dream ( of peace and abundance) was not solely creation of US but the result of the specific historical conjuncture ( a combination of circumstances) at the end of he Second World War

This dream was embraced universally by all those in power

AN EXCERPT FROM A UN POLICY DOCUMENT ON ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF UNDERDEVELOPED COUNTRIES : THE OPENING STATEMENT OF THE CHAPTER

There is a sense in which rapid economic progress is impossiblewithout painful adjustment. Ancient philosophies have to bescrapped; old social institutions have to disintegrate; bonds of caste,creed and race have to burst, and large numbers of persons whocan not keep up with progress have to have their expectations of acomfortable life frustrated. Very few communities are willing to paythe full price of economic progress.United Nations

Department of Social and Economic Affairs, Measures for theEconomic Development of Underdeveloped Countries, 1951

ANALYSIS OF THE REPORT

Report suggests total restructuring of the ‘underdeveloped societies’

Ethnocentric and arrogant tone

A growing will to transform the two-thirds of the world for economic progress and material prosperity

By the early1950s such will had become hegemonic at the levels of the circles of power

SCOPE OF THE BOOK: HISTORY OF THE CREATION OF THE THIRD WOLD, HISTORY & OUTCOME OF DEVELOPMENT IN 40 YEARS

Discourse and strategy of development produced massive underdevelopment and impoverishment (poverty), Exploitation and Oppression

Signs of 40 years of the development include Debt Crisis, the Saheline Femine, Increasing Poverty, Malnutrition, Violence

This book is the history of this loss of an illusion ( development)

How Third World has been produced by the Discourse since their inception in the early post World War 2 period

ORIENTALISM, AFRICANISM, AND DEVELOPMENTALISM/DEVELOPMENT ACHIEVES THE STATUS OF CERTAINTY/ NEW TERMINOLOGIES TO JUSTIFY IT

Until the late 19770s Nature of Development was the central stake in discussion on Asia, Africa and Latin America

The theorists of Economic Development focussed on these regions

Basic Human Need approach of the 1970s

Development achieved the status of certainty and it was even the critics of prevailing capitalists couched their critique in terms of need for development through the concepts like;

Another Development, Participatory Development, Socialist Development

OMNIPRESENT REALITY OF DEVELOPMENT

Reality had been colonized by the development discourse

Government and other agencies and their planning centred upon this discourse

Conditions of people deteriorated that did not bother most of the experts

There was an effort in bits and pieces for the construction of a different reality

DEVELOPMENT OF NEW TOOLS OF ANALYSIS/ REPRESENTATION OF THE THIRD WORLD / FOUCAULT'S WORK ON DISCOURSE & POWER

Development of new tools of analysis in gestation since late 1960s and they became widespread in 1980s that made possible to the analysis of “Colonization of Reality”

How certain REPRESENTATION become dominant

How certain REPRESENTATION shapes the WAYS in which REALITY IS IMAGINED

CONCEPTUAL & THEORATICAL Orientation

FOUCAULT’S work on the DYNAMICS OF DISCOURSE & POWER in the representation of social reality

Has been instrumental in unveiling the mechanisms by which a certain ORDER OF DISCOURSE produces PERMISSABLE MODES of being thinking

WHILE disqualifying and even making others impossible

EXTENSION OF FOUCAULT'S INSIGHT / REPRESNTATION OF THE THIRD WORLD /ANTHROPOLOGY’S RENEWAL DURING 1980’S

New ways of thinking about REPRESNTATION OF THE THIRD WORLD

Extension of Foucault's insights to colonial and post colonial situations by authors

Edward Said

V. Y. Mudimbe

Chandra Mohanty

Homi Bhabha

Anthropology’s self critique and renewal during the 1980’s had an important role ( Representation of the third world)

POSSIBILITIES OF THINKING OF DEVELOPMENT AS DISCOURSE/ FOCUS ON DOMINATION/ OBJECTIVE ANALYSIS

Thinking of development in terms of DISCOURSE

makes it POSSIBLE TO MAINTAIN the FOCUS ON DOMIATION ( like earlier Marxist analysis)

[ Also it], to explore more fruitfully the conditions of possibility and the most pervasive efforts of development

Discourse Analysis creates the possibility of singling out ‘development’, as an encompassing cultural space

Discourse Analysis creates the possibility of SEPERATING OURSELVES from it [ DEVELOPMENT], by Perceiving it in a totally new form ( Task of this book).

HOW TO DEVELOP: A COMMON CONCERN IN POST WORLD WAR 2/ DEVELOPMENT A NEW DOMAIN OF THOUGHT AMONG WESTERN SCHOLARS

Development as a historically produced discourse

Why so many countries started to see themselves as underdeveloped in theearly post World War 2,

How “to Develop” became a fundamental problem for them

How they embarked upon the task of “un-underdeveloping” themselves

by SUBJECTING their societies to increasingly systematic, detailed andcomprehensive interventions

A new domain if thought [DEVELOPMENT] emerged among Western expertsand politicians to see certain conditions [POVERTY AND BACKWORDNESS] inAsia, Africa and Latin America as a problem

EDWARD SAID’S STUDY OF DISCOURSES [ BOOK: ORIENTALISM]

[Orientalism] can be discussed and analysed as the corporateinstitutions for dealing with the Orient----dealing with it bymaking statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, byteaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short , orientalism as aWestern style of dominating, restructuring, and havingauthority over the Orient …My contention is that withoutexamining Orientalism as a discourse we can not possiblyunderstand the enormously systematic discipline by whichEuropean culture was able to manage----and even produce----the Orient Politically, sociologically, ideologically, scientifically, andimaginatively during the post Enlightenment period (1979, p.03)”.

INVENTION OF AFRICA (1988) BY V. Y. MUDIMBE

Orientalism sparked a number of creative studies and inquiriesabout the representation of the third world in various contexts , afew had dealt with the question of Development

The Invention of Africa (1988) by the African philosopher V. Y.Mudimbe

“To study the theme of the foundations of discourse aboutAfrica….[how] African worlds have been established as realities firknowledge” ( 1998, xi) in Western discourse.

NEED FOR CRITICAL REINTERPRETATION OF AFRICAN HISTORY AS IT HAS BEEN SEEN FROM AFRICA’S PERSPECTIVES

V. Y. Mudimbe(1988) showed concerns about “the ‘invention’ of Africanism as a scientificdiscipline (09)”. ( in Anthropology and Philosophy)

V. Y. Mudimbe showed concerns to investigate the ‘amplification’ ( expansion of the narratives,additions) BY African scholars

Of the work of critical European thinkers ( Foucualt and Le`vi-Strauss).

Even in Afrocentric perspectives the Western Epistemological Order continues to be bothContext and Referent

What is at stake for these latter works ( Foucualt and Le`vi-Strauss), Mudimbe explains …a

critical reinterpretation of African history as it has been seen from Africa’s (epistemological,

historical, and geographical) exteriority , indeed , a weakening of the very notion of Africa.

IMPACTS OF THE PROCESS OF CRITICAL HISTORY: RE-FOUNDING AND REASSUMING THE INTERPRETED HISTORY WITHIN REPRESENTATIONS

Critical work of this kind, Mudimbe believes, may open the way for “the process of refunding and

reassuming an interrupted history within representations (183)”.

In other words, the process by which

…Africans can have greater autonomy over how they are represented and how they can construct their own

social and cultural models in ways not so mediated by a Western episteme (dictionary meaning : a system of

understanding or a body of ideas which give shape to the knowledge of that time) and historicity ----albeit

in an increasingly transnational context.

This notion can be extended to the Third World as a whole

For what is at stake is the process by which (in the history of the modern West), non European

areas have been systematically organized into and transformed according to, European constructs.

REPRESENTATION OF ASIA, AFRICA AND LATIN AMERICA IN WESTERN CONCEPTIONS

Representation of Asia, Africa, and Latin America as Third Worldand underdeveloped are the heirs (recipients of heredity) of anillustrious genealogy of Western conceptions about those parts ofthe world.

TIMOTHY MITCHELL (1988) COLONIZING EGYPT CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Timothy Mitchell unveils another important MECHANISM at work in EUROPEAN REPRESENTATION OF

OTHER SOCIETIES.

Mitchell’s goal is to explore “the peculiar methods of order and truth that characterise the modern West

( 1988, ix)”, and their impact on nineteenth century Egypt.

The setting up the world as a picture, ( in the model of the World exhibitions of the last century ),

Mitchell suggests, is at the core of these methods and their political expediency

EMERGENCE OF A REGIME OF OBJECTIVISM AND ITS TWO DEMANDS

For the modern (European) subject, this entailed ( impose or causeas burden) that s/he would experience life as if s/he were set apartfrom the physical world, as if s/he were a visitor at an exhibition.

The observer inevitably (unable to avoid) ‘enframed’ external realityin order to make sense of it; this enframing took place according toEuropean categories

What emerged was a regime of OBJECTIVISM in which Europeanswere subjected to a double demand

1) to be detached and objective

2) To immerse themselves in local life

ELIMINATING THE PRESENCE OF EUROPEAN OBSERVER/PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION

This experience as participant observer was made possible by a CURIOUS TRICK,that eliminating from the picture the presence of EUROPEAN OBSERVER in moreconcrete terms observing the (colonial) world as object “from a position that isinvisible and set apart (Mitchell 1988, 28)”.

The West had come to live “as though the world were divided in this way intotwo:

into a realm of representations and a realm of the ‘real’, into exhibitionsand an external reality; into an order of mere models, descriptions orcopies, and an order of the original”(32).

REGIME OF ORDER AND TRUTH: AN ASPECT OF MODERNITY DEEPENED BY ECONOMICS AND DEVELOPMENT

This regime of order and truth is quintessential ( essential essence ofsomething) aspect of modernity and has been deepened by economicsand development .

It (regime of order and truth) is reflected in an objectivist and empiriciststand that dictates that the Third World and its peoples exist ‘Out there’, tobe known through theories and intervened upon from the outside.

CONSEQUENCES2 OF THIS FEATURE OF MODERNITY :CHANDRA MOHANTAY

The consequences of this feature (order and truth deepened byeconomics and development) of modernity have been enormous.

Chandra Mohantay ( 1991) refers to the same feature when raisingthe question of who produces the knowledge about the thirdworld women and from what spaces; she discovered that womenin the third world are represented in most feminist literatureon development as having ‘needs’ and ‘problems’ but fewchoices and no freedom to act.

What emerges from such modes of analysis is the image of anaverage Third World women , constructed through the use ofstatistics and certain categories.

MOHANTAY, CHANDRA, 1991B, UNDER WESTERN EYES: FEMINIST SCHOLARSHIP AND COLONIAL DISCOURSES

This average third world woman leads an essentiallytruncated (cut short, shorten) life based on her femininegender ( read: sexually constrained) and her being “thirdworld” ( read: ignorant , poor, uneducated, tradition-bound, domestic, family –oriented , victimised , etc.). This, Isuggest, is in contrast to the (implicit)self-representation ofWestern women as educated, as modern, as having controlover their own bodies and sexualities, and the freedom tomake their own decisions 9 1991 B, 56).

These representations implicitly assume Western standards as thebench mark against which to measure the situation of the ThirdWorld Women.

The result, Mohantay believes, is a paternalistic attitude on the partof Western women toward their Third World counterparts and, moregenerally, the perpetuation (to preserve from extinction) of thehegemonic idea of the Western superiority.

Within this discursive regime, work about the Third World Women,develop a certain coherence of effects that reinforce that hegemony.

“It is in this process of discursive homogenization and systemization of the oppression of women in the Third World, that power is exercised in much of recent feminist discourse, and this power needs to be defined and named (54)”. Mohantay

MOHANTY’S CRITIQUE APPLIES TO MAINSTREAM DEVELOPMENT LITERATURE

Needless to say, Mohanty’s critique applies with great pertinence(relevance) to mainstream development literature, in which thereexists a veritable (true) under developed subjectivity endowed(permanent source of income/fund) with features such aspowerlessness, passivity, poverty, and ignorance, usually dark andlacking in historical agency, as if waiting for the ( White) Westernhand to help subjects along and not infrequently hungry, illiterate,needy, and oppressed by its own stubbornness, lack of initiative, andtraditions.

This image also universalizes and homogenises Third World culturesin an historical fashion.

DOMINANCE OF WESTERN PERSPECTIVES

Only from a certain Western perspective does thisdescription make sense; that it exists at all is more a signof power over the Third World than a truth about it.

It is important to highlight for now that the deployment ofthis discourse in a world system in which the West has acertain dominance over the Third World has profoundpolitical, economic, and cultural effects that have to beexplored.

COLONIALIST MOVE: PRODUCTION OF DISCOURSE UNDER CONDITIONS OF UNEQUAL POWER

The production of discourse under conditions ofunequal power is what Mahanty and other refer toas ‘the colonialist move’.

This move entails specific constructions of colonial/Third World subject in/ through discourse in a thatallows the exercise of power over it.

HOMI BHABHA, 1990, THE OTHER QUESTION: DIFFERENCE, DISCRIMINATION, AND THE DISCOURSE OF COLONIALISM

Colonial discourse, although, “the most theoreticallyunderdeveloped form of discourse”

(Colonial discourse ) is “ crucial to the binding of a rangeof differences and discriminations that inform thediscursive and political practices of racial and culturalhierarchization ( 1990, 72).

BHABHA’S DEFINITION OF COLONIAL DISCOURSE

[ Colonial discourse] is an apparatus that turns on the recognition anddisavowal (denial) of racial/ cultural/historical differences.

Its predominant strategic function is the creation of a space for a “subjectpeoples” through the production o knowledge in terms which surveillanceis exercised and a complex form of pleasure/ unpleasure is incited ( urge/encourage)……

The objective of colonial discourse is to construe (explain ) thecolonialized as a population of degenerate (fall below a normal level )types on the basis of racial origin, in order to justify conquest and toestablish systems of administration and instruction…..

I am referring to a form of govnmentality that in marking out a “subjectnation”, appropriates, directs and dominates its various spheres of activity( 1990, 75).

DEPLOYMENT OF A REGIME OF GOVERNMENT OVER THE THIRD WORLD, A “SPACE FOR SUBJECT PEOPLES’” THAT ENSURES CERTAIN CONTROL OVER IT. Although some of the terms of this definition might be more

applicable to the colonial context strictly speaking , thedevelopment discourse is governed by the same principles: ithas created an extremely efficient apparatus for producingknowledge about, and the exercise of power over, the ThirdWorld.

This apparatus came into exercise roughly in the period 1945 to1955, and has not since ceased to produce new arrangements ofknowledge and power; new practices, theories, strategies, and soon.

In sum, it has successfully deployed a regime of governmentover the Third World, a “space for subject peoples’” thatensures certain control over it.

SPATIAL POWER OF DEVELOPMENT : SALTER DAVID 1993

This space is also geopolitical space, a series of imaginative geographies,to use Said (1979) term. The development discourse inevitably contained ageopolitical imagination that has shaped the meaning of development formore than four decades.

For some, this will to spatial power is one of the most essential features ofdevelopment ( Slater 1993).

Slater, David. 1993. The Geoplolitical Imagination and the Enframing ofDevelopment Theory

It is implicit in expressions such as First and Third Word, North and South,centre and periphery.

The social production of space in these terms is bound with theproduction of differences, subjectivities, and social orders.

Despite the correctives introduced to this geopolitics------thedecentring of the world, the demise of the Second World, theemergence of a network of world cities, the globalization ofcultural production, and so on----theu continue to functionimaginatively in powerful ways.

RISE OF POSTMODERN GEOGRAPHIES: SOJA 1989

There is a relation among history, geography, andmodernity that resists disintegration as far as theThird World is concerned, despite the importantchanges that have given rise to postmodern

geographies.Soja, Edward. 1989. Postmodern Geograhies.London: Verso

THREE AXES: THE FORMS OF KNOWLEDGE; THE SYSTEM OF POWER; FORMS OF SUBJECTIVITY

To sum up, I propose to speak of development as a historicallysingular experience, the creation of a domain of thought andaction, by analysing the characteristics and interrelations of thethree axes that I define:

The forms of knowledge that refer to it through which it comes intobeing and is elaborated into objects, concepts, theories, and the like

The system of power that regulates its practice

And the forms of subjectivity fostered by this discourse, thosethrough which people come to recognize themselves as developed orunder developed.

The ensemble of forms found along these axes constitutesdevelopment as a discursive formation, giving rise to a efficientapparatus that systematically relates forms of knowledge andtechniques of power.

Ensemble ( meaning) all the parts of a thing taken together, so thateach part is considered only in relation to the whole.

REGIMES OF DISCOURSE AND REGIMES OF REPRESENTATION

The analysis thus will be couched in terms of regimes of discourse andrepresentation.

Regimes of representation can be analysed as places of encounter whereidentities are constructed and also where violence is originated, symbolizedand managed. [Hypothesis by Rojas de Ferro 1994]

Rojas de Ferro, Maria Cristina. 1994. A Political Economy of Violence. PhD.Diss., Carelton University, Ottawa

ROJAS DE FERRO, MARIA CRISTINA. 1994. A POLITICAL ECONOMY OF VIOLENCE.

This useful hypothesis (developed by a Colombian scholarto explain nineteenth-century violence in her country,)building particularly on the works of Bakhtin, Fouculat, andGirard, conceives of regimes of representation as placesof encounter of languages of the past and thelanguages of the present ( such as the language of‘civilization’ and ‘barbarianism’ in postindependence LatinAmerica), internal and external languages, andlanguages of self and other (Rojas de Ferro 1994).

ENCOUNTER OF REGIMES OF REPRESENTATIONS IN 1940S: EMERGENCE OF DEVELOPMENT

A similar encounter of regimes of representation tookplace in the late 1940s with the emergence ofdevelopment , also accompanied by specific forms ofmodernized violence.

REGIMES OF REPRESENTATION: A THEORETICAL & METHODOLOGICAL PRINCIPLE TO EXAMINE THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE THIRD WORLD THROUGH REPRESENTATION CARTOGRAPHIES/ MAPS OF KNOWLEDGE & POWER ( DELEUZE)

The notion of regimes of representation is a final theoreticaland methodological principle for examining the mechanismsfor, and consequences of, the construction of the Third Worldin/ through representation.

Charting regimes of representation of the Third World broughtabout by the development discourse represents an attempt todraw the “Cartographies” (Deleuze 1988) or maps of theconfigurations of knowledge and power that defines the postWorld War 2 period.

These are cartographies of struggle , (as Mohanty 1991a) adds. Mohanty, Chndra .1991. Cartographies of Struggle: Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism

Although they are geared toward an understanding of theconceptual maps that are used to locate and chart Third Worldpeople’s experience; they also reveal-----even if indirectly at times----the catagories with which people have to struggle.

This book provides a general map for orienting oneself in thediscourses and practices that account for today’s dominant formsof sociocultural and economic production of the Third World

GOALS OF THE BOOK: INTRODUCTION TO THE CHAPTERS

The goals of this book are precisely

To examine the establishment and consolidation of this discourse and apparatus from the early post World War 2 period to the present [ Chapter 2]

Analyse the construction of a notion of under development in post world war 2 economic development theories [Chapter 3]

And demonstrate the way in which the apparatus functions through the systematic production of knowledge and power in specific fields---such as rural development, sustainable development, and women and development. [ Chapters 4 & 5].

Finally the conclusion deals with the important question of how to imagine a ppostdevelopment regime of representation and how to investigate and pursue alternative practices in the context of today’s social movements in the Third World.

COMPARISON WITH EDWARD SAID’S ORIENTALISM

This, one might say, is a study of Developmentalism asdiscursive field.

Unlike Said’s study of Orientalism, however, I pay closerattention to the deployment of the discourse throughpractices.

I want to show that this discourse results in concrete practicesof thinking and acting through which the Third World isproduced.

The example I chose for this closer investigation is theimplementation of rural development, health, and nutritionprogrammes in Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s.

HOMI BHABHA’S CAUTION ON SAID’S WORKHOW THE THIRD WORLD PEOPLE STRUGGLE TO CREATE ALTERNATIVE WAYS OF BEING AND DOING

Another difference in relation to Orientalism originates in Homi Bhabh’scaution that “there is always , in Said, the suggestion that colonial power ispossessed entirely by the colonizers, given its intentionality andundirectionality ( 1990, 77).

Bhabha, Homi. 1990. The Other Question: Differences, Discrimination, and theDiscourse of Colonialism

This is a danger that I seek to avoid by considering the variety of forms withwhich Third World people resist development interventions and how theystruggle to create alternative ways of being and doing.

SIMILARITY WITH MUDIMBE’S AFRICANISM: UNVEIL ORDER OF KNOWLEDGE AND DISCOURSE ABOUT THE THIRD WORLD

Like Mudimbe’s study of Africanism, I also want to unveil the foundationsof an order of knowledge and discourse about the Third World asunderdeveloped.

I want to map, so to say, the invention if development. Instead if focussingon anthropology and philosophy, however, I contextualize the era ofdevelopment within the overall space of modernity, particularly moderneconomic practices.

From this perspective, development can be seen as a chapter of what can becalled an anthropology of modernity

That is, a general investigation of Western modernity as a culturally andhistorically specific phenomenon

If it is true that there is an “anthropological structure” (Foucualt 1975, 198) that sustains the modern order and its human sciences, it must be investigated to what extent this structure has also given rise to the regime of development, perhaps as specific mutation of modernity.

A general direction for the anthropology of modernity has already been suggested, in the sense of rendering ‘’exotic” the West’s cultural products in order to see them for what they are:

A GENERAL DIRECTION FOR ANTHROPOLOGY MODERNITY/ RAINBOW 1986,

“ We need to anthropolgize the West: show how exotic its constitution ofreality has been;

Emphasize those domains most taken for granted as universal ( this includesepistemology and economics);

Make them seem as historically peculiar as possible; show how their claims totruth are linked to social practices and have hence become effective forces inthe social world” (Rainbow 1986, 241).

Representations Are Social Facts: Modernity and Post-modernity inAnthropology

THIRD WORLD IS ESSENTIAL FOR DEVELOPMENT DISCOURSE

The Anthropology of Modernity would rely on ethnographic approaches that look at socialforms as produced by historical practices combining knowledge and power; it would seek toexamine how truth claims are related to practices and symbols that produce and regulatesocial life.

As we will see, the production of Third World through the articulation of knowledge andpower is essential to the development discourse.

This does not preclude ( preliminary condition) the fact that from many Third World spaces,even the most reasonable among the West’s social and cultural practices might look quitepeculiar, even strange.

Nevertheless, even today most people in the West ( and many parts of the Third World)have great difficulty thinking about Third World situations and people in terms otherthan those provided by the development discourse.

MEDIA IMAGE OF THE THIRD WORLD/ NEED TO EXAMINE DEVELOPMENT IN RELATION TO MODERN EXPERIENCES

These terms---such as overpopulation, the permanent threat offamine, poverty, illiteracy, and the like---operate as the mostcommon signifiers, already stereotyped and burdened withdevelopment signifieds.

Media image of the Third World are the clearest example ofdevelopmentalist representations.

These images just do not seem to go away. This is why it isnecessary to examine development in relation to the modernexperience of knowledge, seeing, counting, economizing and thelike.

DECONSTRUCTING DEVELOPMENT

The discursive analysis of development started in the late 1980s and will most likely continue into 1990s, coupled with attempt to articulating alternative regimes of representation and practice.

Few works, however, have undertaken the deconstruction of the development discourse.

James Ferguson’s recent book on development in Lesotho (1990) is a sophisticated example of the deconstructionist approach.

Ferguson provides an in-depth analysis of rural development programmes implemented in the country under World Bank sponsorship

Ferguson, James. 1990. The Anti-Politics Machine: “Development,” Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

FERGUSON, JAMES. 1990. THE ANTI-POLITICS MACHINE: “DEVELOPMENT,”DEPOLITICIZATION, AND BUREAUCRATIC POWER IN LESOTHO. CAMBRIDGE

Further entrenchment of the state , the restricting of rural social relations , thedeepening of Western modernizing influences, and depoliticization ofproblems are among the most important effects of the depoloyment of ruraldevelopment in Lesotho, despite the apparent failure of the programs interms of their stated objectives.

It is at the level of these effects, Ferguson concludes, that the productivity ofthe apparatus has to be assessed.

KEYWORDS IN DEVELOPMENT DISCOURSE: SACHS 1992

Another deconstructionst approach ( Sachs 1992) analyses the centralconstructs or key words of the development discourse, such as market,planning, population, environment, production, equality, participation, needs,poverty, and the like.

After briefly tracing the origin of each concept in European civilization, eachchapter examines the uses and transformation of the concept in thedevelopment discourse from the 1950s to the present.

Sachs, Wolfgang. 1992. The Development Dictionary : A Guide to Knowledgeas Power. London: Zed Books

SYSTEM OF KNOWLEDGE APPROACH: DOMINANCE OF WESTERN KNOWLEDGE SYSTEM

The intent of the book is to expose the arbitrary character of the concepts,their cultural and historical specificity, and the dangers that their userepresents in the context of the Third World.

A related group project is conceived in terms of a ‘systems of knowledge’approach.

Cultures, in this group believes, are characterized not only by rules and valuesbut also by ways of knowing.

Development has relied exclusively on one knowledge system, namely, themodern Western one. The dominance of this knowledge system, namely, themodern Western one

The dominance of this knowledge system has dictated the marginalization anddisqualification of non-Western knowledge systems.

ANALYSIS OF WID (WOMEN IN DEVELOPMENT) APPROACHES BY ADELE MUELLER & CHANNDRA MOHANTY

In these latter knowledge systems , the authors conclude, researchers and activists might findalternative rationalities to guide social action away from economistic and reductionistics waysof thinking.

In the 1970s, women were divorced to have been ‘bypassed’ by development interventions.This ‘discovery’ resulted in the growth during the late 1970s and 1980s of a whole new field,women in development (WID), which has been analysed by several feminist researchers as aregime of representation, mostnotably Adele Mueller ( 1986, 1987a, 1991) and ChandraMohanty.

Muller, Adele. 1986. The Bureaucratization of Feminist Knowledge: The Case of Women inDevelopment

Muller, Adele. 1987a. Peasants and Professionals: The Social Organization of Women inDevelopment Knowledge

Muller, Adele. 1991. In and Against Development: Feminist Confront Development on Its OwnGround

SWEDISH ANTHROPOLGISTS’ WORK ON DEVELOPMENT IN MODERNITY

A group of Swedish anthropologists focus their work on how the concepts ofdevelopment and modernity are used, interpreted, questioned, and reproducedin various social contexts in different parts of the world.

An entire constellation of usages, modes of operation, and effects associatedwith these terms, which are profoundly local, is beginning to surface. Whetherin a Papua New Guinean village or in a small town of Kenya or Ethopia, localversions of development and modernity are formulated according to complexprocesses that include traditional cultural practices, histories of colonialism, andcontemporary location within the global economy of goods and symbols.

Dahl, G., and A. Rabo, eds. 1992. Kam-Ap or Take-Off: Local Notions ofDevelopment. Stockholm: Stockholm Studies in Social Anthropology

PIGG, STACY LEIGH. 1992. CONSTRUCTING SOCIAL CATEGORIES THROUGH PLACE: SOCIAL REPRESENTATIONS AND DEVELOPMENT IN NEPAL

These mush-needed local ethnographies of development and modernity are also being pioneered by Pigg (1992) in her work on the introduction ofhealth practices in Nepal. ( Details in chapter 2)

Pigg, Stacy Leigh. 1992. Constructing Social Categories through Place: Social Representations and Development in Nepal

ROLE OF CONVENTIONAL DISCIPLINES WITHIN THE DEVELOPMENT DISCOURSES

Irene Gendzier ( 1985) examines the role political science played in theconfirmation of theories of modernization, particularly in 1950s, and itsrelation to issues of the moment such as national security and economicimperatives.

Gendzier, Irene. 1985. Managing Political Change: Social Scientists and theThird World

Also within political science, Kathryn Sikkink ( 1991) has more recently takenon the emergence of development in Brazil and Argentina in the 1950s and1960s. Her chief interest is the role f ideas in the adoption , implementation,and consolidation of delopmentalism as an economic development model.

Sikkink, Kathryn. 1991. Ideas and Institutions: Developmentalism in Brazil andArgentina

DOMINANCE OF NORTH AMERICAN SOCIOLOGY IN LATINAMERICA DURING 19950’S AND 60’S

The Chilean Pedro Morande`( 1984) analyses how the adoption anddominance of North American Sociology in the 1950s and 1960s inLatin America set the stage for a purely functional conception ofdevelopment, conceived of as the transformation f “traditional”into a “modern” society and devoid ( untouched ) of any culturalconsiderations

Morande`, Obdulio. 1991. Cultura y Modernizacio`n en Ame`ricaLatinaa

CALL FOR RETURN OF CULTURES ( LOCAL) IN CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF DEVELOPMENT: FOCUS OF THE BOOK

Kate Manzo ( 1991) makes a somewhat similar case in her analysis of theshortcoming of modernist approaches to development , such as dependencytheory, and in her call for paying attention to “countermodernist” alternativesthat are grounded in the practices of Third World grassroots actors.

Manzo, Kate. 1991. Modernist Discourse and the Crisis of DevelopmentTheory

The call for a return of culture in the critical analysis of development,particularly local cultures, is also central to this book.

As this short review shows, there are already a small but relatively coherent number of works that contribute to articulating a discursive critique of development.

The present work makes the most general case in this regard; it seeks to provide a general review of the historical construction of development and the Third World as a whole and exemplifies the way the discourse functions in one particular case.

The goal of analysis is to contribute to the liberation of discursive field so that the task of imagining alternatives can be commenced (or perceived by researchers in a new light) in those spaces where the production of scholarly ad expert knowledge for development purposes continues to take place.

The local-level ethnographies of development mentioned earlier provide useful elements towards this end

In the conclusion, I extend the insights these works afford and attempt to elaborate a view of “the alternative” as a research question and a social practice.

TALAL ASAD, (1973), ANTHROPOLOGY AND DEVELOPMENT ENCOUNTER : QUESTIONS In the introduction to his well-known collection on anthropology’s relation to

colonialism , Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter ( 1973), Talal Asad,raised the question of whether there was not still “a strange reluctance onthe part of mot professional anthropologists to consider seriously thepower structure within which their discipline has taken shape”(5) namelythe whole problematic of colonialism and neocolnialism, their politicaleconomy and institutions

Does not development today , as colonialism did in a former epoch, makepossible “the kind of human intimacy on which anthropological fieldworkis based, but insure [s] that intimacy should be on-sided andprovisional”(17).

Even if the contemporary subjects move and talk back?

TALAL ASAD, (1973), ANTHROPOLOGY AND DEVELOPMENT ENCOUNTER : QUESTIONS

In addition, if during the colonial period “the general drift of anthropologicalunderstanding did not constitute a basic challenge to the unequal worldrepresented by the colonial system”(18), is this not also the case with thedevelopment system?

In sum, can we not speak with equal pertinence of “anthropology and thedevelopment encounter”?

ROLE OF ANTHROPOLOGISTS IN DEVELOPMENT: USAID/WB: ESCOBAR

It is generally true that anthropology as a whole has not dealt explicitly with the fact that it takes place within the post-World War 2 encounter between rich and poor nations established by the development discourse.

Although a number of anthropologists have opposed development interventions , particularly on behalf of indigenous people, larger numbers of anthropologists have been involved with development organizations such as World Bank and the USAID

This problematic involvement was particularly noticed in the decade 1975-1985, and has been analysed elsewhere.

The absence of anthropologists from discussion of development as a regime of representation is regrettable because, if it is true that many aspects of colonialism have been superseded, representations of the Third World through development are no less pervasive and effective than their colonial counterparts.

It is also disturbing, as Said has pointed out, that in recent anthropological literature there is an almost total absence of any reference to American imperial intervention as a factor affecting the theoretical discussion.

This imperial intervention takes place at many levels----economic,military, political, and cultural ----which are woven together bydevelopment representations. Also disturbing, as Said proceeds toargue, is he lack of attention on the part of Western scholars to thesizeable and impassioned critical literature by Third Worldintellectuals on colonialism, history, tradition, and domination---and , one might add, development.

The number of Third World voices calling for a dismantling of heentire discourse of development is fast increasing

The deep changes experienced in anthropology during the 1980s opened the ways for examining how anthropology is bound up with “Western ways of creating the world”., as Strathern ( 1988, 4) advisesandpotentially with other possible ways of representing the interests of Third World peoples.

This critical examination of anthropology’s practices led to the realization that “no one can write about others any longer as if they were discrete objects or texts”.

A new task thus insinuated ( ) itself: that of coming up with “moresubtle, concrete ways of writing and reading….new conceptions ofculture as interactive and historical” ( Clifford 1986, 25)

Innovation in anthropological writing within this context was seenas “moving [ ethnography] toward an un-precedentedly acutepolitical and historical sensibility that is transforming the waycultural diversity is portrayed.

This reimagining of anthropology, launched in the mid-1980s, has become the object of various critiques, qualifications, and extensions from within its own ranks and by feminists, political economists. Third World scholars , Third World feminists, and anti-postmodernists.

Some of these critiques are more or less pointed and constructive than others, and it is not necessary to analyse them in this introduction.

To this extent, “the experimental movement“ of the 1980s has been very fruitful and relatively rich in applications

Anthropology , it is now argued, has to “reenter” the world , after the moments of textualist critique.

To do this, it has to rehistricize its own practice and acknowledge that this practice is shaped by many forces that are well beyond the control of the ethnographer:

Moreover, it must be willing to subject its most cherished notions, such as ethnography, culture, and science, to a more radical scrutiny ( Fox 1991).

Strathern’s call that this questioning be advanced in the context ofWestern social practices and their “endorsement of certaininterests in the description of social life” is of fundamentalimportance.

At the core of this recentering of the debates within the disciplinesare the limits that exist to the Western project of deconstructionand self-critique.

It is becoming increasingly evident, at least for those who arestruggling for different ways of having a voice, that the process ofdeconstructing and dismantling has to be accompanied by that ofconstructing new ways of seeing and acting.

Needless to say, this aspect is crucial in discussions about development,because people’s survival is at stake.

As Mohanty ( 1991a) insists, both projects ----deconstruction and

reconstruction----have to be carried out simultaneously.

As I discuss in the final chapter, tis simultaneous project could focusstartagically on the collective action of social movements:

They struggle not only for goods and services but also for the vary definitionof life, economy, nature, and society. They are, in short, cultural struggles.

As Bhabha wants us to acknowledge, deconstruction and other types ofcritique do not lead automatically to “an unproblematic reading of othercultural and discursive systems”.

They might be necessary to combat ethnocentrism, but they can not , ofthemselves, unreconstructed, represent that otherness ( Bhabha 1990, 75).

Moreover; there is the tendency in these critiques to discuss othernessprincipally in terms if the limits of Western logocentricity, thus denying thatcultural otherness is “implicated in specific historical and discursive conditions,requiring construction in different practices of reading ( Bhabha 190, 73).

There is a similar insistence in Latin America that the proposals ofpostmodernism, to be fruitful there, have to make clear theircommitment to justice and to the construction of alternative socialorders.

These Third World correctives indicate the need for alternativequestions and startagies for the construction of anti-colonialistdiscourses( and the reconstruction of Third World societies in/through representations that can develop into alternativepractices).

Calling into question the limitations of the West’s self-critique, as currently practiced in much of contemporary theory , they make it possible to visualise the “discursive insurrection” by the Third World people priiposed by Mudimbe in relation to the ‘sovereignty of the very Eurpoean thought from which we wish to disentangle ourselves.

The needed liberation of anthropology from the space mapped by thedevelopment encounter ( and, more generally, modernity), to be achievedthrough a close examination of the ways in which it has been implicated in it,is an important step in the direction of more autonomous regimes ofrepresentation;

Thiss is so to the extent that it might motive anthropologists and others todelve into the strategies people in the Third World pursue to re-signify andtransform their reality through their collective political practice.

This challenge may provide paths towards the radicalization of the discipline’sreimaging started with enthusiasm during the 1980’s