Anthropology for Development

From Theory to Practice

Robyn Eversole

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317392903
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

Anthropology for Development: From Theory to Practice connects cross-cultural social theory with the concerns of development policy and practice. It introduces the reader to a set of key ideas from the field of anthropology of development, and shows how these insights can be applied to solve real-world development dilemmas.

This single, accessibly written volume clearly explains key concepts from anthropology and draws them into a framework to address some of the important challenges facing development policy and practice in the twenty-first century: poverty, participation, sustainability and innovation. It discusses classic critical and ethnographic texts and more recent anthropological work, using rich case studies across a range of country contexts to provide an introduction to the field not available elsewhere. The examples presented are designed to help development professionals reframe their practice with attention to social and cultural variables as well as understand why mainstream approaches to reducing poverty, raising productivity, delivering social services and grappling with environmental risks often fail.

This book will prove invaluable to undergraduate and postgraduate students who are professionals-in-training in development studies programs around the world. It will also help development professionals work effectively and inclusively across cultures, tap into previously invisible resources, and turn current development challenges into opportunities.

CHAPTER
1
Anthropology of development in theory

Development can be defined broadly as the process of social and economic change. Change may be planned or unplanned. Development professionals, however, are specifically interested in change that can be imagined, planned for and created. For development professionals ‘development’ is a planned change process that increases prosperity or well-being or social equity – depending on what kind of change they feel is most needed.

The Brundtland Commission’s definition of development from the 1980s puts the emphasis on sustainable change: development meets human needs in the present without compromising future generations’ ability to meet their needs.¹ In 2015, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development identified three key pillars of development as ‘people, planet and prosperity’ with a focus on poverty eradication.² Every definition of development has a slightly different focus and emphasises different desired outcomes. But each refers to a process of social and economic change that is aiming to make the world better than it is now.

This chapter will explore some of the many ways that development, as planned social and economic change, is understood, practised and experienced around the world. To do this, it draws on the work of anthropologists who study development. This chapter does not attempt to canvass the entire range and richness of anthropology theory. Rather, it focuses in on some key insights from the anthropology of development which are relevant to development professionals, and which can directly inform development practice.

Development in context

Theories are sets of ideas about how the world works. Our ideas about how the world works – our theories – are important, because they guide our actions and ultimately inform what we can achieve. In development practice, our theories about social and economic change guide how we go about pursuing change. They shape the approaches we take, the tools we use and the kinds of results we look for.

Over the decades since development work has become a recognised area of professional practice, a number of powerful ideas have framed people’s understandings about how development works. Key ideas like underdevelopment, poverty, technology transfer and economic growth have had a long-lasting impact on how many people think about what development is and how to achieve it.

Many ideas about development have their roots in Western philosophy; for instance, the idea of progress as something that can be defined and achieved over time. Other ideas, like underdevelopment and the Third World, have emerged from colonial and post-colonial history, in which wealthy countries defined what ‘development’ should look like for poorer countries. From the mid twentieth century, a growing development industry emphasised the idea that technology transfer should be used to stimulate economic growth. Many of these ideas still influence development practice today.

Old ideas persist, but at the same time new ideas about development are always coming onto the scene. Ideas like good governance, sustainable livelihoods, inclusive growth and accountability distil key insights that have emerged in practice about the processes and goals of positive change. These ideas from recent decades focus on more ‘social’ questions about power relations and who benefits from change processes.

Development has its own large vocabulary. There are always a range of ideas jostling for attention, and many of these ideas carry a lot of baggage. Some ideas about development become so popular that they develop a life of their own; they become ‘buzzwords’. A buzzword can have ‘a multitude of meanings and nuances, depending on who is using it and in what context’.³ It is therefore possible for different people to use the same word – like poverty or sustainability – but use it to mean very different things.

Ideas, combined into theories, guide practical choices about development. Each choice to invest in productivity-raising technology, or to invest in new governance institutions, is informed by particular sets of ideas about what sort of change is likely to make things better, and what is required to make this change happen. Theory informs practice.

Practice informs theory too. In development work, policy makers have practical concerns that often form the starting point for development actions. They may be under pressure to create jobs, to provide infrastructure, or to ensure there are adequate services in hard-to-reach places. They ask for ideas – theories – that will show them how to create the kinds of change they need.

In development work, the link between theory and practice is not always clearly articulated. Development work is focused on practical action, getting things done. Yet, on closer look, most development policies, programs and projects are based on an idea or set of ideas about change: ideas about what change is desired, and what needs to happen in order to get there. This may or may not be clearly articulated, but it is called a theory of change. A theory of change is a set of ideas about how change will happen.

Development initiatives are often based on a straightforward theory of change. For instance, if the aim is to raise productivity in local microenterprises, then development workers might design a training program for enterprise owners. Training makes sense because of the idea that improving people’s skills –their ‘human capital’ – raises productivity. Or, if the aim is to encourage people to adopt particular kinds of health practices, development workers may use a community-based extension program to make people aware of these practices and their benefits. In each case, the theory of change suggests that certain actions will – if done properly – lead to certain outcomes. Microenterprises will become more productive. Households will adopt healthier practices.

Nevertheless, even when there is a clear and logical theory of change, the desired change may not actually happen. Doing this may not, in practice, lead to that. Training may happen and yet microenterprise productivity levels may remain the same. Community-based extension activities may be beautifully implemented, but fail to make any difference. These are the problems that vex development work. Things that should work, often don’t. And the theories that guide us often cannot tell us why.

Even when development initiatives make sense in theory, they may fail to work in practice. Doing this does not always lead to that because other factors are at play that can influence the results. The industries in question may have supply-chain problems, for instance, or an inability to access credit; training may therefore make no difference to their overall productivity. Households on the receiving end of extension programs may have any number of compelling reasons for rejecting new practices – such as lacking the necessary infrastructure or time – even when they understand them perfectly.

Anthropologists who study development recognise that every development initiative hits the ground in a particular context. The context is the on-the-ground setting in which development happens. Context is both physical and deeply social. It is the physical setting (natural and built), as well as the ways in which people work, live and interact with one another in that place.

Most theories of change assume that change is a straightforward technical process. They look at the connection between one variable (like training) and another variable (like productivity). Anthropologists, however, see change differently. Anthropologists recognise that every context is different, and these differences affect what happens. In each context, numerous variables are at play that will ultimately affect the outcomes of a development initiative. Further, the particular people involved will always influence the direction of change.

Anthropology of development theory thus starts from a key insight: Development cannot be created in isolation from its social context. Development is not a technical process in which doing this will always achieve that; rather, every development initiative is co-constructed and negotiated among people in particular contexts. These interactions affect what sort of change takes place, and who wins and who loses from development action. For anthropologists, development is first and foremost a social process.

Anthropologists and development

All around the world, from isolated villages to cosmopolitan cities, anthropologists have conducted research to understand the many different ways that people live. They have looked up-close at different contexts and what life is like for people living there. Anthropologists have been interested in kinship and social organisation, gender roles, division of labour, political institutions, beliefs and practices, and many other aspects of people’s lives. They have not, however, always been interested in development.

For years nearly all anthropologists studied people whose ways of life were very different from their own. Many anthropologists in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries worked in places far away from their own homes, conducting fieldwork with groups of people who were largely unknown to them: the Yanomami, the Xavante, the Nuer and many others. The opportunity to travel and work with ‘exotic’ peoples was often a drawcard for would-be anthropologists.

Many anthropologists who travelled far afield for their studies assumed that they had discovered societies where people had lived unchanged for hundreds, even thousands, of years. Compared with the rapid pace of change in the places where the anthropologists were from, the people that anthropologists studied looked static and unchanging. They lived in remote places. They did not use modern technology. It was not uncommon for academics to call them ‘stone age’ or ‘iron age’ peoples, even in the twentieth century, because their way of life looked like a leftover from an earlier age.

Over time, however, anthropologists started to question this belief. Working with these groups of people up-close, all over the world, they began to observe evidence of social and economic change taking place. In the second half of the twentieth century, the world was changing quickly. New technologies were making travel and communications easier. It became clear that ‘traditional’ peoples were not static and unchanging. They did take on new ideas and practices.

Anthropologists also began to recognise that change wasn’t something new. So-called ‘traditional’ peoples had always changed and adapted. They were not leftovers from earlier ages; rather, they were contemporaries with histories of their own. Eric Wolf’s influential book Europe and the People without History documented the active histories of many social groups that had been previously portrayed as static, passive recipients of European colonisation. This book and others made the case that all communities and societies – including apparently isolated and traditional ones – actively navigate and instigate change.

Nevertheless, anthropologists still tended to have an ambivalent view of change. Anthropologists saw the value in traditional ways of working, and feared what would happen when distinctive local practices were replaced by modern cook-stoves, televisions, wage-labour and other global technologies and practices. They feared that the uniqueness of these ‘traditional’ cultures would be lost. When anthropologists saw the groups they worked with losing their languages or giving up their traditional lifestyles, they tended to view change as not a good thing.

This ambivalent view of change was exacerbated when development became an explicit focus for national governments and international organisations. From the mid twentieth century, anthropologists found themselves witnessing numerous intentional change-creating efforts in the places where they worked. Most of these development initiatives were explicitly focused on modernisation: they aimed to replace ‘traditional’ lifestyles with more modern ones based in industrial technology and cash economies. Modernisation as an idea portrayed traditional practices as backward and undesirable. Anthropologists took a sceptical view.

Anthropologists thus found themselves at the pointy end of development: disagreeing with its premises while directly observing its impacts. Anthropologists working in specific contexts were often in a position to witness rapid social and economic changes and what they meant for real people on the ground in real places – often far from the centres of decision-making power. Frequently, the people on the receiving end of development initiatives were given no choice. They were forced to change in ways that other people wanted.

Some of these changes were disastrous for the people concerned. Local languages were banned, villages displaced or destroyed, migratory groups were forced to be sedentary, access to forests or waterways was blocked, traditional livelihoods were replaced with precarious low-wage labour, and communities’ ways of life were destroyed. Some development efforts were helpful, improving people’s options, security or standards of living – but there were plenty of initiatives that did the opposite. And often, anthropologists were in a position to witness the impacts first-hand.

Because of these experiences, anthropologists have tended to have a very ambivalent view of development. Unlike economists and development managers, anthropologists have not started from the position that development is necessarily a good thing. If anything, anthropologists have started from a contrary position: that development may not be the solution, but rather the problem.

Anthropologists have often taken a critical view of development because their work has enabled them to observe, up-close, the effects of development for real people in real places. Through their experiences, they have been conscious of what happens when rapid change – planned or unplanned – threatens people’s way of life. They have seen people lose their land and their livelihoods. They have seen communities uprooted and fragmented, and functioning social systems damaged beyond repair.

Over the years, many anthropologists have sought to mobilise these experiences observing development in context, and to use what they know to make a positive difference. Anthropologists, as both academics and practising anthropologists, have encouraged development workers to become more engaged with questions of social context. They have called attention to how development processes have disadvantaged particular grou...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of boxes
• Introduction
• 1 Anthropology of development in theory
• 2 Anthropology of development in practice
• 3 An anthropological framework for development practice
• 4 Applying the framework: Tools and approaches
• 5 Anthropological responses to development challenges
• 6 Conclusions: Using anthropology in development work
• Further reading
• References
• Index