Anthropology, Development and Modernities

Exploring Discourse, Counter-Tendencies and Violence

Alberto Arce, Norman Long

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781134628421
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

While the diffusion of modernity and the spread of development schemes may bring prosperity, optimism and opportunity for some, for others it has brought poverty, a deterioration in quality of life and has given rise to violence. This collection brings an anthropological perspective to bear on understanding the diverse modernities we face in the contemporary world. It provides a critical review of interpretations of development and modernity, supported by rigorous case studies from regions as diverse as Guatemala, Sri Lanka, West Africa and contemporary Europe.
Together, the chapters in this volume demonstrate the crucial importance of looking to ethnography for guidance in shaping development policies. Ethnography can show how people's own agency transforms, recasts and complicates the modernities they experience. The contributors argue that explanations of change framed in terms of the dominantdiscourses and institutions of modernity are inadequate, and that we give closer attention to discourses, images, beliefs and practices that run counter to these yet play a part in shaping them and giving them meaning.
Anthropology, Development and Modernities deals with the realities of people's everyday lives and dilemmas. It is essential reading for students and scholars in anthropology, sociology and development studies. It should also be read by all those actively involved in development work.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Anthropology, Development and Modernities
• Contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1: Reconfiguring Modernity and Development from an Anthropological Perspective
• 2: Creating or Regulating Development Representing Modernities Through Language and Discourse
• 3: Modernisation Without the Market? The Case of the ‘Soviet East’1
• 4: Islamisms and the Decivilising Processes of Globalisation
• 5: The Spectacle of Modernity Blood, Microscopes and Mirrors in Colonial Tanganyika1
• 6: Development Discourse and its Subversion Decivilisation, Depoliticisation and Dispossession in West Africa1
• 7: On the Anticipation of Violence Modernity and Identity in Southern Sri Lanka1
• 8: At the frontiers ofthe modern state in post-war Guatemala
• 9: Vital Force, Avenging Spirits and Zombies Discourses on Drug Addiction Among Surinamese Creole Migrants in Amsterdam
• 10: Consuming Modernity Mutational Processes of Change
• 11: Exploring local/global transformations
• Bibliography