Anthropology of Development

optional courses

The course is an introduction to an important field of critical anthropology which is anthropology of development. It is related to post-colonial studies of the relation between North and South and post-structural theory.

The sign “*” by the text means that it is not compulsory for the whole class but for the person who is presenting it.

1. Introduction

What is Anthropology of Development?

2. „Dr Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde” - Development and anthropology

Ferguson, James

1997 Anthropology and Its Evil Twin: ‘Development’ in the Constitution of a Discipline, [in:] Frederick Cooper and Randall Packard eds. International Development and the Social Sciences: Essays on the History and Politics of Knowledge, University of California Press.

3. Genealogy of the concept of development

Cowen, Michael and Robert Shenton

1995 The Invention of Development, [in:] Jonathan Crush ed., Power of Development, Routledge.

*Haugerud, Angelique and Marc Edelman

2004 Development, [in:] A Companion to the Anthropology of Politics, David Nugent and Joan Vincent, eds, pp. 86-106. Oxford: Blackwell.

4. Concepts: development, „Third World”, underdevelopment

Escobar, Arturo

1988 Power and Visibility: Development and the Invention and Management of the Third World, “Cultural Anthropology”, Vol. 3, No. 4, pp. 428-443.

*Pletsch, Carl E.

1981 The Three Worlds, or the Division of Social Scientific Labor, Circa 1950-1975, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 23, No. 4., pp. 565-590.

* Truman, Harry S.

1949 Inaugural Address, January 20. http://www.vlib.us/amdocs/texts/41trum1.htm

5. Development buzzwords: poverty, poverty reduction, participation, social capital, sustainability, etc. (26.03)

Sustainability ……………………………..– environment …………………………………………

Needs ……………………………………– Standard of Living ………………………………………….

Taking the power out of empowerment ……………………………… – Social capital …………………………..

Helping ………………………………………. – Poverty ………………………………………..

(each student reads about and presents different concept and asks one question for discussion)

Cornwall Andrea, Deborah Eade (eds.)

2010 Deconstructing Development Discourse Buzzwords and Fuzzwords, Oxfam, Oxford.

Sachs, Wolfgang (ed.)

2010 (1992) The Development Dictionary. A Guide to Knowledge as Power, Zed Books Ltd, London/New Jersey.

6. Modernization, colonialism, development

Scheper-Hughes, Nancy

1997 Demography without numbers, [in:] Anthropological demography: toward a new synthesis, (eds.) David I. Kertzer and Tom Fricke, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois, 201-22.

* Arce, Alberto; Norman Long

2000 Consuming Modernity. Mutational processes of change, [en:] ed. A. Arce, N. Lang, Anthropology, Development and Modernities, p. 159-183, Routledge, London, New York.

7. How to study development? Applied anthropology, action anthropology

Bennett, John W.

1996 Applied and Action Anthropology: Ideological and Conceptual Aspects, Current Anthropology, Vol. 37, No.1, Supplement: Special Issue: Anthropology in Public, pp.23-34.

Tax, Sol

1975 Action Anthropology, “Current Anthropology”, Vol. 16, No. 4, pp. 514-517.

* Daubenmier, Judith M.

2008 Sol Tax and the Value of Anthropology, [in] The Meskwaki and Anthropologists. Action Anthropology Reconsidered p. 64-108, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln/London.

8. Studying development projects: useful concepts.

Olivier de Sardan, Jean-Pierre

2005 Anthropology & Development. Understanding contemporary social change, Zed Books, London/New York. (Chapter 9, *Chapter 1)

*Chapter 1

9. Development and gender (07.05)

Villarreal, Magdalena

2007 Power and Self-Identity: The Beekeepers of Ayuquila [w:] M. Melhuus & K. A. Stølen, Machos, Mistresses, Madonnas. Contesting the Power of Latin American Gender Imagery, VERSO, London/New York.

*Crewe, Emma; Elizabeth Harrison

2002 The Gender Agenda [in:] Whose Development, An Ethnography of Aid, p. 49-68, Zed Books, London/New York.

10. Microcredits (14.05)

Hummel, Agata

2013 The commercialization of microcredits and local consumerism: examples of over-indebtedness from indigenous Mexico [in:] I. Guérin, S. Morvant-Roux, M. Villarreal (eds) Microfinance, Debt and Over-Indebtedness Juggling with money, Routledge, London & New York, p. 253-271.

*Lazar, Sian

2004 Education for credit. Development as Citizenship Project in Bolivia, “Critique of Anthropology” no. 24 (3), s. 301-319.

11. Development hypocrisy

Ferguson, James and Larry Lohmann,

1994 The Anti-Politics Machine: ‘Development’ and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho, “The Ecologist” 24 (5): 176-181.

*Mosse, David

2006 Anti-social anthropology? Objectivity, objection, and the ethnography of public policy and professional communities, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute no. 12, 935-956.

12. Surviving progress (28.05)

13. Development critique revised.

De Vries, Pieter

2007 Don’t Compromise Your Desire for Development! A Lacanian/Deleuzian rethinking of the anti-politics machine. Third World Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 1, pp. 25–43.

*Give a man a fish

13. Voices from the south

Esteva, Gustavo; Madhu Suri Prakash

1998 Beyond development, what?, Development in Practice, 8:3, p. 280-296.

*Escobar A., 2012 New Preface. In: Encountering Development. The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton, Princeton University Press, New York: vii-xlii.

14. Alternatives to development?

Gudynas Eduardo

2011 Buen Vivir: Today´s tomorrow, Development 54 (4): 441-447.

15. Conclusions

Course requirements:

− Reading a main text for each meeting and showing its comprehension during the meeting (class). If you have not red the text it counts as an absence.

− Always bring the text with you!!!!

− Bringing minimum two questions to each text to share with the group and to discuss them.

− Participation in the discussion.

− Introduction to the class topic, presentation of one additional text related to one of the subjects of the class.

Absences

o You are obliged to regularly assist the class with the exception of those who were given the permission far an individual organization of studies; they should negotiate with the professor the mode of participation in classes and the conditions of the assessment.

o The maximum number of absences may not exceed 1/4 of the course (that is 3, and in exceptional cases 4 meetings). Otherwise the course can not be passed.

o Every absence, justified or not, must be made up for, which means that the student must master the knowledge that was passed in class.

 To make up for an absence you should write a short essay on the text that was treated in the class and deliver it one week after the absence, until the next class (the deadline may be postponed to two weeks if you show the sick leave document). Essays delivered later will not be accepted.

 Students that have been absent for health reasons (that is have shown the sick leave document in the next class) or were taking part in other university activities are not exempt from the acquired knowledge on the topic.