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Ethnographic Practice and Public Aid Ethnographic Practice and Public Aid ACTA UNIVERSITATIS UPSALIENSIS Uppsala Studies in Cultural Anthropology no 45 Edited by Sten Hagberg and Charlotta Widmark Ethnographic Practice and Public Aid Methods and Meanings in Development Cooperation © The authors 2009 ISBN 978-91-554-7560-4 ISSN 0348-5099 Printed in Sweden by Edita Västra Aros, Västerås 2009. Distributor: Uppsala University Library, Box 510, SE-751 20 Uppsala, Sweden www.uu.se, [email protected] Table of Contents Foreword .............................................................................................. 7 Esse Nilsson Acknowledgements ............................................................................... 9 1. Introduction: Ethnographic Practice and Public Aid ..................... 11 Sten Hagberg and Charlotta Widmark 2. The Anthropologist as Troublemaker or Contributor in Development Work: Reflections on Experiences from the Field ........ 27 Per Brandström 3. Anthropology, Development and the ‘Perpetual Present’: Knowledge, Power and Practice ................................................... 53 David Lewis 4. Hovering on the Threshold: Challenges and Opportunities for Critical and Reflexive Ethnographic Research in Support of International Aid Practice .............................................................73 Rosalind Eyben 5. Development, Governance and Reforms: Studying Practical Norms in the Delivery of Public Goods and Services ................... 101 Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan 6. Notions of Poverty and Wealth in Coastal Zanzibar: The Policy Relevance of Local Perspectives ................................. 125 Eva Tobisson 7. Anonymity and Familiarity: Participant Observation in Development Cooperation Practice ............................................. 161 Sten Hagberg 8. From Mission to Profession: A Narrative of the Institute of Cultural Affairs .......................................................................... 183 Hans Hedlund 9. Ideals, Contradictions and Confusion: NGO Development Workers at the Grassroots ......................................................... 215 Malin Arvidson 10. Empowering Connections: Influencing Social Science Knowledge Production in Distant Places ................................... 241 Eren Zink 11. The Loneliness of the Short-Term Consultant: Anthropology and Hydropower Development in Laos .............. 263 Jan Ovesen 12. Shortcuts to Anthropological Fieldwork in Sida-Commissioned Assessments: Experiences from Bolivia and Peru .......................... 287 Charlotta Widmark Foreword The arts and crafts of anthropologists in applied development practice display a spectrum of approaches, tools, attitudes and ways of working. This book shows some of these trade secrets and engages the reader in the intrinsic web of relations and practices within contemporary institutions of development cooperation. These relations and practices often set the parameters in smaller and larger development interventions and within policy formulation. They lay implicit within the Swedish Policy for Global Development (2002), expressed through the Rights perspective and Poor people’s perspectives on development. While ethnographic knowledge and practice may add to the overall analysis and interpretation of context – the natural point of departure for all development cooperation – the practical approaches of applied anthro- pology are often expressed through participatory tools of inquiry, which at the same time open up anthropology to other disciplines and practices. These approaches are used methodologically and for specific purposes in development cooperation, but also exist as implicit and subtle ways to relate to development and change, thereby becoming much more associ- ated with attitudes and behaviours of development practitioners them- selves. These ‘anthropologists from within’ are well expressed in the col- lection of papers in this book. Some of them work in development coop- eration agencies as well, including at Sida. A great challenge facing development cooperation in current times is that aid is channelled through larger interventions such as programme and general budget support. This prompts governments and agencies such as Sida to understand and clarify the links between national resource flows and impacts on the lives of people living in poverty. Ethnographic prac- tice and applied anthropology play an important role here; as analytical tools, for evaluation purposes, for development results, but above all as a way to handle the knowledge generation and understanding of how the local relates to the national and global and vice versa. It is this ambition and necessity that social and cultural anthropology can contribute to in contemporary development cooperation. This book, which is the outcome 8 Ethnographic Practice and Public Aid of the conference on Anthropology in Practice that Sida supported in 2006, provides valuable examples of this kind. Esse Nilsson Socio-cultural adviser Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) Acknowledgements The first ideas for this book project date back to the mid-1990s when both of us were working together at the Development Studies Unit of the Department of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University. The strong sense of doing important, painstaking work for Sida and other donors also motivated a more profound reflection on how anthropologists do engage in and with development. However, for various reasons it was not until ten years later that we were able to consider these ideas again and make a concrete proposal for funding a conference. Esse Nilsson, then socio-cultural adviser at Sida’s Department for Policy and Methodology, supported the conference idea as a way to gather anthropologists involved in development and aid. Other supportive people at Sida were Annika Lysén and Staffan Herr- ström. This support meant that Sida generously provided funding for the conference organisation, for which we are deeply grateful. The funding also covered a conference secretary, Ms. Mariam Persson. Mariam did a wonderful job of keeping all the strings together, making the whole or- ganisation run smoothly in a friendly atmosphere. Thank you, Mariam! We would also like to thank our fellow anthropologists who presented papers and debated these issues during the event. While not all the papers are published in this book, all paper presenters, discussants and chairs, as well as many in the audience, made substantial contributions to the reflec- tion on ethnographic practice and public aid. We also want to thank Anne Cleaves for her careful language editing. As always, our Department of Cultural Anthropology & Ethnology sup- ported the conference as well as the editorial process. As a complement to Sida support we also received funding for publishing the book from Wilhelm Ekmans fond at Uppsala University. Uppsala, June 2009 Sten Hagberg and Charlotta Widmark Sten Hagberg and Charlotta Widmark 1. Introduction Ethnographic Practice and Public Aid The ambition of this book is to explore the interface of anthropology and development with a particular focus on how anthropologists working in aid settings use, apply and interact with theory and method. With recent transformations of development cooperation in line with the Paris Decla- ration and anthropology’s decreasing influence within the development sector, it has become particularly important to describe, analyse and re- flect upon anthropologists’ experiences of being practically involved in international aid. In fact, despite the dominant positions of economists and political scientists working at macro-levels, many anthropologists still work in this professional field. Hence, the careful and thick description of such experiences is central both to understanding the ways in which pub- lic aid is currently organised and to arguing for stronger and more sub- stantial anthropological engagement in development cooperation. The roles of anthropologists have changed in current aid discourse and practices in which ‘projects’ and ‘programmes’ have given way to ‘budget’ and ‘sector’ supports and where poverty reduction is dealt with – and sometimes almost disguised – in policies and reforms at macro-levels. In a professional world so dominated by economists and political scientists, anthropologists have difficulties finding room to manoeuvre, let alone influencing the ways in which current development cooperation is organ- ised. And yet anthropological knowledge and perspectives continue to be critical for improved development practice. For instance, it is central in the production of anthropological knowledge to take the specific context into account and to analyse the social relations shaping this context, and then also to apprehend the situations in which the context and the social relations determine the discourse and practices of social actors. Such an- thropological perspectives are pertinent to policy, because to make sense, policy must address the contexts, relations and situations in which people 12 Ethnographic Practice and Public Aid living in poverty are located (see Hagberg 2001), something easily said but far more difficult to do in actual policy. Tobisson (this volume) points to the problem of perspectives on poverty being based on generalised assumptions rather than informed understanding of what matters to poor people. It is as if the harsh realities in which poor people live are dealt with ‘at a distance’, away from the dirt and dust of everyday life. Donor agencies nowadays rarely have
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