The projection of development: cinematic representation as an(other) source of authoritative knowledge? 1 London School of Economics and 1 Political Science, UK David Lewis
[email protected] 2 2 Dennis Rodgers University of Manchester, UK (to 31 August 2012) & University of Glasgow (from 1 September 2012) 3* Michael Woolcock
[email protected] &
[email protected] 3 World Bank August 2012
[email protected] BWPI Working Paper 176 Brooks World Poverty Institute ISBN : 978-1-907247-75-0 Creating and sharing knowledge to help end poverty www.manchester.ac.uk/bwpi Working papers are preliminary drafts from work in progress. They are circulated to obtain comments and criticisms prior to finalisation. Wherever possible we identify the final/authoritative version of what were originally working papers. Abstract Popular representations of development need to be taken seriously (though not uncritically) as sources of authoritative knowledge, not least because this is how most people in the global North (and elsewhere) ‘encounter’ development issues. To this end, and building on the broader agenda presented in a previous paper on exploring the usefulness of literary representations of development, we consider three different types of cinematic representations of development: films providing uniquely instructive insights, those unhelpfully eliding and simplifying complex processes, and those that, with the benefit of historical hindsight, usefully convey a sense of the prevailing assumptions that guided and interpreted the efficacy of development-related interventions at a particular time and place. We argue that the commercial and technical imperatives governing the production of contemporary films, and ‘popular’ films in particular, generate a highly variable capacity to ‘accurately’ render key issues in development, and thereby heighten their potential to both illuminate and obscure those issues.