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Anthropology and Development An uneasy romance

Björg Karlsdóttir

Leiðbeinandi: James G. Rice Júní 2018

Anthropology and Development An uneasy romance

Björg Karlsdóttir

Lokaverkefni til BA–gráðu í Mannfræði Leiðbeinandi: James G. Rice 12 einingar

Félags– og mannvísindadeild Félagsvísindasvið Háskóla Íslands Júní, 2018

Anthropology and Development

Ritgerð þessi er lokaverkefni til BA í mannfræði og er óheimilt að afrita ritgerðina á nokkurn hátt nema með leyfi rétthafa. © Björg Karlsdóttir, 2018

Prentun: Háskólaprent Reykjavík, Ísland, 2018

Abstract

Since the end of the Second World War, International Development has become one of the most dominant ideas of the twentieth century with its goal to encourage positive change in the so called ‘Third World’ or ‘global South’. Anthropologists have been involved in international development since it was established in the 1950s, both in theory and practice, but have found it difficult to agree on the discipline’s professional and intellectual relationship with it and this has been an ongoing debate within the field. In this thesis, the relationship between international development and anthropology will be examined. First, an historical overview of development and its theories will be laid out and the ideologies through which it was constructed. Anthropology’s beginnings as a discipline will also be considered and how it later informed some core ideas of development. Anthropologists’ involvement in development will be explained and how it has divided the discipline into two sub- disciplines, based on very different theoretical orientations. Then, the influential post- development critique that was dominant during the late 1980s and 1990s in anthropology will be introduced as well as its theoretical foundations and the historical circumstances it was born into. The work of Arturo Escobar and James Ferguson will be presented and how it has influenced the discipline. Then, will be demonstrated how development has been treated within anthropology since the turn of the millennia and the work of anthropologists that have tried to move beyond the post-development critique as well as the suggested alternatives that have been presented. Lastly, a brief discussion of new challenges that the world of development and anthropology of development face with a changing global scene will conclude the thesis.

4 Table of Contents

Table of Contents ...... 5 1 Introduction ...... 6 2 The development of Development ...... 8 2.1 Historical overview ...... 8 2.2 Theories of development ...... 11 2.3 Dependency and World System theories ...... 13

3 Anthropology and Development – an uneasy romance ...... 15 3.1 Development anthropology and Anthropology of Development ...... 15

4 Post-Development ...... 21 4.1 Post-modernism ...... 21 4.2 Post-structuralism ...... 22 4.3 Post-colonialism ...... 24 4.4 Arturo Escobar ...... 25 4.5 James Ferguson ...... 28

5 New Anthropology of Development ...... 29 5.1 Moving beyond the critique ...... 29 5.2 ‘New’ issues – ‘new’ development’ ...... 34

6 Conclusion ...... 38 References ...... 40

5 1 Introduction The concept of ‘development’, in the sense it has been used since the late 1940s, has become one of the most dominant ideas of the twentieth century, with the implication to promote positive change in countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, the so called ‘Third World’ (Lewis, 2005) or ‘global South’ and has been used to describe social and cultural differences around the globe ever since (Venkatesan & Yarrow, 2012:1). There are very few terms or concepts that provide as many difficulties in its definition as ‘development’. In a standard dictionary definition, ‘development’ is explained as a state of growth or advancement but as a social practice it is and continues to be highly complex with multiple meanings and explanations which people within various fields have found problematic to agree on (Lewis, 2005). Within anthropology, development has been a central subject since its emergence. Development is studied as an institution that affects a large part of the world’s population. It is construed differently by different people and holds many different cultural practices. Development plays a major role in the life of many people, mostly in non-Western societies, which have been the central focus of anthropologists (Rossi, 2004a:556).

In this thesis, the relationship between international development and anthropology will be examined. Since anthropology’s inception, the discipline has been the study of ‘native’ and ‘traditional’ peoples, and it is the discipline that has reflected upon and criticized its own colonial history the most (Escobar, 1991). This has played a major role in this problematic relationship between the two fields. Anthropologists have been involved in international development since it was established in the 1950s both in theory and praxis but have found it difficult to agree on the disciplines professional and intellectual relationship with it.

In the first chapter of this thesis the history of International Development will be traced, and the ideologies through which it was constructed. Anthropology’s beginnings as a discipline will also be considered and how it informed some core ideas of development. In the second chapter, anthropologists’ involvement in development will be explained and how it has divided the discipline into two sub-disciplines, based on very different theoretical orientations. The post-structural critique of development that was dominant during the late 1980s and 1990s will be introduced as well as its

6 theoretical foundations and the historical circumstances it was born into. The most influential anthropological work of the time will be presented, the work of Arturo Escobar and James Ferguson and how it has influenced the discipline. In the last chapter, it will be demonstrated how the post-structural critique has influenced the discipline and been criticized and the work of anthropologists that have tried to move beyond the critique and suggested alternatives is presented. The relationship between anthropology and international development since the 2000s will be explored as well as some of the latest work of anthropologists focusing on development.

7 2 The development of Development

2.1 Historical overview The very foundations of what we understand today to be interventionist international development was laid during the colonial era (Gardner & Lewis, 2015). In the late 1930s and 1940s, a development framework in a form of interventionist policies and metropolitan finances was first presented in the colonial world. The colonizers, desperate to re-legitimize an empire that was challenged by nationalist movements, labor unrest and a growing resistance towards colonial rule, relied on this new development framework to stabilize their rule. But this would only create more conflict instead of solving it as the resistance grew. This made the colonial development turn out in a very different way than was intended: “it provided a means by which imperial powers could reconcile themselves to their loss of power, while maintaining a connection with their ex-colonies and a continued sense of their mission in shaping their future” (Cooper & Packard, 1997:7). What characterized these earlier forms of development thought were notions of mutual benefits, which are still common today. The goal was first and foremost to stimulate markets in the colonies to boost the economy at home (Gardner & Lewis, 2015:15).

Despite the colonial history of development, the activity of ‘international development’, as we know it today, is seen as emerging in the end of Second World War when important multilateral development agencies were established (Gardner & Lewis, 2015:15). In the first years after the War significant amounts of aid were provided to Europe which was in ruins. In anticipation of the reconstruction that would be needed in the years after the War, and to encourage international economic cooperation, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), or the Bretton Woods Institutions were established during a conference held by forty-three nations in the town of Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, United States in July 1944. Around the same time the United Nations (UN) had been in development and was formally established in 1945 (Edelman & Haugerud, 2005). In opposition to what was known as ‘bilateral aid’ or

8 the aid assistance from one government to another, now ‘multilateral aid’ was presented, including various donors with no one directly controlling policy. Yet, international organizations like the World Bank were heavily influenced by the United States and supported democratic governments with strong emphasis on the free market (Gardner & Lewis, 2015:15-16). The Bretton Woods institutions encouraged an economic approach to development with fast reconstruction and growth as a vital factor to a good national economy. These economic benefits were assumed to “filter down through the economy and be distributed across groups and sectors” (Nolan, 2002:35). What would later follow the economic approach was emphasis on political stability, democracy and transnational participation (2002:35).

With decolonization movements around the world emerging in the years after the Second World War, some former colonies aligned with the United States and various international organizations. Under the threat of the spread of communism in the decolonizing world by the end of the 1940s, economic leaders in the US became skeptical about being able to “wait for the benefits of opening more areas to the markets” and with this, a shift away from market-driven approaches was promoted with the world’s poor as a focus (Cooper & Packard, 1997:8). This led to the ‘internationalization’ of earlier colonial-development ideas about the ‘others’ being in need to take up modern ways of living, making ‘development’ a global issue and in the interest of states (1997:8).

It was under these circumstances that US president Harry Truman in 1949 announced in his famous address that the United States would provide the poor nations of the world with technical knowledge to accomplish the economic prosperity already experienced by the West; a ‘fair deal’ for the whole world. Capital, science and technology were the principle components of making this vast reformation possible and in this way, the American dream of peace and profusion could be distributed to the entire world population (Escobar, 1995:4). The World Bank and International Monetary Fund moved away from efforts of reconstruction to international development, as well as various UN organizations (Cooper & Packard, 1997:9). What followed was a new era in the understanding and managing of the world’s problems (Escobar, 1995:3) and the

9 less economically established areas of the world were now labelled ‘underdeveloped’ (Gardner & Lewis, 2015:10).

It was also around this time when a new vocabulary to describe the different geopolitical areas of the world became popular. The impoverished nations of Africa, Asia and Latin America, were now to be known collectively as the ‘Third World’. These countries were extremely diverse, but had a similar overall profile according to certain criteria: “low per capita incomes, shorter life expectancy, higher rates of infant mortality, and a higher population growth rate than industrial countries” (Nolan, 2002:35). Also, most of their inhabitants worked in agriculture and many of these nations were former colonies whose economies were based on the primary sector. Nolan (2002:35) argues that the ‘Third World’ conception “obscured more that it clarified”. Third World countries were not equally poor, they were culturally diverse and their experience with colonialism was manifold. These countries also presented a great variety of governments, economies and political positions. The term, in Nolan’s (2002:36) view, has not been of any help in understanding the nature of poverty or development.

The mutual interests of the United States and Europe to ‘develop’ or ‘modernize’ the ‘Third World’ with technical assistance would be an important factor in the establishment of various international development agencies in the years to follow (Cooper & Packard, 1997:8) and these institutions and an ever-growing number of nongovernmental (NGO’s) and multilateral organizations keep on following the ‘developmental’ vision still to this day (Venkatesan & Yarrow, 2012:1).

Economics dominated the development thinking in the first years of international aid distribution and ‘underdevelopment’ was considered a technical problem (Ferguson, 1994) that had to be fixed – by making the poor countries more like the rich – and economics should provide a quick solution. However, in recent years, development has become more focused on social and cultural aspects with a growing realization that economics alone cannot make a successful development (Lewis, 2005). In the 1970s, ‘alternative’ development with new ‘basic need’ approaches was presented as an answer to the ‘mainstream’ economic development (Pieterse, 1998:346). The ‘basic need’ policies of the 1970s turned later into new emphasis of ‘sustainable development’

10 in the 1990s and more recently a focus on human development, ‘building civil society’ and ‘good governance’ (Lewis, 2005:472).

But even though the development industry is a field characterized by an “ever- shifting landscape of labels, concepts and fashions”, it still is and will remain a powerful and complex world of private and public organizations distributing great amounts of aid (Lewis, 2005:473). The old economic oriented tradition continues partly in the modern day with the priorities of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, who advocate for neoliberal ‘structural adjustment’ polices with the aim to free markets and minimize the role of governments (Lewis, 2005:475). Venkatesan and Yarrow (2012:1) argue that despite the fact that the technocratic and economic oriented ideologies of the 1950s and 1960s have been harshly criticized and laid aside, neoliberal thinking characterized by goals of economic growth remains dominant within mainstream development institutions and their practices.

As has been shown, international development was in the beginning mostly characterized by economic relief and transfer of modern technology to poor countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America or the so called ‘Third World’ and the motives based on ideas about progress and modernization (Kristín Loftsdóttir, 2016). In the next section, theories of development and their foundations will be explained as well as anthropology’s theoretical background in this context.

2.2 Theories of development During the era of the Enlightenment, in eighteenth century Northern Europe, the belief in the promotion of progress emerged. At this point, industrial capitalism took over from earlier feudalism and this encouraged Western thought which highlighted rationality, progress, technology and science (Edelman & Haugerud, 2005). During the time of the Enlightenment the dichotomy between ‘primitive’ and ‘civilized’ people, ‘backwards’ and ‘advanced’ began to emerge and these divisions appear today in the conception of ‘developed’ and ‘underdeveloped’ (Gardner & Lewis, 2015:10).

11 The breakthrough in scientific knowledge and social theory in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century is equally important to the history of development theory as capital expansion and industrialization. What was central to this was the publishing of Charles Darwin’s Origin of species in 1859. Darwin’s work was highly influential within Western social sciences at the time and his discovery about the evolution of biological species would be used to theorize social change and explain societal differences by some of the founding fathers of social theory, among them anthropologists (Gardner & Lewis, 2015:11). The social evolutionists denied the common nineteenth century beliefs that the so called ‘savages’ were biologically different from the ‘civilized men’. They argued that ‘savages’ and ‘civilized men’ were the same beings and that ‘higher forms’ of societies only existed because they had developed from ‘lower ones’ (Ferguson, 1997:153). In this view, non-civilized people were seen “[representing] more or less nearly, the history and experience of our own remote ancestors when in corresponding conditions” (Morgan, 1877 cited in Ferguson, 1997:153). The social evolutionists believed in ‘human unity’, viewing all human kinds as one but they also divided societies, ranking them on a linear scale after their stages of ‘evolutionary development’ (1997:153); as Morgan (cited in Ferguson, 1997:153) described it “other tribes and nations have been left behind in the race of progress”.

Within the social evolutionist thought, ‘development’ was central and the fundamental principle in which more ‘civilized’ societies would have emerged out of so called simpler ones; “the driving motive force in human history” (Ferguson, 1997:153). This idea of human societies all moving under the principle of ‘evolutionary development’ on a linear scale provided the division between ‘primitive’ and ‘civilized’ people and societies which played a key role in the colonial idealism (1997:154). The Enlightenment thought as well as the social evolutionist theories can be reflected in the ideas and theoretical body that international development was based on in the first years of its existence.

It was first after the Second World War that the study of development became a specific field, when experts in the West became interested in the ‘modernization’ of the nations that were gaining their independency from colonial rule. At that time, the

12 concept of ‘modernity’ was constructed through ideas suggesting the superiority of the already ‘modernized’ nations (Arce & Long, 2000:4).

During the first years of international development, in the 1950s and 1960s, the dominating theoretical perspective was the ‘modernization theory’ that was fundamentally evolutionary in the sense that societies were seen to be moving on a linear scale, all heading the same way towards the highest stage of industrialization, urbanization and societal structures. Within modernization theory, rationality plays a key role, both in a moral and economic sense (Gardner & Lewis, 2015:19). These ideas were highlighted by US economist W.W. Rostow in the Stages of Economic Growth: A non-Communist Manifesto (1960). In his influential work, which was highly liberal and inspired by the Enlightenment thought, Rostow demonstrated that the economic growth accomplished in the West should be used as an example for the rest of the world (Gardner & Lewis, 2015). He stressed that there were five stages of development where poor, traditional societies could move through and at last reach the final stage, based on financial investments, economic growth, good governance and modern technologies, and that would eventually lead to their self-sustaining growth (Lewis, 2005); “in its ‘mature stage’, technology pervades the whole economy, leading to ‘the age of high mass consumption’, high productivity and high levels of urbanization” (Gardner & Lewis, 2015:20).

The ‘modernization project’ was supposed to offer the ‘Third World’ assistance to ‘catch up’. The aid policies promoted by international organizations advocated the need to eliminate any ‘traditional’ cultural or institutional barriers that could prevent ‘progress’. This marked the establishment and legitimization of a ‘developmentalist’ relationship with the ‘Third World’ and it was dismissed that there had existed any kind of ‘modernity’ in these countries before Western invasion (Arce & Long, 2005:5).

2.3 Dependency and World System theories In the 1970s, Marxist influenced dependency and world system theorists heavily criticized the socioeconomic effects of modernization and development (Kristín Loftsdóttir, 2016). These theories were characterized by systematic and structural forms and connected historical events and social aspects to a general overall system like mode

13 of production, world capital system, or the global market. “The aim was nothing less than a systematic theory of social totalities, their parts, and their developmental dynamics, with nothing left to unexplained or attributed to chance, although some aspects might have to be examined empirically” (Peet & Hartwich, 2009:197).

In the ‘dependency’ school of development, theorists turned their focus to historical and political processes. They rejected the modernization theory and laid an emphasis on the unequal trade relationship between ‘North’ and ‘South´. The theorists argued that ‘underdevelopment’ was the result of the integration of small economies into the greater global capitalist system, mainly to provide cheap raw materials to industrialized countries (Lewis, 2005:475). The dependency theorists claimed that development was fundamentally unequal process in which the rich countries get richer and thereby the rest poorer (Gardner & Lewis, 2015).

Dependency theories, like most Marxist theories, are mostly historical and political in orientation. The dependency theorists argued that the ‘Third World’ had been ‘underdeveloped’ by Western imperialism and post-imperial manipulation. This has sometimes been explained with the center/periphery model where the global north presents the ‘center’ of capitalism and the global south its ‘periphery’. The economies of the periphery were then merged into capitalism on highly unequal terms. The periphery provided raw materials for manufacturing in the center and peripheral societies became dependent upon foreign markets (Gardner & Lewis, 2015:23). Similar theories are world system theories which viewed the globe as one interconnected system where each country is seen in connection to the system. The Third World was not seen as natural but as constructed through economic and political processes (Gardner & Lewis, 2015:24).

The ‘dependency’ theories and neo-Marxist critiques were popular throughout the 1970s but later they were harshly criticized and lost their influence in the 1980s. Some critics pointed out that they oversimplified Marx’s ideas about the destructive power of capitalism, for underestimating the strategies of marginal groups to resist and renegotiate their place within the global system, and for its lack of solutions to poverty and underdevelopment. But even though dependency theories met much critique, many of its ideas remain within some of the newer critiques on international trade,

14 assistance, authorities and supply chains, which has been taken up by various mainstream movements and activists (Lewis, 2005:475).

3 Anthropology and Development – an uneasy romance The relationship between development and anthropology has been present since the 1950s and has continued in various ways ever since in a form of both research and practice, with moral and political involvement or in the form of critique (Lewis, 2005). Since the beginning, this relationship has been rather uneasy and problematic and among anthropologists it has been a strenuous task, agreeing on which stance should be taken when dealing with the issue; if ‘applied’ anthropology is appropriated or not. These disagreements have deep roots in anthropology’s colonial history and has effected the discipline’s relationship with development. This will be demonstrated in the next section.

3.1 Development anthropology and Anthropology of Development Before the Second World War, the only social scientists studying people and societies in countries that would later be labelled the ‘Third World’ were anthropologists. This would play a major role in the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist critique that the discipline received in the post-World War era (Paiement, 2007). Anthropologists have had a long history of involvement in imperial projects, but also in projects of protection, solidarity and liberation that ran counter colonial goals (Mosse, 2013:228). Anthropology has a for a long time struggled with how to study and represent different cultures and at the same time tried to grasp and move away from its ties to Western ideas about ‘progress’ and colonial history (Arce & Long, 2005:1; Marcus & Fischer 1986).

Applied anthropology is a sub-field within anthropology where anthropological methods and concepts are used in practical and policy settings. Within the field, anthropologists work as activists, policy makers and professionals within variety of fields, including development (Lewis, 2005). Disagreements on anthropological involvement in such practical matters (opposed by the emphasis on scientific

15 objectivity) can be traced back to the early twentieth century, where Bronislaw Malinowski, in the US, argued for applied involvement of anthropologists and that they should take part in policy making with the African colonial administrators at the same time E. E. Evans-Pritchard, on the UK side, advised them to do the complete opposite (Lewis & Mosse 2006).

During the colonial period, anthropologists contributed research findings to policy makers and colonial rulers and the sub-discipline of applied anthropology has therefore been controversial within the wider discipline (Nolan 2002:66). The colonial history of anthropology still today continues to affect the “vocabulary, imagination, and political commitments” of the discipline and anthropologists’ political involvement at the time has sustained a suspicion towards the sub-field of applied anthropology (Paiement 2007).

As international aid became commonplace in the 1950s many anthropologists started to work within the field at the time (Bierschenk, 2008). Their main task was to “facilitate the diffusion of new technologies by overcoming resistance to change arising out of traditional values and institutions” (Escobar, 1997:662). In the United States, anthropologists embraced the humanist-liberal optimism and egalitarian populism that had characterized the American social sciences since its emergence in the nineteenth century, which can be associated with a moral motivation to make a better world. Many anthropologists saw the field as a form of ‘public service’ (Bierschenk, 2008:6-7).

In the 1960s and early 1970s with a direction towards economic oriented policies, development planners and policy makers largely ignored the knowledge that social scientists had to offer in development work and found it irrelevant (Cernea, 1995). That, and a radical criticism of anthropology’s own colonial past and its then present involvement in the occupation of foreign territories, led to a withdrawal of anthropologists from the development scene and anthropologists increasingly found employment in universities (Lewis, 2005).

However, in the 1970s, after years of failed economic oriented interventions, development organizations re-considered their approaches. The focus switched to the social and cultural aspects of development projects, the consequences they had on a people on a local level and the importance of local knowledge in the programs. It

16 became generally accepted that the poor themselves had to participate in development programs if they should be efficient, and that the programs had to be socially and culturally relevant. This can be mirrored in the World Banks ‘poverty oriented’ policies focused on the ‘basic needs’ of the poor, presented in 1973 by its leader Robert McNamara, but other development institutions like the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and some of the UN technical agencies were also turning the same way at the time. The focus on ‘culture’ increased, which until 1970s had received little attention created new opportunities for anthropologists within development (Escobar, 1997).

At the time, anthropologists were also facing a harsh employment crisis within the academy, and were therefore keener to get involved in development work (Escobar, 1997; Ferguson, 1997). The number of anthropologists working for development organizations increased drastically in the years to follow. In the World Bank for example the employed professional anthropologists increased from one in the 1970s to over fifty by the mid 1990s (Carnea, 1995). This turn created the sub-field of ‘development anthropology’. Yet, the sub-discipline was highly controversial since its emergence within the wider discipline, just like applied anthropology had been, and it received great amount of criticism. It had a bad reputation among academic anthropologists and often thought of as having little, or nothing at all, to do with mainstream anthropological theory (Ferguson, 1997).

The anthropologists James Ferguson (1997:167) was highly critical of anthropology’s involvement in development and has referred to development as anthropology’s ‘evil twin’. What he means is that development is concerned with the same geographic areas as anthropology but at the same time it challenges the presumptions that anthropologists have been devoted to, regarding the value of the traditional, local and autonomous. As he explains, anthropologists usually study ‘less developed’ people in ‘less developed’ countries – “in short, the Third World within” (Ferguson 1997:169). Ferguson argues that we are left with “dual organization binding anthropology to its evil twin: the field that fetishizes the local, the autonomous, the traditional, locked in a strange, agonistic dance with the field that, through the magic of development, would destroy locality, autonomy, and tradition in the name of becoming modern” (1997:169).

17 On the contrary, Gow (2002:300) argues that development anthropology has been a moral project and that the justifications for its existence have been based on strong ethical assumptions.

This new trend, at the time, of anthropological involvement in development has also been linked to the emergence of radical development theory and increased politicization within anthropology during the 1970s. The shift from modernization theory in development studies towards ‘dependency’ theories and radical Marxist critique drew more attention to anthropologists and their detailed research of small and traditional societies within the greater political economy (Lewis, 2005). Anthropological knowledge was seen as a tool that could provide understanding about people’s behavior and anthropologists became involved in development with a strong feeling of political and theoretical purpose (Ferguson, 1997:164).

But in the late 1980s and 1990s, a radical critique of development and anthropology’s involvement in it emerged, often associated with the work of the anthropologists James Ferguson and Arturo Escobar (Bierschenk, 2008), which will be better explained in next chapter. Anthropologists moved to the idea of ‘big D’ Development; the study of development as a dominant Western discourse analyzed in a Foucauldian fashion. Under such ideas, the West is seen to have continued to control processes of change in a post-colonial world (Mosse, 2013:228; Yarrow & Venkatesan, 2012).

This criticism of anthropologists’ involvement in development led to a shift from applied ‘development anthropology’ to a more academic and critical ‘anthropology of development’ and with this turn the relations between the two fields was radically reevaluated. Now, instead of studying processes, relationships and dynamics of development the main subject became the very institutions and knowledge producing of development and the whole development apparatus was to be understood as a Western ‘invention’ (Venkatesan & Yarrow, 2012:3). Anthropologists of development soon found out that any critique of development was also a critique of anthropology itself. Anthropological knowledge had been used through history to authorize particular colonial and post-colonial endeavor to social enhancement, and both anthropologists

18 and development professionals have agreed on similar ideas about social evolution (2012:4).

This divided the discipline of anthropology in the late 1980s and 1990s into two opposed positions and caused a disciplinary infighting. On the one side, there was the applied, technically sophisticated ‘development anthropology’, the main goal of which was to be practically useful within the development apparatus. This faction of anthropology was, from the point of view of its critics, seen as theoretically unreflective and focused almost solely on the potentials of anthropology’s contribution to development. On the other side, there was the ‘anthropology of development’ with its radical critics and its ‘anti-involvement’ stance, getting most of its influences from the approach inspired by the philosophy of Michel Foucault concerned with the connection of knowledge to power. These opposed positions within anthropology have very different theoretical, and practical orientations, and therefore offer remarkably different perspective of development, and do disagree on almost anything when it comes to the relation between anthropology and development. This has resulted in a very disunited discipline in this area (Bierschenk, 2008:8).

Paiement (2007:200) has pointed out two major downsides of this professional infighting. First, the negative accusations and the ‘monopoly’ of positive features declared by both parties “are not inherent reflections of any significant differences in the scope of either’s work”. In his view, these advantages and insufficiencies should rather be linked to good and bad anthropology. Second, Paiement (2007:200) claims that the division between applied and basic research in anthropology has “encouraged isolation and ignorance about the role and the value of anthropological concepts and methods to the processes of development”.

The shift from applied development anthropology to critical anthropology of development can in some ways be seen as a temporary period but discussions between anthropologists with different views on the application of anthropology has carried on throughout the 1990s and in to the 2000s (Venkatesan & Yarrow 2012:5).

Above, the uneasy relationship that anthropology has had with development has been demonstrated and how it has divided the discipline into two opposed positions. In the

19 next chapter, the radical criticism that helped to feed this divide that emerged in the 1980s and 1990s will be considered, and the two most influential scholars within the field of anthropology of development, namely Arturo Escobar and James Ferguson will be presented.

20 4 Post-Development Post-development critics claimed that development continued the exercise of power over so-called ‘Third World’, and some have even argued that development represents a new form of colonialism (Kiely, 1999). James Ferguson and Arturo Escobar, who both were highly influential within this type of criticism, suggested that anthropologists should move away from the previous focus on specific development policies, usually made within applied anthropology, to a broader critique of development with a capital ‘D’ viewed as a dominant Western discourse. Instead of focusing on single projects or paradigms or finding ways to improve development policies, now the aim was a critical deconstruction of the whole idea of ‘development’ (Venkatesan & Yarrow, 2012). To understand the radical critique of development within anthropology in the 1980s and 1990s it is important to understand the theoretical perspectives that were dominating at the time.

4.1 Post-modernism The post-modern thought became dominant in many social sciences in the 1980s and 1990s. Gardner and Lewis (2015) refer to the 1990s as the ‘age of post-modernity’ within both development and anthropology. The post-modern thought has multiple definitions but can be simply explained as the intellectual and cultural rejection of modernity. Within the academy, post-postmodernism marked the end of unitary theories of progress and scientific rationality and claiming, ‘objective truth’ was linked to the exercise of power. For post-modernists, there could not be one true version of reality because everybody experiences reality differently (Gardner & Lewis, 2015:28). New emphasis on ‘reflexivity’ emerged where ethnographic completeness and the authority of the anthropologist was rejected and there could not be made a true, complete statement about culture (Marcus & Fischer 1986). Postmodern anthropology got its inspiration from critical post-colonial writings and criticized the subjection of ‘the other’ versus ‘us’ (Barnard, 2000).

21 The turn to post-modernism could also been felt in the development practice. After 1980s, various new approaches were introduced to development work characterized by a focus on a specific issue instead of, as earlier, promising a ‘whole package’ solution. It also became common to work with a particular group or issue, like women or peasants for example, to view development and aid in more reflexive way, as well as applying ‘bottom-up’, grassroots approaches. These approaches can be traced back to the ‘basic need’ approaches that became popular within development work in the 1970s. Other related trends like ‘good governance’ and human development became popular in the 1990s and at this point development became more polarized both in theory and practice. The World Bank and various UN organizations favored neoliberal approaches like structural adjustment and free trade while others emphasized ‘alternative’ development characterized by participation, empowerment and human rights (Gardner & Lewis, 2015:29).

The post-modern turn did start a crisis within anthropology regarding concepts and theories of development. Anthropology, arguably, has always been partly post-modern. The discipline’s main argument has been cultural relativism that stresses the realization of the “inner logics of different societies” (Gardner & Lewis, 2015:30). In this way, the world is comprehended as culturally manifold, with many different realities and this has long been a core feature of anthropological thought. Yet, anthropologists did not, up until the 1980s, question the status of the knowledge they collected and produced from the point of view of the complex issues of power relations concerning knowledge production itself. The very foundation of the scientific project of anthropology itself was now reconsidered as well as anthropology’s assertion to understand and represent the various diverse societies of the world (2015:30).

4.2 Post-structuralism Many critical thinkers, during the 1970s and early 1980s, started to raise suspicion towards grand theories and structural explanations of societies. Critical theorizing started to become ‘post-structural’, especially in France, in the 1970s and these philosophies were taken up in Britain and the United States during the 1980s and at last, in the 1990s, they had become mainstream (Peet & Hartwich, 2009:197).

22 The work of the French philosopher Michel Foucault would become the most influential within post-development and post-colonial critique in anthropology (Barnard, 2000) and his work has provided some important appliance for analyzing socially constructed discourse as a social exercise (Rabinow, 1986). The relations between discourse, as a field of knowledge, statement or practice, and power became an important issue of study. In this view, all things that unite people or experiences become politically suspect (Gardner & Lewis, 2015:28).

In the 1960s Foucault first began to argue against structuralist approaches. He stressed an absence of order throughout history; for him, order was created by the historians or social scientists who wrote about certain events not by the actors themselves at a given point. In the 1970s, his focus shifted on the connection between power and knowledge. In Foucault’s view, power is not something one has but an ability to manipulate and control social processes and “neither social nor symbolic structures are to be taken for granted; nor should they be seen as culturally agreed schemata which each member of society understands in the same way” (Barnard, 2000:144).

Foucault describes his work as not claiming history’s truth’s or fictions "but in seeing historically how effects of truth are produced within discourses which in themselves are neither true nor false" (Foucault cited in Rabinow, 1986:240). Foucault offered an examination of what he called the ‘regimes of truth’ as a vital part of social practices. He proposes three hypotheses: "(1) Truth is to be understood as a system of ordered procedures for the production, regulation, distribution, circulation and operation of statements. (2) Truth is linked in a circular relation with systems of power which produce and sustain it, and to effects of power which it induces and which extend it. (3) This regime is not merely ideological or superstructural; it was a condition of the formation and development of capitalism" (Foucault cited in Rabinow, 1986:240). Escobar (1995:501) points out that discourse, as a concept, allows the theorists to think beyond the continuous ‘binarisms’ rooted in nearly all social theory, “those between the ideal and the real, the symbolic and the material, and production and signification since discourse embraces them all”.

‘Discourse’ in a Foucauldian understanding represents the way people talk and write about something, a suggested knowledge framework, or how knowledge is used.

23 Foucault’s ideas have been very influential in anthropology, especially in the post- colonial and post-development critique about Western knowledge domination (2000:144).

4.3 Post-colonialism The radical critique of the Western ideas of reason, truth and progress can be traced to Paris in the 1980s, ironically in the center of the Enlightenment thought where these earlier ideas originated. This radical criticism converged with the ideas of scholars from earlier colonized countries who lived or had studied in the West. These scholars worked under a ‘hybrid in-between’ position and based their analyses on post-structural criticism among other philosophical traditions and theoretical frameworks. The post- colonial critique was a radical reevaluation of the knowledge and social subjects constructed by colonial discourse and Western imperialism (Peet & Hartwich, 2009:209). From the late 1970s, an increased realization that many characteristics of the discourse that evolved in the colonial era still were common within anthropology. The study of the political role and power of textual representation, developed by literary theorists, was presented to anthropology through the critique of the creation of the ‘the other’ or the ‘Orient’ (Pels, 1997).

Within the post-colonial critique, the goal was to reverse Europeans view of ‘the other’ or non-Europeans. One of the most influential authors was the Palestinian- American literary critic Edward Said. In his book, Orientalism (1979), he demonstrated how ‘the Orient’ was constructed through a discourse created by Europeans in the post- Enlightenment period. Said was under great influences from Foucault and used his discourse analyses to examine the political and cultural aspects of interregional power relations. Said argued that all interactions between Europeans and others were based on a binary opposition – like East/West, South/North. Europeans had constructed an image or imaginary of ‘the Orient’ other to spatially and culturally distinguish from themselves, as well as to justify European colonial rule. Orientalist discourse, he said, limited thought and therefore non-Western people were not free subjects and these ideas about geographic areas – ‘the Orient’ (East) and the ‘Occident’ (west) – were essentially constructed by Westerners (Peet & Hartwich, 2009:211).

24 4.4 Arturo Escobar The Columbian anthropologist Arturo Escobar was one of the most influential author within the ‘post-development’ thinking and his analyses were mainly based on the post- structural work of Michel Foucault and the post-colonial work of Edward Said. Escobar’s critique was pointed towards international development as it was presented in the years after Second World War and he viewed ‘development’ as a discourse working against the poor (Nustad, 2001). For Escobar, development was one of the languages of power and the principle ideas of development were a discursive creation of a specific geopolitical area; the ‘Third World’. Escobar argued that the Western dream of ‘progress’ turned into a hegemonic global imagination and president Truman’s ‘free deal’ for everyone came at a price for people in those countries that were targeted for ‘development’. For Escobar, the Western development discourse took so completely over ‘reality’ that even those who objected development were forced to express their critique in a developmental conception (Peet & Hartwich, 2009:222); “[r]eality ... had been colonized by the development discourse” (Escobar, 1995:5)

Escobar (1997) claimed that within the many theories and policies that had dealt with ‘development’, the term itself had not been questioned or analyzed as a highly problematic one. This uncritical propensity that continued through time was one of Escobar’s main issues. He claimed that “what remained unchallenged was the very basic idea of development itself, development as a central organizing principle of social life, and the fact that Asia, Africa and Latin America can be defined as underdeveloped and that their communities are ineluctably in need of ‘development’” (Escobar, 1997:502).

If development is to be fully understood, Escobar (1997:502) argued that it is crucial to analyze the way it has been comprehended historically, within which perspectives, within whose authority and with what consequence for what people. It is important to examine how this way of viewing the world came into to being. In his view the anthropology of development should study the truths and silences that the language of development has created and look closer at the very foundation of development, as a device of thought and practice, rather than thinking up new ways of doing better development (Escobar, 1997:502).

25 Escobar argued that processes of development functioned through three principle strategies: First, the idea of underdevelopment as a ‘problem’ or ‘abnormality’ that can to be clinically treated. Second, the ‘professionalization’ of development; how development experts turn what normally would be seen as political problems into neutral ‘scientific’ concepts, creating a “regime of truth and norms”. Third, the ‘institutionalization’ of development. The creation of a new power/knowledge systems that urge people to specific rationalities and behaviors (Peet & Hartwich, 2009:224; Escobar, 1992).

Escobar (1992:24) used discourse analyses to try to understand what development really is and does. According to him, “[t]o examine development as discourse requires understanding why so many countries started to see themselves as underdeveloped, that is, how “to develop” became for them a fundamental problem, and how, finally, it was made real through the deployment of myriad strategies and programs”. He further argues that “the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America did not always see themselves in terms of "development” (Escobar, 1992:24).

Escobar (1995:9) stressed that the development discourse and colonial discourse functioned identically: “[They] created an extremely efficient apparatus for producing knowledge about, and the exercise of power over, the Third World [and] ... it has successfully deployed a regime of government over the Third World, a space for ‘subject peoples’ that ensures certain control over it” (1995:9). Inspired by Edward Said’s ideas about this constructed, imaginative ‘space’, Escobar argues that it is also a geopolitical space. This is evident in divisions such as ‘First’ and ‘Third’ world, global ‘North’ and ‘South’, ‘center’ and ‘periphery’. “The social production of space implicit in these terms is bound with the production of differences, subjectivities, and social orders” (Escobar, 1995:9).

Escobar (1997:503-504) highlighted a few key contributions of the critical analyses of development. First, that it offers a way to question how the ‘Third World’ has been established as ‘reality’ within modern expert knowledge, what knowledge and representation reside within the language of development and to what extensiveness this language has occupied social reality.

26 Second, that it provided the view of ‘development’ as a Western invention. A view that does not see it as a natural or inevitable process but a product of observable historical processes. “The view of development as invention also suggests that the invention can be unmade or reinvented in multiple ways” Escobar (1997:503-504).

Third, that it offered a “map of the discursive regime of development ... a view of the apparatus of expert knowledge forms and institutions which organize the production of forms of knowledge and types of power, linking one to the other in a systematic manner, resulting in specific diagram of power”. This view is fundamental in the post-structuralist discourse analyses; “the organization of the simultaneous production of knowledge and power” (Escobar, 1997:503-504).

Fourth, that these analyses show how development discourse changed over time. From focus on modernization and economic progress in the 1950s to more emphasis on sustainable development in the 1990s. Escobar (1997: 503-504) argued that the landscape of the development apparatus changed over the course of time but its fundamental positioning remains unquestioned. “Whatever the modifier that was attached to it, the fact of development itself was not placed under radical questioning” (Escobar, 1997:503-504).

At last, that it has introduced the questions of ‘subjectivity’; the relation between development discourses and identity. The question of how these discourses can play a role in forming people’s identities (Escobar, 1997:503-504).

Escobar’s work has been highly influential and created a realization that there was more to ‘development’ than just agencies and aid workers trying to accomplish a positive change in poor countries and that it had become one of the most dominant ideas of the century. Escobar argued that development is a social practice that has influenced the way many view the world as well as affecting the lives of countless people and their living standards. Escobar’s conclusion was that the whole idea of development is flawed and outdated and that the only way to challenge the orthodoxies of development and open the way for a ‘post-development’ future, was the rise of local, social movements (Lewis, 2005:478).

27 4.5 James Ferguson The anthropologist James Ferguson, like Escobar, was under much influence from post- structural thinking and Foucault’s ideas about discourse and power. In his book The anti-politics machine (1994) which was based on his fieldwork in the African state Lesotho, he shows how a World Bank project first and foremost works as a ‘machine’ to expand the power of development agencies and the state instead of working as an instrument to eliminate poverty. The ““development” apparatus in Lesotho is not a machine for eliminating poverty that is incidentally involved with the state bureaucracy; it is a machine for reinforcing and expanding the exercise of bureaucratic state power, which incidentally takes “poverty” as its point of entry” (Ferguson, 1994:255).

Ferguson distinguishes between the intentions of development planners and aid workers and the real outcomes of the project and argues that the effects produced by development discourse are not the product of the developer’s bad intention. “Whatever interests may be at work, and whatever they may think they are doing, they can only operate through a complex set of social and cultural structures so deeply embedded and so ill-perceived that the outcome might be only a baroque and unrecognizable transformation of the original intention” (Ferguson, 1994:17).

His argument is that the project serves as a mechanism to ‘depoliticize’ matters of development, translating social and economic issues into ‘technical’ problems that bureaucratic intervention could then ‘solve’; an ‘anti-political machine’. “By uncompromisingly reducing poverty to a technical problem, and by promising technical solutions to the suffering of powerless and oppressed people, the hegemonic problematic of “development” is the principal means through which the question of poverty is de-politicized in the world today” (1994:255).

Gow (2002:301) points out that Ferguson offers a critical examination of not what development programs fail to do, but what they do. By this Ferguson indicates that there is an ‘unspoken logic’ underlying such failures – ‘instrumental effects’ that if analyzed carefully unfold as the exercise of power.

28 5 New Anthropology of Development

5.1 Moving beyond the critique Much throughout the 1990s the critical post-development voices were dominant within the anthropology of development but later received much criticism. Many scholars argued that the post-development approach had largely ignored the agency of actors involved in development and by this viewed it as more univocal and powerful than it really is (Nustad, 2001). Anthropologists have turned to more actor-oriented approaches that see development as a field of struggles and interactions between multiple actors (Arce & Long, 2005). They have also moved to the study of the performance of development projects by analyzing how the projects are acted out by the local population and what influences they have (Lewis, 2005) as well as to a more detailed ethnographic work on development institutions and professionals (Bierschenk, 2008) and an examination of the relationship between policy and practice (Mosse, 2004).

The ideas of Foucault continued to inspire anthropologists studying development into the 2000s but his earlier work on power and discourse was laid aside and his later work on ethics and governmentality received more attention (Lewis & Mosse, 2006). Governmentality works through positive power and is “defined in terms of the "conduct of conducts," involving a range of techniques and practices, performed by different actors, aimed to shape, guide, and direct individuals' and groups' behavior and actions in particular directions” (Foucault cited in Sending & Neumann, 2006:656). Governmentality has been used to analyze development as an international order or ‘global governance’ working without a state or territorial framework (Lewis & Mosse, 2006:3)

This mirrored the shift in anthropology of development from deconstruction of the historical system of thought that development is constructed through, to a more narrow and detailed focus on the practices and interactions between various actors and between actors and knowledge production (Rossi, 2004a:560). Foucault’s ideas about power and the way it had been used by Escobar and Ferguson for example, has been criticized for presenting a totalizing view of the history of development and for laying

29 too much emphasis on structures as well as discourses and therefore fail to give a valid account of human agency (Rossi, 2004b:5). Foucault’s goal was to examine how specific practices have been made acceptable at specific historical moments. But Rossi (2004b:8) points out that Foucault’s approach has failed to explain two things that are important to the field of international development: The relations between different actors and a specific kind of discourses and the negotiations and strategies used by differently positioned groups to control the discourses.

Friedman (2006:202) expresses his frustration of the still ongoing presence of the post-structural paradigm and its domination within the study of development. In his view, academic anthropologists have much to offer when it comes to addressing problems of poverty, global inequality, and socioeconomic change. He points out that the post-structural critique has helped to explain why so many development projects fail and how the West has controlled processes of change in the ‘Third World’. Also, that it has brought to the light the important relationship between poverty, knowledge and power and opened a space to ‘‘imagine alternatives to development’’ (Friedman 2006:203). Despite the post-structural contributions to the understanding of development, Friedman (2006:203) argues that it has some serious problems and it has led to the stagnation of anthropology of development. The post-structural critique views development discourse as monolithic and univocal and that way it claims that there is only one hegemonic development discourse, but Friedman (2006:204) argues that “development discourse is always negotiated, exploited, contested, and co-opted by those involved in the process” and that there is not one ‘discourse of development’, but many different discourses of development.

The critics blame the discourse for the socioeconomic situation in the ‘Third World’ but Friedman (2006:204) criticizes this and argues that discourse is always a product of those who deploy it. “The products of ‘‘development’’ are not the result of discourse alone, but rather emerge out of the dynamic interplay between conscious, living actors” (2006:204). He also stresses that the post-structural critique is too structural in its positioning which creates serious problems when it comes to agency. In this way, those who receive development aid are viewed as “passive objects who are simply acted upon” and people in the ‘Third World’ are just helpless victims of “all-powerful

30 Western-led development discourse” (2006:204). Friedman, who has worked as practitioner and researcher in development, denies this and stresses that those who receive development aid do “appropriate, resist, manipulate, and redefine ‘‘development’’ for their own ends” (2006:204). It has been shown in many recent anthropological studies of development that marginal groups do use multiple strategies and forms of negotiation or resistance to conduct their own “project in the projects” (Rossi, 2004b:5; Mosse, 2004).

Friedman (2006:204) also criticizes the post-structural approach for taking its analytical and methodological groundings from the point of development planners, institutions and governments. From this perspective, the experiences of those who receive development assistance is dismissed as well as their agency. Lastly, he argues that the critique is completely apolitical. In his view the critics are unwilling to act politically and therefore ignore any Western movements that try to fight against poverty and inequality because of their deep-rooted skepticism about outside ‘developers’ (Friedman, 2006:204). Paiement (2007:203), in a similar manner, has argued that the post-structural critique has overlooked the positive results of development projects and the way they have been appropriated and reshaped on a local level. He also claims that they have not offered any useful alternatives to the unfortunate situations they denounce. “The implication is that somehow by simply talking critically about development discourse, anthropologists can demonstrate political solidarity with the oppressed” (2007:3). By this he questions the political correctness of the critics.

Venkatesan and Yarrow (2012:2) have also argued that the post-developmental rejection of development fails to consider or suggest any alternative to development that could lead to a more fair and bright future. They argue that the critics have tended to universalize the practices and processes of development projects. When development is viewed as just a form of dominant Western discourse many ideas, relations and practices are left out and dismissed (Venkatesan & Yarrow, 2012:2). Rossi (2004a:556) argues that anthropologists should study the various institutions, networks, and identities within the development apparatus and in that way, it becomes “multi- sited, multi-vocal, and multi-levelled”.

31 Friedman (2006:207) proposes alternatives to the study of development. He suggests that ‘development´ is treated as a result of the interaction between ‘local’ social and political forces, and the ‘global’ dominant and subordinate development scene. He argues that development is a product of the two, the local and the global, and their interplay with each other. In this way, the study of development maintains the emphasis on the development discourse but also includes local agency and its influences on the development process (2006:207). What Friedman (2006) also suggests is that anthropologists studying development should go back to the methods that the discipline was built upon, the ethnography, which Comaroff (2010:532) has referred to as anthropology’s ‘brand’; without it “what pretends to be anthropology is not”. Further Friedman (2006:209) argues that the way forward for the anthropology of development is to rely on the core of the discipline’s traditions: “a commitment to ‘‘thick description’’ through long-term fieldwork and participant observation in localised, grassroots settings” (2006:220).

Venkatesan and Yarrow (2012:9), in the same fashion, call for a more ‘nuanced ethnographic work’ and a critical reflection on anthropology’s own ideas and practices. They propose that anthropologists ‘differentiates development’ by using ethnography to explore the multiple meanings and practices that are to be found within the world of development. In contrast to the view of development as a monolithic, Western discourse they try to uncover the variation of ways “in which ideas of ‘development’ are imbricated in the practices and relationships of otherwise socially, culturally and geographically distinct groups of people” (Venkatesan & Yarrow, 2012:9). Within international development there are many different cultural spaces disconnected from each other, for example the field of project interventions, donor and recipient countries, ministries and aid agencies. These spaces bring together various actors like planners, development workers, and aid recipients, belonging to different cultural and social spaces and those must be acknowledged as well as their interactions (Rossi, 2004b:7).

Bierschenk (2008:13-14) proposes two new ways for anthropology in the study of development. First, ethnographical work on development institutions and professionals. This, he argues, would help to connect local practices with larger global dynamics.

32 Second, that anthropologists should reflect on the “participatory turn”. What he means by this is that anthropology of development should become more reflexive and produce ethnographic work on the role and functions of anthropologists working for development agencies (Bierschenk, 2008:13-14).

Mosse (2004) has examined the relationship between development policy and their real outcomes and advocates for anthropological examination of this relationship. Mosse (2004:639) challenges the common belief that development practices are driven mainly by policy and suggests that what is presumed to be ‘good policy’, “one that legitimizes and mobilizes political support ... in reality make it rather unimplementable within its chosen institutions and regions”. He argues that even though development is managed by “multi-layered complex of relationships” and the organizational culture rather than policy, “development actors work hardest of all to maintain coherent representations of their actions as instances of authorized policy, because it is always in their interest to do so” (2004:639).

As has been shown, anthropologists have suggested new ways to examine the world of development and the relationships between institutions, organizations, and actors. It has become generally accepted that the critical approach should be avoided as they have failed to consider the agency of recipients and oversimplified various relations within development. While it is important to consider the lack of political influences of those who receive development aid, some actor-oriented ethnographies have shown that the so called beneficiaries often manipulate their marginal positions for their own advancement (Rossi, 2004a:556; Mosse, 2004).

The world of development is highly complex with multiple meanings and actors. The new anthropological analyses view the social life that is involved in development projects as complex processes, influenced by the everyday actions and practices of people like aid recipients, development workers, stakeholders and politicians (Arce & Long, 2005). Today, anthropologists have moved away from relying on a single theoretical framework when focusing on development and the idea of any one ‘solution’ or a ‘quick fix’ to underdevelopment (Gardner & Lewis, 2015:19). It has also become increasingly popular to focus on happiness within development and wider society among anthropologists and other academics. Also, new and alternative ideas

33 about development have evolved with emphasis on participation, empowerment and citizenship rights (Gardner & Lewis 2015:36). Today, many anthropologists even believe (in contrast to the post-structural critique) that some development projects have good will and motives and therefore argue that development should be studied from a more neutral position, as a ‘category of practice’ (Neveling, 2017:164).

5.2 ‘New’ issues – ‘new’ development’ As the time changes so has the world of development. Affluence continues to become more and more concentrated, with only a small portion of the world’s population controlling its resources and flow of capital. Global inequality and poverty increases and continues to be a major issue as the expansion of capital and its interconnections controls and shapes our world. Today, we are witnessing that the division between ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ countries has become blurred with the rise of many middle-income countries and an alteration in the balance of global powers, increased ‘securitization’ of development as a response to 9/11 and increased involvement of the private sector. These new circumstances have changed the ‘field’ for anthropologists of development to great extent (Gardner & Lewis, 2015:31). Now let us look at some of the global changes that have occurred since the turn of millennia and how it has changed the scene of international development.

Over time the notion of the ‘Third World’ have changed. In the 1970s the term was used to refer to impoverished nations ruled by ‘third class’, highly corrupted governments but in recent years’ new terms have been presented, like ‘emerging economies’ or the ‘global south’. The expansion of some Asian countries and Middle East oil giants as economic powers on a global scale in recent years has made the old binary distinctions of a ‘Third’ and a ‘First’ world extremely complicated. Now, there are fewer poor countries and middle-income countries and emerging economies hold the majority of the world’s poorest. Another important factor is the 2008 financial crisis and the lack of economic stability it entailed in powerful Western countries. This has changed the way many view power balance in international affairs (Gardner & Lewis, 2015:32).

34 Since the 1990s, we have also witnessed a geopolitical alteration of aid donors. The West is providing less aid and new donors are contributing high sums making the scene of international development more ‘multi-polar’. Since the global financial crisis in 2008, many Western nations have reduced their share of international aid (Gardner & Lewis, 2015:39). The leading new donor is China which emphasizes agriculture and infrastructures over governance and social or human development (Garder & Lewis 2015) but other countries such as India and Russia are also joining the development venture (Mosse, 2013). There has also been an increase within private development philanthropy. This includes organizations like the Gates Foundation which has funded with over US $30 billion in development work (Gardner & Lewis, 2015:39). International development is in continuing change, as new donors present alternatives. Some question the motives of the new players, suspecting them to disguise and work under the same self-interest as the earlier once did and now the accomplished success by international development could be threatened (Gardner & Lewis, 2015:40).

Since 9/11, ‘securitization of aid’ has increased and development, again, became characterized by paranoia towards the ‘hostile other’, similarly to during the Cold War. Again, the act of international development was used by governments as a devise of foreign policy and ‘soft power’. As a response to the 2001 attacks on the US, what president Bush called ‘the war on terror’, Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan received great amounts of aid in the years to follow (Gardner and Lewis, 2015:40). Combined with the neoliberal development model that had been falling into favor since the 1990s, the securitization turn has had considerable consequences worldwide and altered the priorities of international development. For example, it has created a new ‘othering’ and antagonism towards Muslims and their societies; “diminished the independence of humanitarian aid agencies; and constricted the available ‘civil society space’ in which development alternatives can be imagined and discussed” (Gardner & Lewis, 2015:40). This has also resulted in a ‘securitization’ of migration and the last two decades have been characterized by fear of terrorism in the Western World associated with Islam and Muslim cultures and this has led to heavy restriction of human mobility and closing of borders. The refugee crisis in Europe, have become the main issue in the debate on the threat of nation-states an in public discourses and asylum seekers and immigrants are

35 now criminalized and seen as enemies rather than human beings in need (Kristín Loftsdóttir, 2016:242)

With reduction of the role of the state, increased marketization and the slacken of regulation of capital flow worldwide, neoliberal policies have led to the reformation of welfare systems since the 1980s. A key factor was the imposing of ‘structural adjustment’ policies upon developing countries. Mainstream development institutions like the World Bank continue to work under the reforms of neoliberalism, but there are many different alternatives within the development world that question and challenge the official ideas and institutions. For example, some have started to focus on different and broader ideas about quality of life, wellbeing and happiness, which has challenged the classic, economically focused indicator of progress, the gross domestic product (GDP) (Gardner & Lewis, 2015:35).

The neoliberal turn has also changed the focus of the development scene towards creating conditions to attract mobile capital to the production of labor-intensive goods for global markets, such as garment factories in Bangladesh (Mosse, 2013:236). Jobs in such factories usually involve inhumane working condition, overtime and low salaries and the workers are usually women. These people produce goods like luxury brands and technology, that are consumed in the West. Kristín Loftsdóttir (2016:241) argues that development discourses have created moral ‘global citizens’ in the West who like to care about the well-being of poor people and donate money to charities or volunteer abroad but at the same time they carry on their consumption and turn a blind eye on the larger picture of how inequality and poverty on a global scale are closely connected to the production of commodities and the intolerable working conditions of factory workers. She also points out that “[p]eople working in factories and sweatshops do not seem to be significant targets of poverty reduction or intervention by development agencies; despite this, they still claim to be working towards the goal of long-term improvement in people’s lives” (Kristín Loftsdóttir, 2016:241). The neoliberal policies have created the ‘precariat’, a new global class of people, both in ‘North’ and ‘South’ who are vulnerable and their lives are characterized by short-term jobs, a lack of dependable welfare support and an unstable and unregulated economy (Garder & Lewis 2015:41; Standing, 2011).

36 Another important global issue is the threat of environmental change. Bennett (2017) has argued that since the end of the Second World War, Western led economic development has encouraged the belief that resources are infinite and as demand has escalated throughout the years it has created a massive environmental destruction. He stresses that the “underlying cultural issue of development is the morality of human intentions and their environmental consequences” and that environmental change will be “the problem of the ... century”, therefore it demands an anthropological attention (Bennett, 2017:10). Brightman and Lewis (2017) argue that sustainable anthropology has an important role to help make sure we pass on a ‘livable earth’. They stress that anthropology “provides unique insights on the present possibilities available for humanity, and offers ways to rethink humanity’s current trajectory in order to help pass on a livable earth to future generations” (2017:1). The anthropology of sustainability studies cultural and social processes from multiple perspectives, with the needs and interests of specific societies as the driving motive, “rather than the universalist interests of any single ideological, historical, or methodological tradition” (2017:1). Anthropological understanding of sustainability based on ethnographic research explores human adaptation to environmental change and what we can learn from it (Brightman & Lewis 2017).

In the first decades of the twenty-first century, global inequality and impoverishment is still extreme, with only fifteen per cent of the population dominating the world’s resources and controlling all economic activities (Gardner & Lewis, 2015:40). “Politically threatened under conditions of austerity; dwarfed by the giants of climate change, the rise of China, new conflicts, or transnational migration; and attacked on all sides for having perverse effects” Western aid seems to be on the decline (Mosse, 2013:238). All those new issues demand new ways in the study of development (Garder & Lewis, 2015; Mosse 2013). Gardner and Lewis (2015:41) stress that today, we need to widen the focus of anthropology of development by paying attention to the international political and economic relations that form the basis for the wider global political economy, which plays a huge role in the changing power balance between different parts of the world that creates the increasingly uneven concentration of poverty and inequality (Gardner & Lewis 2015:41).

37 6 Conclusion Almost 70 years ago the world was transformed from being comprised of primarily the old colonial powers and their colonies to be divided into rich and poor nations, what became known as ‘developed’ and ‘underdeveloped’ countries or the ‘Third World’ (Arce & Long, 2005). International Development was presented in the late 1940s as a ‘fair deal’ for the whole world (Escobar, 1995) and has since then been one of the most dominant forces of our time (Lewis, 2005). Economics dominated the development scene in the first years where ‘underdevelopment’ was considered an ‘abnormality’ that had been clinically treated (Escobar, 1992) and economic relief and transfer of modern technology could provide a ‘quick solution’. Yet, despite that fact that development has ever since, at least in some ways, continued to be dominated by economic thought, international development has become more focused on the social aspects of development in recent years. From the 1970s ‘basic needs’ policies to 1990s sustainable development and participation and more recently human development, empowerment ‘building civil society’ and ‘good governance’, the world of development has been an ever-shifting landscape of labels and ideas (Lewis, 2005). Since its emergence, international development has been a central issue within the discipline of anthropology as it touches the lives of countless people throughout the globe and in this thesis, anthropology’s and development’s rather uneasy and problematic ‘romance’ has been examined. Anthropology has been involved in development both intellectually and in practice but anthropologist found it hard to agree on the disciplines involvement, it has even been referred to as anthropology’s evil twin (Ferguson, 1997). In the 1990s, international development and the anthropologists working within the field were harshly criticized by post-developmental thinkers who saw development as a powerful, Western-led discourse that had constructed and dominated the ‘Third World’, was even to blame for the whole situation (Escobar, 1995). The critique had much influences on the field of anthropology of development but today most scholars have moved away from this thinking as well as the infighting about the discipline’s involvement in development and now have returned to more actor-oriented approaches on a local level (Mosse, 2004) and more nuanced ethnographic work (Venkatesan & Yarrow, 2012).

38 Today, a changed global scene has created various new social and moral issues who involve the action of international institutions, agencies and co-operation (Arce & Long, 2000). These issues include among other things, the securitization of aid, human rights, terrorism, immigration and refugee crisis, neoliberal policies, and environmental challenges. These new global issues are also of great interest among anthropologists who today are involved in work that touches on all of those. Gardner and Lewis (2015) state that throughout the years, anthropologists have continued doing what they do best: examine the everyday lives and cultures of people around the world, exposing important real life situations that usually otherwise would be brushed aside. By that, anthropologists can offer alternative ways of viewing international development and its effects on people’s lives (Gardner & Lewis 2015:43). In my view anthropologists do have much to offer to the issues of international development with their critical view, analyzing tools, long-term fieldwork and ethnography. I agree with Friedman (2006) that anthropology, should be more politically involved and use its strengths to come up with alternative solutions to development. Anthropology is the study of human beings and as long as international development exists there will be an anthropological involvement within it.

39 References

Arce, A., & Long, N. (Eds.). (2000). Anthropology, development, and modernities: exploring discourses, counter-tendencies, and violence. London: Routledge.

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