Download Miller - Chapter 13

People Defining Development
(Chapter 13)
Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008
The BIG Questions
 What is development and the
approaches to achieving it?
 How is development related to
indigenous people and women?
 What are urgent issues in
development?
Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008
What is Development?
 Development is directed change to
improve human welfare through poverty
reduction
 Development anthropology is the
subfield of anthropology that studies
how culture and development interact
 Has a strong applied component
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Development and Culture
Change
 Development is a major driver of
cultural change in contemporary times
 Culture change can be intentional or
accidental, forward- or backwardlooking, rapid or gradual, obvious or
nearly invisible, beneficial or harmful
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Development and Culture
Change
 Culture change occurs through…
 Invention & Diffusion
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Development and Culture
Change
 Invention
 Culture change driven within a culture
through experimentation and accumulation
of knowledge
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Development and Cultural
Change
 Diffusion – culture change driven by cultural
contact; the spread of culture through contact
 Can occur…
 Between cultures of roughly equal power
 A more powerful culture appropriating aspects of a
less powerful culture
 Transfer from a dominant culture to a less powerful
one – through force, education, “marketing”
 Acculturation – Form of cultural change in which
a minority culture becomes more like the
dominant culture
 Assimilation – Form of culture change in which a
culture is thoroughly acculturated and is no longer
distinguishable as having a separate identity
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Development and Cultural
Change
 Diffusion
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Models of Development
 No single view of how to achieve
development exists
 They differ in terms of…

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Goals
Process
Measurement
Attention to environmental and financial
sustainability
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Models of Development
 Five major models…
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Modernization
Growth-oriented development
Distributional development
Human development
Sustainable development
 Some of the models overlap and are not
mutually exclusive
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Models of Development
Modernization
Growth-oriented
development
Distributional
development
Human
development
Sustainable
development
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Modernization
 Modernization is a form of change
marked by economic growth through
industrialization and market expansion
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Modernization
 Western model – belief that other
cultures can develop in the same way
that the West did
 Goals: Industrialization, technological
progress
 Process: Belief that science and
technology are the pathways to
progress; material progress will lead to
individual betterment
 Problems: ??
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Modernization
 Problems: Little regard for the
environment, brings about social
inequality, trying to assimilate cultures to
a Western way of thinking
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Growth-Oriented Development
 Is similar to modernization in its goals
 Key emphasis on economic growth
 Belief that economic growth will trickledown, leading to improved human
welfare among the less well-off
 Goals: economic growth,
industrialization, technological progress
 Measurement of development: Rate of
growth of the economy, gross domestic
product (GDP)
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Growth-Oriented Development
 Process: Structural adjustment
 1. Increasing economic productivity and
trade through modernized agriculture and
manufacturing and participation in world
markets.
 2. Reducing government expenditures on
public services such as schools and health
in order to reduce debt and reallocate
resources to increase productivity.
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Growth-Oriented Development
 Problems: ??
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Growth-Oriented Development
 Problems: Will the wealth trickle-down?
Or will the rich get richer and the poor
get poorer?
 Green revolution – rich got richer and the
poor got poorer
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Distributional Development
 Goal: Emphasizes social equality in benefits,
especially in terms of increased income,
literacy, and health
 Process:
 Rejects the trickle-down process as ineffective in
reaching less well-off people
 Opposes structural adjustment policies because
structural adjustment undermines the welfare of the
poor by removing the few entitlements they had in
the form of services
 Advocates need for benevolent government to
ensure equitable access of resources for the poor
to provide for their own needs – government
investment in schools, health care, land
redistribution, etc.
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Distributional Development
 Measurement of development: Health
status, literacy, social equality
 Problems:
 May have difficulty implementing
 “Socialism” and “big government” are seen
as having negative connotations among
some areas of the West
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Kerala, a state in
South India, has
followed a
distributive path
to development
and, though the
“poorest” state in
India, it has the
highest social
indicators in
health and
education
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Human Development
 Based on the belief that people are the
real wealth of nations
 Investments in improving human welfare
will lead to economic development, not
vice versa
= WEALTH
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Human Development
 Goal: Invest in human welfare rather
than economic growth
 Process: Invest in health, education,
personal security, and safety (may
involve redistribution)
 Measurement of development: Human
development index (HDI) – measure of
life expectancy, literacy, education,
standard of living, and GDP per capita
(strives to measure overall well-being,
not just economic well-being)
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Human Development
 Problems: ??
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Human Development
 Problems: well-being is subjective – e.g.
measuring quality of life, human
development, and human welfare are
tricky
 Gross International Happiness (GIH) or
Gross National Happiness (GNH)
 http://www.tve.org/earthreport/archive/doc.cf
m?aid=1717
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Sustainable Development
 Sustainable development refers to
forms of improvement that do not destroy
nonrenewable resources and are
financially supportable over time
 Based on the belief that the economic
growth of wealthy countries has been
and still is costly in terms of the natural
environment and people whose lives
depend on these ecosystems
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Sustainable Development
 Goal: Non-environmentally destructive
development
 Measurement of development:
environmental indicators and other social
and economic indicators
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Institutional Approaches to
Development
 There are a wide variety of institutions,
organizations, and specialists involved in
development policy making, programs,
and projects
 Cultural anthropologists examine the
organizations involved in international
development
Behavior within the institutions
Institutional discourse
Social interactions with the “client population”
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Institutional Approaches to
Development
 Large-scale development institutions
Multilateral institutions – those that include
several countries as “donor” members
 United Nations
 World Bank
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Institutional Approaches to
Development

World Bank
 Founded in 1944
 Dedicated to promoting the concept of economic growth
worldwide
 Is supported by contributions from over 150 member countries
– economic superpowers dominate it
 Main strategy is to promote international investment through
loans
 Most loans support large infrastructure projects such as roads
and dams
 Most loans charge interest and are tied to certain conditions
Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008
Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008
Institutional Approaches to
Development
 Large-scale development institutions
Bilateral institutions – those that involve
only two countries: a “donor” and a “recipient”
 United States Agency for International
Development (USAID)
 Canadian International Development Agency
(CIDA)
 Britain’s Department for International
Development (DfID)
 Differ in amount of grants versus loans,
countries to which they lend to, etc.
depending on each “donor” country’s interests
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and political goals
Institutional Approaches to
Development
 Small-scale organizations
Grassroots approach – locally initiated
projects
More likely to be culturally appropriate,
supported through local participation, and
successful
Often utilize social capital – intangible
resources of social ties, trust, and cooperation
 Often can use social capital to provide basic
social and economic needs
May be faith-based organizations
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Example of
grassroots
development
among the
peyizan yo of
Haiti
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The Development Project
 Development institutions, whether they
are large or small, implement their goals
through the development project
 The development project is a set of
activities designed to put development
policies into action
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The Project Cycle
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All development projects have a
project cycle, or the full process of a
project from initial planning to
completion
The project cycle includes 5 basic
steps from beginning to end
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The Development Project Cycle
Project identification
Project design
Project appraisal
Project implementation
Project evaluation
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History of Anthropologists and
the Project Cycle

Most individuals that work in large-scale
development institutions are economists
Since the 1970s applied anthropologists
have been involved in development
projects
Anthropologists were first hired to be
project evaluations



Found a variety of problems with development
projects
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Problems with Development
Projects
 The project was inappropriate for the
cultural and environmental context
 The target group, such as the poor
and women, had not been reached,
but instead project benefits had gone
to some other group
 The intended beneficiaries were
actually worse off after the project
than before it
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Why these problems?

Poor project design
 Projects designed by people-distant and
culturally uninformed bureaucrats, usually
Western economists who lived in cities
far from the project site with no firsthand
experience of the lives of the target
population
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Why these problems?
 Lack of a sociocultural fit
 Sociocultural fit is taking the local
culture into account in project design
 e.g. giving milk to a community that is lactose
intolerant
 Tree project in Haiti

“Experts” applied a universal formula (“one
size fits all”) to all situations
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Why these problems?

Development aggression – the imposition
of development projects and policies
without the free, prior, and informed consent
of the affected people
 Some scholars argue that many
development projects are a form of
neocolonialism
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Anthropologists and the
Project Cycle Today

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Today anthropologists are involved in
earlier aspects of the project cycle as
well
Recognition among development
institutions for the people-close,
culturally informed perspective that
anthropologists begin
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Anthropologists and the
Project Cycle Today

Anthropologists may engage in
traditional development anthropology
(TDA)
 When an anthropologist takes on a
role of helping to make development
policies and programs work better
 Anthropologist asks: What can I do to
make this project successful?
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Anthropologists and the
Project Cycle Today

Anthropologists may engage in critical
development anthropology (CDA)
 When an anthropologist takes on a
critical-thinking role
 Anthropologist asks: Is this a good
project from the perspective of the
local people and their environment?
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Anthropologists and the
Project Cycle Today

Anthropologists may be considered a bit
of a nuisance because their involvement
may slow the process of implementing
projects
 But hopefully the tradeoff is a more
successful project!
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Social Impact Assessment
 Social impact assessments are studies
that gauge the potential social costs and
benefits of particular innovations before
change is undertaken
 Anthropologists are often involved in these
assessments
 The studies may allow communities that are
confronting the adoption of new technology
the chance to weigh evidence on the pros
and cons and make an informed judgment
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Development and Minority
Groups
 Indigenous people and women are often
the ones most negatively affected by
development projects
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Indigenous People &
Development
Indigenous people have been subjected to loss
of rights, land, and culture they once had
Through indigenous claims and pressure, some
states have begun to resolve land issues
Many indigenous people have formed their own
organizations to promote “development from
within”
Some organizations link separate indigenous
groups to increase their power
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Example: Native
Peoples of Walpole
Island, Canada,
fought to control
industrial waste
that was polluting
their water and
land
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Women and Development
There is often a male bias in
development which is when development
projects are designed and implemented
with men as beneficiaries and without
regard to their impact on women’s roles
and status
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Women and Development
As a result of male-biased development, women:
 Have lost political power and rights to property
 e.g. decline of matrilineality
 Increased inequality in genders by giving men greater access
to new sources of income
 Have undergone “domestication” due to
development projects which focus on infant feeding
practices, child care, and family planning
 Their lives have been more focused on the domestic domain
and more removed from the public domain
 Male bias in development and the exclusion of
women has led to some development projects to fail
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Women and Development
Many women have formed organizations to improve
their lives
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Urgent Issues and New
Directions in Development
 Designing more people centered projects
is a priority
 Redefining development projects as life
projects
 A life project is local people’s vision of
the direction they want to take in life,
informed by their knowledge, history, and
context, and how to achieve that vision
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Urgent Issues and New
Directions in Development
 Viewing the protection of cultural rights as
a human right
 Making sure development doesn’t destroy
culture and a culture’s environment should
be a priority
 Great in theory, but in practice in our
increasingly globalized world cultural
practices and positions of two or more
cultures may conflict
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Urgent Issues and New
Directions in Development
 Viewing cultural heritage as a way to
development
 Promoting cultural heritage, through tourism for
example, can be a double-edged sword, though
 Tourism can preserve and protect cultural heritage
(e.g. preserving indigenous arts)
 But tourism can also damage and destroy culture
and the environment (e.g. through roads, hotels)
 Promoting cultural intellectual property rights
 Can help people gain a share of profits from
intellectual property
 But can also be difficult to defend and enforce
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Cultural Anthropology of the
Future
 Cultural anthropologists work with and
for local people
 To secure human rights and prevent human
rights abuses
 To improve their lives through appropriate
development projects and policies
 To foster cultural diversity, understanding,
and survival throughout the world
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The BIG Questions Revisited
 What is development and the
approaches to achieving it?
 How is development related to
indigenous people and women?
 What are urgent issues in
development?
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Sudan is the site
of longstanding
“ethnic” and
regional violence.
In 2005, southern
gained some
autonomy from
the north.
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Ladakh
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Climate Change & Our Future

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3411514
3/ns/newspicture_stories/displaymode/1247/?begi
nSlide=1
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