Anthropology of Development Lecture 4 Flashcards
Anthropology of Development
Development as a window through which insights on social change, power, discourse and knowledge can be expanded.
Kertzer 1980s
Residents of Bologna describes immigrants as ‘too lazy to work and so lacking in willpower that they spawn hoards of children; as welfare dependent illiterate and violent bad people’
AoD is aggressive
Not necessarily, specifically designed to help development and applied anthropology.
Theorising development
-Hegemony
Hegemony is particularly disastrous because it prevents people from resisting effectively. Incorporates the ideas of rulers, cannot think for themselves, cannot imagine alternatives.
Main eras according to AoD’s:
Critique of social change (1850’s-1970’s)
How do social institutions and social structures change over time? Can change be controlled?
Main eras according to AoD’s:
Silence 1970’s
-Rise of applied anthropology and development theory
Main eras according to AoD’s:
Post-structuralist critique of development 1980’s -2000’s
- Focas on discourse
- Reflective
- Post-modern, interested in knowledge and power
- Generally argues for non-intervention
- Scathing critique of Development Anthropology
Focus on development as a project (society)
- How social structures, like economy, political structures, kinship, shift through time.
- Resistance as structural
Focus on development as identity (Culture)
- How our ways of perceiving development are political and help reproductive inequality (discourse).
- Resistance as discursive
Understanding social change:
Diffusionism
Societies will adopt better ideas and technologies from neighbours.
Understanding social change:
Structural-Functionalism
No historical change. Focus is on how society functions at a given time.
Understanding social change:
Structuralism
An exercise to find the most elementary and universal binaries and structures of thought.
Understanding social change:
Social Evolutionism
Idea that societies evolve according to set stages…Change often related to internal intellectual processes.
Silent years
Gradual decline in the theorization of development due to:
- Fewer groups in academia, more in applied anthropology.
- Applied anthro had some remarkable victories and thought that anthro should offer practical tips not theories
- Applied anthos actually acting on main complaints AoDs has of development meaning theories won’t work don’t need anthropologists.