Development Anthropology Lecture 3 Flashcards
Development Anthropology
Even though development is a recent thing anthropologists have always been involved in attempts to govern and change societies.
Colonial era 1850-1940’s
- Improve colonial governance
- Classical questions of change and relativity
Post war 1940’s -1970’s
- Rise of neoliberal theories of development
- Retreat of anthropology
- Split between applied and academic anthropology
Post 1970’s - present
- Development anthropology strikes back
- Dependancy theory
- Series of anthropological victories and acceptance of anthropology
Development anthropologists against development
Use of skills learned by DA to resist rather than assist development projects
More on the colonial project.
Social Change
Functionalism and structural functionalism uninterested in change, rather developing sociological laws by which we understand how societies reproduce themselves and work.
Social Evolutionism
Early US, French and British anthropology reactions to social evolutionism- Idea that societies can progress to become better versions of themselves.
More on the colonial project.
Cultural relativism
Cultures can only be properly understood on their own terms it is therefore ethnocentric (morally, politically and methodologically incorrect) to judge the as inferior or as primitive versions of ourselves
Local cultures must be saved
Development results in massive alienation as people are cut off from meaningful worlds and dragged into another. People are lost without their social forms.
Colonial Period HOWEVER…
Many anthropologists still working with colonial governments and development projects. American Society for applied anthropology 1941
WW2
World wide destruction with the colonies involved. Anthropologists were seen as spies, recruiters keepers of prisoners and intelligence. Those involved in development also involved in the destruction that followed.
Post war period
- Some anthropologists such as Banfield tried to work within the model of development.
- General retreat, International cooperation administration lost all anthropologists by 1970
Why did applied anthropologists leave when development was becoming big?
- Anthropologists had failed to provide models of colonial systems development that agents needed.
- More jobs in academia around the worth, those in development moved on
- Anthropologists stated that the fall of colonialism meant no funding and they’re not welcome and they had not done much to quell destruction.
Economists happy to have no anthropologists around
Anthropologists are dreamers that are latently hostile against the modern world.
1960’s- 1980’s
1960’s- New generation of anthropologists
1970-80’s - No jobs in academia,
forced to work outside of academia, argued there is no such thing as applied anthropology and attempted to close the gap between academia and applied
-Trickle down not working
