Anthropology and Development: Challenges for the Twenty-First Century

Citation

Gardner, K., & Lewis, D. (2015). Anthropology and Development: Challenges for the Twenty-First Century. Pluto Press.

Chapter Summary

The book is a compact text in Pluto Press's Anthropology, Culture and Society series, with a series preface, acknowledgements, a list of acronyms, five chapters plus a concluding chapter, notes and an index. It is the authors' second book on the subject, a rewrite of their 1996 Anthropology, Development and the Post-Modern Challenge. The publisher says the authors engage with nearly two decades of continuity and change in the development industry and argue that, although international development has expanded since the 1990s, it has become more rigidly technocratic. The chapter descriptions below draw on the publisher's summary and on two published reviews.

Chapter 1: Understanding Development: Theory and Practice into the Twenty-First Century

Traces the history of development from the Enlightenment and the early links between capitalism and colonialism to the 1990s, and sets out two contrasting general theories, the liberal modernisation approach and the radical dependency approach. It then updates the picture with recent trends: the rise of new economic blocs such as the BRICs, the post-2008 financial crisis, inequality within countries, the Millennium Development Goals, and issues such as migration, conflict, securitisation, philanthropy, corporate social responsibility and microfinance. Reviewers read it as keeping a critical stance towards development discourse while noting new forms of resistance such as the Arab Spring and Occupy.

Chapter 2: Applying Anthropology

Takes up the old debate between pure and applied anthropology and argues for an engaged applied anthropology: advocacy, public anthropology, activist research and protest anthropology.

Chapter 3: The Anthropology of Development

Reviews the anthropology of development as a field, using Gillian Hart's distinction between "big D" Development (the post-Second World War project of intervention) and "little d" development (the uneven unfolding of capitalism). It refers to the discursive turn of the mid-1980s, associated with Writing Culture, and notes recent interest in participation, community governance and the moral dimension of development.

Chapter 4: Anthropologists in Development: Access, Effects and Control

Concerns the position of anthropologists working inside development agencies and projects: access, effects and control. A reviewer notes that this chapter reproduces the corresponding chapter of the 1996 book in full.

Chapter 5: When Good Ideas Turn Bad: The Dominant Discourse Bites Back

Examines how radical ideas such as empowerment, participation, and gender and development lose their edge once mainstream agencies adopt them, becoming "buzzwords and fuzzwords". The authors also look at the project-oriented gaze of aid agencies and their reliance on indicators and metrics, and at new social movements as spaces for anthropological engagement.

The concluding chapter

Returns to the argument that an anthropology of development, like other socially engaged disciplines, has built on its past to become self-reflexive. Its title, which concerns anthropology, development and the twenty-first century, is abbreviated in the contents listing available.

Key Concepts

Chapters 1–3

• Modernisation and dependency theories: the liberal and radical general theories of development set against each other in Chapter 1.
• Applied, engaged and public anthropology: the forms of engagement discussed in Chapter 2.
• Big D Development and little d development: Hart's distinction used to separate intervention from the wider processes of capitalism (Chapter 3).

Chapters 4–6

• Access, effects and control: the three questions that frame the position of the anthropologist in development (Chapter 4).
• Buzzwords and fuzzwords: the vague terms into which radical concepts decay (Chapter 5).
• Anti-politics machine: James Ferguson's argument that development depoliticises, which Chapter 5 revisits.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Theory tied to cases. Maria Pilar Lorenzo (KU Leuven), in a review published by the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, praises the way theory and practice are woven together through case studies, which makes the book accessible to readers beyond the academy.
• A clear position. Lorenzo also commends the authors' stance of combining anthropology and development rather than rejecting either, and their explicit disagreement with the post-development writers Sachs and Escobar.
• Wide literature, global frame. Arba Bekteshi, in Allegra Lab (2016), notes the generous presentation of anthropological work on development; Lorenzo values the macro-level attention to global issues such as sustainable development, migration and the financial crisis.
• Both reviewers recommend it. Bekteshi calls it a staple for anyone interested in the subject; Lorenzo calls it an invaluable resource.

Limitations

• Much is carried over. According to Bekteshi, sizeable parts of the book come from the 1996 original, with Chapter 4 reproduced in full, so readers who know the earlier book will find less that is new than the "completely rewritten" description suggests.
• Theory ground is narrow. Lorenzo regrets the lack of non-mainstream and non-Western development theories, her example being Gandhi's model of self-reliant villages.
• Newer powers get little depth. She also finds that the rise of China and other emerging powers is mentioned but not worked through.
• No overarching theoretical frame. Bekteshi notes that the authors decline to give the book a single theoretical frame of the kind postmodernism supplied in the 1996 volume.

Where It Fits in the Course

Within the anthropology-of-globalization list, Gardner and Lewis is an intermediate step on development. Emma Crewe and Richard Axelby's Anthropology and Development is an introductory textbook that treats development as a set of relationships between donors, governments, organisations and the people they aim to help, and is the gentler place to start. Gardner and Lewis then supply the critical history and the debate over what anthropologists should do about development.

Arturo Escobar's Encountering Development is the critical study of development as a discourse, from whose position Gardner and Lewis, in Lorenzo's account, deliberately depart, and Talal Asad's Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter gives the older argument about the discipline's colonial origins. Thomas Hylland Eriksen's Globalization: The Key Concepts is a short introduction to the wider process within which Gardner and Lewis discuss new economic powers.

How to Use This Book

The book suits second- and third-year undergraduates and master's students in anthropology, development studies and related fields, and practitioners in non-governmental organisations. An introductory social or cultural anthropology course is helpful.

A practical plan:

• Core: Chapters 1 and 3 for the history and the anthropological critique, then Chapter 5 for how radical concepts are absorbed.
• For practitioners: Chapters 2 and 4, on applying anthropology and the position of anthropologists inside development.
• Pair with cases: read each chapter alongside an ethnography of development or an agency document, so that its arguments can be tested. Use the book to frame essays that weigh critique against engagement.
• Know the lineage: readers who have the 1996 volume can concentrate on the new material, since Chapter 4 is a carry-over.