Beyond the post-structural impasse in the anthropology of development

Dialectical Anthropology

Volumn 30, Issue 3-4, 2006, Pages 201-225

  Friedman, John T ^a  

^a UTRECHT UNIVERSITY   (Netherlands)

Author keywords

Anthropology and development; Development; Namibia; Post development; Post structuralist critique of development

Indexed keywords

EID: 34347235095     PISSN: 03044092     EISSN: 15730786     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/s10624-007-9006-9     Document Type: Article

References (81)

1. A. Arce & N. Long (eds.), Anthropology, Development and Modernities: Exploring Discourses, Counter-Tendencies and Violence (New York and London: Routledge, 2000);
2. J-P. Olivier de Sardan, Anthropology and Development: Understanding Contemporary Social Change (London and New York: Zed, 2005).
3. A. Escobar, "Discourse and Power in Development: Michel Foucault and the Relevance of His Work to the Third World," Alternatives 10, no. 3 (1984): 377-400.
4. B. Cooke & U. Kothari (eds.), Participation: The New Tyranny? (London: Zed Books, 2001);
5. M. Cowen & R. Shenton, Doctrines of Development (London and New York: Routledge, 1996);
6. J. Crush (ed.), Power of Development (London and New York: Routledge, 1995);
7. A. Escobar, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995);
8. J. Fairhead, "Development Discourse and its Subversion: Decivilisation, Depoliticisation and Dispossession in West Africa," in Anthropology, Development and Modernities: Exploring Discourses, Counter-Tendencies and Violence, eds. A. Arce & N. Long (New York and London: Routledge, 2000);
9. J. Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine: "Development," Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990);
10. R. Grillo & R. Stirrat (eds.), Discourses of Development: Anthropological Perspectives (Oxford and New York: Berg, 1997);
11. G. Mohan, "Developing Differences: Post-Structuralism and Political Economy in Contemporary Development Studies," Review of African Political Economy, no. 73 (1997): 311-328;
12. D. Mosse, Cultivating Development: An Ethnography of Aid Policy and Practice (London: Pluto Press, 2005);
13. D. Mosse & D. Lewis (eds.), The Aid Effect: Giving and Governing in International Development (London: Pluto Press, 2005);
14. M. Rahnema & V. Bawtree (eds.), The Post-Development Reader (London and New Jersey: Zed Books, 1997);
15. W. Sachs (ed.), The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power (London: Zed Books, 1992).
16. By "discourse", the post-structuralist critics refer not only to the interchanges associated with speech and conversation, but more importantly, to that which is represented through language: "A discourse (e.g. of development) identifies appropriate and legitimate ways of practising development as well as speaking and thinking about it. A discursive perspective, however, also embraces a totalizing conception of how society constitutes its members (or 'subjects'), and of the role of language in that process" (R. Grillo, "Discourses of Development: The View from Anthropology," in Discourses of Development: Anthropological Perspectives, eds. R. Grillo & R. Stirrat (Oxford and New York: Berg, 1997).
17. A. Escobar, "Imagining a Post-Development Era," in Power and Development, ed. J. Crush (London and New York: Routledge, 1995).
18. K. Nustad, "Development: The Devil We Know?" Third World Quarterly, 22, no. 4 (2001): 479-489.
19. For a rejoinder to some of the criticisms that follow, see A. Escobar, "Beyond the Search for a Paradigm? Post-Development and Beyond," Development 43, no. 4 (2000): 11-14.
20. M. Everett, "The Ghost in the Machine: Agency in 'Poststructural' Critiques of Development," Anthropological Quarterly 70, no. 3 (1997): 137-151.
21. J. T. Friedman, "On the Post-Structuralist Critique of Development: A View from North-west Namibia," Development Southern Africa 23, no. 5 (2006): 587-603;
22. K. Gardner & D. Lewis, "Dominant Paradigms Overturned or 'Business as Usual'? Development Discourse and the White Paper on International Development," Critique of Anthropology 20, no. 1 (2000): 15-29.
23. M. Everett, "The Ghost in the Machine"; R. Kiely, "The Last Refuge of the Noble Savage? A Critical Assessment of Post-Development Theory," The European Journal of Development Research 11, no. 1 (1999): 30-55;
24. B. Rossi, "Revisiting Foucauldian Approaches: Power Dynamics in Development Projects," The Journal of Development Studies 40, no. 6 (2004): 1-29.
25. For example, see A. Escobar, Encountering Development;
26. J. Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine;
27. and G. Williams, "Modernizing Malthus: The World Bank, Population Control and the African Environment," in Power of Development, ed. J. Crush (London and New York: Routledge, 1995).
28. R. Kiely, "The Last Refuge of the Noble Savage?";
29. J. Nederveen Pieterse, "After Post-Development," Third World Quarterly 21, no. 2 (2000): 175-191.
30. S. Arnin, Unequal Development: An Essay on the Social Formation of Peripheral Capitalism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1976);
31. T. dos Santos, "The Structure of Dependence," The American Economic Review 60, no. 2 (1970): 231-236.
32. D. Booth, "Marxism and Development Sociology: Interpreting the Impasse," World Development 13, no. 7 (1985): 761-787;
33. K. Gardner & D. Lewis, Anthropology, Development and the Post-Modern Challenge (London and Chicago: Pluto Press, 1996);
34. R. Kiely, The Sociology of Development: The Impasse and Beyond (London and New York: Routledge, 1995);
35. F. Schuurman (ed.). Beyond the Impasse: New Directions in Development Theory (London: Zed, 1993).
36. J. Comaroff, Body of Power Spirit of Resistance: The Culture and History of a South African People (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1985);
37. J. Comaroff & J. Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution, Volume 1: Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1991);
38. J. Comaroff & J. Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution, Volume 2: The Dialectics of Modernity on a South African Frontier (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1997).
39. J. Comaroff, Body of Power Spirit of Resistance.
40. Ibid., 1.
41. B. Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipleagoes of Melanesian New Guinea (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1984), 25.
42. J. Clifford & G. Marcus (eds.), Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986);
43. G. Marcus & M. Fischer, Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986);
44. E. Said, "Representing the Colonized: Anthropology's Interlocutors," Critical Inquiry 15, (1989): 205-225.
45. C. Geertz, "Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture," in The Interpretation of Culture: Selected Essays (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 10.
46. S. Ortner, "Resistance and the Problem of Ethnographic Refusal," Comparative Studies in Society and History 37, (1995), 190.
47. For a more detailed historical analysis, see J.T. Friedman, "Making Politics, Making History: Chiefship and the Post-Apartheid State in Namibia," Journal of Southern African Studies 31, no. 1 (2005): 23-51.
48. Throughout the German colonial period, the colonial administration had little to do with Kaokoland and its inhabitants. German troops and administrative personnel were stationed no farther north than Sesfontein (situated on Kaokoland's southern border).
49. National Archives of Namibia (NAN) ADM 156 W32, "Report on Kaokoveld by Major C.N. Manning," 1917, p. 2.
50. Ibid., 61.
51. Ibid., 53.
52. Ibid.
53. Ibid., 54. 29'
54. Ibid., 62.
55. Ibid., 61.
56. NAN NAO 061 12/3, "Minutes of Meeting Held at Ohopoho from 7th to 16th April, 1952", Officer-in-Charge, Native Affairs, Ohopoho, 16 April 1952, pp. 2-3.
57. NAN SWAA 2513 A552/1 (Vol. 2), "Report of the Officer-in-Charge, Native Affairs, Kaokoveld for the Quarter Ending 30th June, 1952", Officer-in-Charge, Native Affairs, Ohopoho, 30 June 1952, p. 2.
58. Archives of the Opuwo Town Council (OTC) N1/1/5/5 (1), Untitled letter No. 1 to Bantu Affairs Commissioner, Willem Hartley, Oruvandjae, 10 December 1960.
59. OTC N1/1/5/5 (2), Untitled letter No. 2 to Bantu Affairs Commissioner, Willem Hartley, Oruvandjae, 10 December 1960.
60. OTC N1/1/2, "Bevolkingsensus: Kaokoland" memorandum and attached "Vergadering met Kaokoland Hoofmanne op 4 September 1970", 9 September 1970.
61. Interview 083/2001: 9, 16, 22 and 30 August 2001.
62. J. T. Friedman, Imagining the Post-Apartheid State: An Ethnographic Account of Namibia, (Unpublished PhD dissertation: University of Cambridge, 2004); J.T. Friedman, "Making Politics, Making History".
63. I have located only one reference that suggests a direct link between the Kaokoland conflict and the Epupa development process. The observation, offered by a Namibian nature conservationist, was noted in a travel magazine's brief review of the project (Getaway, "Nature Notes: And They Want to Dam This...," July (1997): 34-35).
64. In less direct fashion, Giorgio Miescher discusses the local conflict in relation to Epupa and regional development more generally (G. Miescher, Epupa, Kaoko, Namibia: Analyse einer öffentlichen Debatte im postkolonialen Namibia - Kontinuitäten und Diskontinuitäten kolonialer Konzeptionen (unpublished Lizentiatsarbeit: University of Basel, 1997);
65. G. Miescher, "Cry for Development: The Kaoko Development League (KDL), Colonial Legacies and the Epupa Debate in Kaoko," in People, Cattle and Land: Transformations of a Pastoral Society in Southwestern Africa, eds. M. Bollig & J. Gewald (Köln: Rüdiger, Köppe, Verlag, 2000). The two other anthropologists who have researched the Epupa process stress the role of outside influences
66. (M. Bollig, "Söldnerführer, Chiefs und Indigenous Rights Aktivisten - Intermediäre der Macht im Nordwesten Namibias," Peripherie 67 (1997): 67-84) and factors unrelated to the conflict
67. (M. Jacobsohn, "Socio-Cultural Impacts on the Himba Residents in the Project Area," in Lower Cunene Hydropower Scheme Feasibility Study: Draft Feasibility Report, Part A4, Environmental Assessment - Supporting Studies, Epupa and Baynes Projects (English Version), ed. NamAng (Windhoek: The Permanent Joint Technical Commission of Angola and Namibia on the Cunene River Basin, 1997) as being most integral in shaping project dynamics.
68. R. Christie, "Who Benefits by the Kunene Hydro-Electric Schemes," Social Dynamics 2, no. 1 (1976): 311-343;
69. R. Murray, "Cunene Scheme: A Focus for Confrontation," African Development 9, no. 11 (1975): 31-33.
70. T. Sveijer, "Namibia: The Himba People's Fight Against the Planned Construction of a Dam, Indigenous Affairs 3/4 (1997): 12-17.
71. M. Bollig, "Resource Management and Pastoral Production in the EPUPA Project Area (The Kunene Drainage System from Swartbooisdrift to Otjinungwa)," in Lower Cunene Hydropower Scheme Feasibility Study: Draft Feasibility Report, Part A4, Environmental Assessment - Supporting Studies, Epupa and Baynes Project (English Version), ed. NamAng (Windhoek: The Permanent Joint Technical Commission of Angola and Namibia on the Cunene River Basin, 1997).
72. Legal Assistance Centre, The Epupa Debate: A Summary of Some of the Key Issues around the Proposed Hydropower Scheme on the Lower Cunene River (Windhoek: Legal Assistance Centre, 1998).
73. NamAng, Lower Cunene Hydropower Scheme Feasibility Study: Final Feasibility Report (Windhoek: The Permanent Joint Technical Commission of Angola and Namibia on the Cunene River Basin, 1998).
74. See L. Dentlinger, "Namibia, Angola eye reviving Kunene hydropower plans." The Namibian, 17 August 2005.
75. J. T. Friedman, "Mapping the Epupa Debate: Discourse and Representation in a Namibian Development Project," in New Notes on Kaoko: The Northern Kunene Region (Namibia) in Texts and Photographs, eds. G. Miescher & D. Henrichsen (Basel: Basler Afrika Bibliographien, 2000).
76. H. Kapika et al., "Epupa Hydropower Scheme - Public Hearing: Statement of Affected Community," International Rivers Network, http://www.irn.org/programs/safrica/hear961031.html (accessed 14 April 2006).
77. J. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990).
78. Interview 047/2001: 20 and 23 April 2001.
79. Interview 083/2001: 9, 16, 22 and 30 August 2001.
80. Interview 087/2001: 17 and 22 August 2001.
81. The Namibian, "3 projects in balance," 9 February 2001.