Åsa Maria Hermansson STVC04

(861103-6008) Winnie Bothe

Hegemony of Discourse
- The chances to think outside the neoliberal box

Fall term 2012

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Åsa Maria Hermansson STVC04
(861103-6008) Winnie Bothe

Abstract
This paper argues that empowerment, in the hands of mainstream development agencies, is a tool for
reproducing the hegemony of the neoliberal discourse. Empowerment is seen as a way of shaping
citizens to become part of the ruling world order. Outset is taken from a power notion where this
hegemony is not held by certain groups but of the very discourse where people are vehicling it in their
interaction under a notion of apoliticalness. The strong position of one discourse and its reinforcement
risk to obstruct the chances to see the world differently and thus limit the perspectives on development.

Key words
Empowerment, Participation, Discourse, Deconstructivist, Apolitical, Hegemony, Power, Foucault,
Micro practices, Normalization, Common sense, Ideology, Neoliberal, World Bank

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Åsa Maria Hermansson STVC04
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Table of content

Abstract …............................................................................................................................... 2

Table of content ….................................................................................................................. 3

1. Introduction ….................................................................................................................... 4

2. Empowerment …................................................................................................................. 6
2. 1. Providing the poor with the keys to reduce poverty - Mainstream empowerment definition .............. 6
2. 2. Empowerment as improving citizens ......................................................................................................... 7

3. Discourse …........................................................................................................................ 8
3.1. The crucial role of the empowerment discourse …................................................................................... 8
3. 2. The Apolitical politics …............................................................................................................................ 10

4. Hegemony …..................................................................................................................... 11
4.1.Hegemony of thought ….............................................................................................................................. 11
4.2. Rethinking the villains - A Foucauldian power notion …........................................................................ 12
4.3 Micro practices - continued Foucauldian perspective …......................................................................... 13

5. Conclusion ….................................................................................................................... 17

6. Bibliography …................................................................................................................. 16

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Åsa Maria Hermansson STVC04
(861103-6008) Winnie Bothe

1. Introduction

This paper argues that empowerment, in the hands of mainstream development agencies, is a tool for
reproducing the hegemony of the neoliberal discourse. This is important since it carries the risk of
obstructing our chances to see the world differently and thus limit the perspectives of solutions to be
found to the challenges around us. I question the role of mainstream empowerment projects in this
process arguing for participation in the neoliberal world order. However, instead of seeking whom to
blame, it suggest that the control of this process is not held by certain actors but in the very discourse,
that subjugates development agents as well as participants of development intervention. Instead of
talking in terms of development agencies as having some sort of hidden agenda, I argue that the process
of narrowing our minds is a consequence of an expanding ideology and that we all are vehicles of
reproducing this hegemony of thought.

Having reached a universal hegemony, ruling not through force, but by normalization of its ideas, the
neoliberal worldwork appears to be taken for common sense. The empowerment projects of the
mainstream development agencies invites us to accept the rationale that comes with it. In this
empowerment discourse we are all vehicles in reproducing the power of this ideology. I will look at it
as a question of cultural hegemony that limits us to think of other options since our categories are
narrowed. i.e. if we believe the human is driven by rational egoism given by nature, it becomes rather
difficult to see solidarity as a way to confront the problems. If we perceive representative state
democracy for granted as common sense, the advantages of libertarian direct democracy will be
unthinkable. Focus does not lie on whether gaining back the Freirean origin of empowerment,
awareness building for mobilization against oppression (1960), would be more effective for the ends of
development than the neoliberal market participation. This is not even an aim to define what “true”
empowerment is. Instead, focus lies on the reproduction and expansion of a neoliberal rationale
accompanying the discourse, which I argue narrows the space for thinking in other ways, seeing other
ways to organize society and to think of development.

I will make a theoretical study where, firstly, I will give an overview of the mainstream definition of

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empowerment, represented by Helling et al. and the World Bank development report (2005). Then I
will draw on Tania Murray Li (2007), to explain why I argue that the former paternalistic and possibly
dangerous. Taking help from Andrea Cornwall and Karen Brock (2005), I will look at the crucial role
of discourse when reproducing the hegemony of the neoliberal thinking. I will use a definition of
hegemony where it is not a class or group that holds power over another but an expanded meaning
referring to Winnie Bothe (2011). I will develop on why this is not a hegemony owned by a certain
power holder, but by the discourse itself relying my argument on the theories of Foucault.

The thematic surges from a lack of belief in the 'development industry', whether it seeks to strengthen
the state or weaken it, be it about market access or land reforms, aiming to include local knowledge or
not. I argue that in any case it carries a hint of objectification. It is a challenge to try to take as an outset
the perspective of the subject of development and empowerment projects, to not write about “them”,
the subjects of development. Usually, when talking about an “exclusion from development” (Helling et
al. 2005, Friedman 1992 etc) the authors positions themselves inside development and “the poor” as
excluded from it. I do not by any means argue that this exclusion does not exist, but I question the
perspective of it, whichever good intentions there are. I argue that the outset should be of the subject as
the insiders, and see the development projects as an external influence. Most certainly there are people
who are grateful for the development guidance, but it may also humiliate by the objectifying
perspective of the external aid programs. Uma Kothari (2001), in her critique of the participation
tyranny, invites us to seek to understand “the experience of being researched”.

The aim with this paper is not be to argue for one system being better than another. It is tempting to
give suggestions for better ways to search for empowerment in areas of dignity, justice, pragmatism
and plurality. However I do not challenge the view that the neoliberal interventions are good in some
places and cases. As Li (2007) admits in her critique of the mainstream empowerment discourse,
sometimes what the rurally poor in Indonesia wanted was precisely market access. What is at stake is
the universalism of on discourse. If the discursive hegemony is seen as a box, this paper does not
suggest certain directions in which to look, but to tumble its walls a bit to see more horizons.

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Åsa Maria Hermansson STVC04
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2. Empowerment

2.1 Providing the poor with the keys to reduce poverty - Mainstream empowerment
definition

“Empowerment is both a means and an end to local development: empowered people are both
better endowed with the resources that enable them to satisfy their needs and better able to
participate in the arenas of governance and markets through which they can continue to improve
their lives” (Helling et al. 2005:17).

A metaphor of finding the keys to poverty reduction, is frequently used in the World Bank development
report (2000/2001). Also within the Local Governance framework, presented by Louis Helling et al.
(2005), empowerment plays a central role, where empowerment, participation and local governance are
used interchangeably. The final destination of empowerment is poverty reduction and the way there
goes firstly through market reforms, state action to enhance the market and capacity building for 'the
poor' to participate in it. The World Bank Report states: “Promoting opportunity though assets and
market access increases the independence of poor people and thus empowers them by strengthening
their bargaining position relative to state and society” (WB 2000/2001:7). Through participation in the
market, poor people will be empowered to improve their lives.
At the same time, empowerment is considered to increase people's opportunities and capabilities to
make and express choices and transform it into desired actions and outcomes. Helling et al. argue
that people's capability to effectively participate in their own development is determined “not only by
individual resource endowments, but also by social capital that provides the basis for collective action“
(2005:iii). Focus lies on enhancing capabilities and opportunities for the poor to participate in inclusive
local governance that facilitates local service provision and local private sector growth. By these means
human, social and economic development will be achieved. This brings about a virtuous circle where
empowerment is both the means and the end in itself (Helling et al. 2005).

The empowerment programs of the big development institutions have faced critique for promoting a

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depoliticized version of empowerment where the radical roots have gone lost (See Participation the
new tyranny 2001) They are also being accused for disguising their neoliberal agenda behind “nice
sounding” and “warmly persuasively” words (Cornwall and Brock 2005). I will argue that when
someone is handing over the keys of poverty reduction to someone else, it shows that the door in which
they will fit has already been decided upon.

2.2 Empowerment as improving citizens

Empowerment was heard of for the first time as long ago as in the seventeenth century. Twisting,
turning and analyzing, grammatically there are inevitably at least two presumptions hidden in the very
word empowerment; someone lacks power and someone or something can provide it. This raises the
questions of who needs to be empowered and why. By what or by whom? And, most importantly, who
is to define the answers to these questions?
According to Tania Murray Li (2007) empowerment serves as a tool for shaping citizens. Under the
streaming flag of empowerment, people are invited to participate in the already set neoliberal
organization. Li names them trustees, all those who share in the will to improve others. Trustees are
defined “by the claim to know how others should live, to know what is best for them, to know what
they need (2007:4-5).” The structures of dividing people remains a factor in contemporary development
agendas. “Planned development is premised upon the improvability of the 'target group' but also posits
a boundary that clearly separates those who need to be developed from those who will do the
developing” (Li 2007:15).
In the process of moulding citizens, certain behavior is rewarded. ”[I]n the neoliberal development
program promoted by the World Bank /.../ experts seek to render their target group entrepreneurial,
participatory, responsible, and corruption-averse. These characteristics cannot be imposed-they can
only be promoted by setting conditions to encourage people to behave as they ought” (Li 2007:16).
Where the end of empowerment is already decided upon, empowerment may end up as a procedure
of dispossession. The empowerment seeks to make citizens of the global South participate in a certain
way of doing things, not to decide how to organize society. Li argues that defining for someone else

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what she needs always carry certain paternalism. “Whatever the response, the claim to expertise in
optimizing the lives of others is a claim to power” (2007:5)
Or as Uma Kothari would put it: “The very act of inclusion of being drawn in as a participant can
symbolize an exercise of power and control over an individual” (2001:142). As Li acknowledges, the
outcomes of improvement projects are not always bad. They may very well bring changes that people
want - roads and bridges, fewer floods and diseases, less corruption and waste (2007:1). What is at
stake is the worldmaking that comes with.

3. Discourse

3. 1. The crucial role of the empowerment discourse

“Following Apthorpe (1997, cited in Eyben, 2008), we understand discourses as not only
the way that things, such as policy documents, are written or said, but also as the procedures
and activities associated with words that shape whose knowledge counts and
what alternatives are proposed and recognized as possible”

Nana Akua Anyidoho and Takyiwaa Manuh (2010) eloquently define discourse this way. Power and
words are intricately linked and words should not be seen only as words.
Andrea Cornwall and Karen Brock (2005) suggest us to look at what the words do for development
policy. When empowerment is a mean and en end for people's participation and inclusion, one has to
ask the question of what we are supposed to participate in. Cornwall and Brock argue that certain
discourses frame certain problems, when distinguishing some aspects of a situation rather than others.
This defines the path of action and only certain kinds of solution will be possible. Different ways of
worldmaking use different frames of reference and can produce very different views of what is true or
right. Cornwall and Brock, referring to Laclau, see it as a process of linking 'chains of equivalence' to
the words and this coming to precedent other meaning. If governance were to be linked to other chains
of equivalence, other ways of confronting problems would be made possible. If people are supposed to

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be empowered to and by participation in the market, this also presumes that means for consumption is
the central way to achieve social security.

“Configuring participation and empowerment with 'governance', for example, produces a

different set of possibilities than would be the case if governance were to be replaced with
'social protection'” (Cornwall&Brock 2005:1047).

Cornwall and Brock suggest linking the word to other chain words: social justice, redistribution and
solidarity, instead of seeing it as poor people being empowered through the marketization of services
that were once their basic right. “It would allow us to recognize that there are many possible worlds to
be made with these words, something which consensus thinking calls on us to pretend to ignore”
(2005:1057).

As Anyidoho and Manuh witness from their assessment of bilateral, non governmental and World Bank
projects in Ghana with focus on empowering women, the heavy focus on economic inclusion made
other ways of looking at empowerment unthinkable. Where the dominant discourses on women’s
empowerment in Ghana are framed in terms of welfare and basic needs, women are viewed as victims
to be taken care of, or marginalized groups to be integrated into development. “None of these
organizations mention women’s leisure, or sexuality, for instance, as areas of empowerment /.../ Rather
it is largely basic survival and anti poverty discourses that masquerade as empowerment discourse in
Ghana” (2010:273).

Discourse is a powerful tool when looking at the importance of words as carriers of categories.
Empowerment, when in the hands of a neoliberal institution, comes with chain of underlying ideas. It
invites us to take for granted the self evidence of representative democracy, of state power, of growth as
the solution to the world's poverty, of money as the ultimate happiness, of market as provider of health
and education, of competition as the best incentive for improvement, of material well being as the sine
qua non for social and political development. Winnie Bothe (2011:131):

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Åsa Maria Hermansson STVC04
(861103-6008) Winnie Bothe

“The argument for a deconstructivist perspective on empowerment is that the direct critique of
neoliberal interventions still fails to acknowledge the highly political process hidden behind the
supposedly depoliticized empowerment agenda. “Although these present highly salient
critiques, they fail to comprehensively capture how local governance moulds the citizen role”.

3. 2 The Apolitical Politics

“The short answer to the question of what the 'development' apparatus in Lesotho does: it
depoliticizes everything it touches, everywhere whisking political realities out of sight, all the
while performing, almost unnoticed, its own pre-eminently political operation of expanding
bureaucratic state power (Ferguson 1990:xv).

Critics argue that empowerment has become depoliticized. “It has been turned away from its radical
roots: we now talk of problem-solving through participation rather than problematization, critical
engagement and class” Cleaver 2001:53). From a radical left political meaning of mobilizing against
oppression, there has been a move towards a depoliticized meaning that unites actors to consensus.
However, this supposedly apolitical framework leaves a lot of room for filling it with a highly political
project to take place unnoticed, the normalization of a neoliberal world view.
No event is apolitical, as semiologist Roland Barthes (1957) would argue. In his work on myths, the
myths represent ideological values. Myth makes ideology apolitical and natural. Through the work of
language, the political myths become perceived as natural facts and reduce the possibility to question
the myth. The rulers hide the fact that they are ruling. Cornwall and Brock argue that empowerment,
shaped as 'warmly persuasive and fulsomely positive lend the needed legitimacy to development actors
to justify their interventions”(2005:1044). I suggest this happens at another, less conscious level, where
no one is seeking to deprive the other of their capacity to think in wider terms but that this yet happens.
Kothari argues that programs designed to bring the excluded in “often result in forms of control that are
more difficult to challenge, as they reduce spaces of conflict and are relatively benign and liberal”
(2001:143). This leads us into a discussion on hegemony. As Bothe puts it (2011:149) it is necessary to

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widen the discussion to see “how local governance may serve as a technology of empowerment, but
equally also one of hegemonization”.

4. Hegemony

4.1 The hegemonic power of the neoliberal ideology

“The downside of all this is discursive closure: it becomes more difficult to disagree with the
use of words like empowerment than with the way of worldmaking of particular institutions”
(Cornwall and Brock 2005:1056).

In this section hegemony is understood as dominance. Yet, is not the material dominance of one class
over another, but the hegemony of a discourse in relation to other discourses. Cornwall and Brock see
hegemony through a Gramscian lens, as a discourse where terms having moved from contests of
meaning to an unquestioned acceptance. They argue that this results in a discursive hegemony where
ideology is being accepted as common sense. The terms we us and how we combine them “allow
certain meanings to flourish, and others to become barely possible to think with” (2005:1057).
Scott (1985,1992) defines hegemony as the 'invisible power'. In his discussion of 'transcripts', Scott
sees the weak as well as the dominant as caught in the same web of socialized roles and behavior.
These are often expressed without explicit or conscious intent. The view on hegemony that he puts
forth is a cultural and psychological definition where instead of insidiously coordinated acts of
domination, hegemony is see as a subconscious matter of internalization and normalization. Thus, it
narrows our perspectives to think of the world in other ways. Cornwall and Brock insists that it is
necessary to reveal that these ways of worldmaking are mere ideology. When ownership,
accountability, governance and partnership are the underlying chains of equivalence of empowerment,
it is possible “to make the world that the neoliberal model would have us all inhabit” (Cornwall &
Brock 2005:1057).
Every ideology carry its world view and outlook on people. What enforces a hegemony is that the

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rationale behind it that becomes normalized into common sense. However, this should not be seen in
simple conspiratorial ways. Seeing it in material terms, where one class exercises power over another,
the global North purposely holding the global South back, the practitioners over the participants, the
local elite over the local poorest, Kothari suggests that these dichotomies will not help us to explain
how power works (2001). Li agrees that the rush to identify hidden motives of profit or domination
narrows the analysis. She sees in the trustees a true intent to make the world better.

“Rather than assume a hidden agenda I take seriously the propositions that the will to improve
can be taken at its word. This is another important lesson learned from Ferguson's Anti-politics
machine. Interests are part of the machine, but they are not its master term” (2005:7-8).

As Bothe shows in her study in Bhutan (2011:417):

“In effect, the hegemonization of political practice is rarely willed, planned and even less
decided upon, but rather it is the implicit product of prevalent beliefs and practices”.

4.2 Rethinking the villains - A Foucauldian power notion

“... in speaking of domination I do not have in mind that solid or global kind of
domination that one person exercises over others, or one group over another, but the
manifold forms of domination that can be exercised within society. Not the
domination of the King [that is, the state or the government] in his central position,
but of his subjects [that is, the citizens or the people] in their mutual relations: not the
uniform edifice of sovereignty, but the multiple forms of subjugation that have a place
and function within the social organism” (Foucault 1977:95-6 quoted in Bothe 2011:142).

If power is everywhere, then also development practitioners and participants are themselves conduits of
power. This makes sense when we try do identify who lies behind the neoliberal hegemony. Is it the

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scholars, the the president of the World Bank, the extension workers, the president of the United States,
the media conglomerates? Instead, it can be seen as being he very ideology, the system, the structure,
the discourse, that has gained this almost unquestioned hegemony. This ideological hegemony thus
keeps reshaping its vehicles to reproduce it. Li (2007) argues that the calculated programs of
interventions are never invented from scratch. Instead they are traversed by a will to improve, not as a
product of a singular will or intention. It surges from a history of assemblages of knowledges,
perceptions, practices, techniques, authority, human capacities and as argued here, vocabularies.

“There are of course individuals involved in devising particular interventions and programs of
improvement. The position of programmers is structured by the enterprise of which they form a
part. It is routinized in the practices in which they engage (Li 2007:6).”

The consequence is the reproduction of an ideology where the general discourse becomes so
normalized that it reduces the possibility to remember that the world could be constructed in other
ways. This normalization of underlying ideas can be argued to narrow our minds to “think outside the
box.” If we believe that the human is driven by rational egoism given by nature, it becomes rather
difficult to see solidarity as a way of confronting the problems. If we take representative state
democracy for common sense, the advantages of libertarian direct democracy will be unthinkable. To
'love one's neighbor' as a basis for worldmaking becomes bundled off back to the Bible as irrational.
Equality gets to be seen as utopian. Dignity becomes a non-question.

4.3 Micro practices - continued Foucauldian perspective

“Hegemonic or global forms of power rely in the first instance on those ‘infinitesimal’ practices,
composed of their own particular techniques and tactics, which exist in those institutions on the
fringes or at the micro-level of society” (Foucault 1980:98).

It has to be said that some people and groups hold more power than others, but Foucault might argue

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that also the apparent power holders are subjugated the power structures. Indeed it is in the very eye of
the storm, or the centers of the discourse, that it becomes the most difficult to see other horizons.
Foucault criticizes the material understanding of power as an act of one group exercising power over
another. Power is rather a diffuse mechanism that functions in a net-like organization (1980).

“And not only do individuals circulate between its threads; they are always in the
position of simultaneously undergoing and exercising this power. They are not only its
inert or consenting target; they are always also the elements of its articulation. In other
words, individuals are the vehicles of power, not its point of application” (Foucault 1980:98).

As Kothari describes it, this happens through micro practices at all levels. The reproduction of power
takes place in the cultural norms, the self-control and the interaction between individuals. “Power is
thus found in the creation of norms and social and cultural practices at all levels” (Kothari 2001:141).
Instead of the supposed governors having an intention to manipulate the presumed governed, as Bothe
argues (2011), it is as much the way in which the governed govern each other, and even themselves.
And:

“Rather, hegemony is seen as an invisible strategy which may work both on those who exercise
hegemony as well as on those who benefit the least from it. As a consequence, both the
intellectuals and the general population may be equally submerged by a hegemonic principle”
(Bothe 2011:148).

Working at the level of norms, the parallel can be drawn to how resistance the general discourse is
treated as irresponsibility. By making non-participant seem subversive, unwilling to cooperate,
backwarded, utopian or irrational the upholding of the ideological hegemony remains possible. This
also goes for the unwillingness to participate in development projects. Frances Cleaver: “Interestingly,
many approaches make significant efforts to link participation with social responsibility, to characterize
non-participation as irresponsible” (2001:48). Also Bothe follows this track when describing the
normalization processes among Bhutanese citizens: “Those who fail to comply with their expected role,

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become ill looked upon”. Those who do not comply with their expected role become ill looked upon or
even excluded. As such, hegemony is “also interlinked with local processes in which the citizens
govern each other and even themselves. This is reflected in the way in which local citizens taught these
practices to each other, as well as in the community appreciation or condemnation for not following the
norms” (Bothe 2011:414). Kothari concludes that when subversive participants are characterized as
uncooperative, the chances are minimal for other realities to be shaped (2001).

5. Conclusion

I have argued that behind every ideology lies a rationale of implicit and explicit ideas of the world,
what the human being is and how society should be organized. What is at stake is the worldmaking that
comes with the neoliberal discourse. The neoliberal discourse has reached a position of consensual
hegemony where its underlying ideas have become seen as common sense and apolitical. Under a veil
of apoliticalness a lot of room is opened for a political process to take place unnoticed, the
normalization of a neoliberal world view.
The role of the empowerment discourse is that it invites the citizens of the global South to participate
not only in projects of marketization, but also in the neoliberal way of thought. Empowerment, in the
hands of neoliberal development institutions, serves as the tool to reproduce its world hegemonic
position. Discourses frame certain problems, when distinguishing some aspects of a situation rather
than others. Different ways of worldmaking use different frames of reference and can produce very
different views of what is true or right. This defines the path of action and only certain kinds of solution
will be possible.
If we accept that the human is driven by rational egoism given by nature, it becomes rather difficult
to see solidarity as a way of confronting the problems. If we take representative state democracy for
granted as common sense, the advantages of libertarian direct democracy will be unthinkable. When
the importance of economic wealth is being taken for granted as the centrality of empowerment, leisure
and time becomes a non-question. When market is seen as the arena for development the capacity to
buy services that once were a right becomes considered empowerment. However it is important to

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Åsa Maria Hermansson STVC04
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remember that these assumptions about the world are not necessarily common sense, but ideological,
making part of an ideology that has gained a hegemonic position that leaves other discourses out.
In this paper hegemony is understood as dominance. However, it is not the material dominance of
one class over another, but the hegemony of a discourse in relation to other discourses. It is explained
as an 'invisible power' where the apparent powerless as well as the dominant are caught in the same
web of socialized roles and behavior. These are often expressed without explicit or conscious intent.
Hegemony is see as a subconscious matter of internalization and normalization. Thus, it narrows our
perspectives to think of the world in other ways. Instead of seeing it in conspiratorial terms, the global
North purposely holding the global South back or the development practitioners exercising mind
shaping over the participants, I have taken as an outset that the intentions to improve the world are
honest, the issue is rather that it fails to recognize the implications they may have. Most likely, no one
seeks to conscientiously narrow our minds. Development agencies, practitioners, participants are all
subjugated the power structures. This makes sense when we fail to identify who lies behind the
neoliberal hegemony. The hegemony is not owned by certain groups but is found in the very discourse.
Thus we all can be considered vehicles of the reproduction of this hegemony. It circulates in the
assemblage of history, knowledges, perceptions, practices, techniques, authority, human capacities,
vocabularies, norms, cultural practices at all level, and the interaction between individuals.
The issue is not whether the neoliberal forms of interventions are more ore less effective for the ends
of development than for instance land reforms or control over the means of production. It may very
well bring changes that are useful. Instead of arguing of who is the best spokes person for the subjects
of development and who holds the truest aim to improve human conditions, focus lies on the
reproduction and expansion of a neoliberal rationale accompanying the empowerment discourse and
this discourse's hegemonic position making other views on development barely thinkable. When the
ways of thinking about development are limited, so are the set of solutions to the challenges
surrounding us. If the discursive hegemony is seen as a box, this paper does not suggest a certain
direction to take, but to tumble its walls a bit to see more horizons.

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Åsa Maria Hermansson STVC04
(861103-6008) Winnie Bothe

6. Bibliography
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Barthes, Roland (1957). Mythologies, Seuil, Paris

Bothe, Winnie (2011). Forming local citizens in Bhutan: The Traditionalization of Participatiom
Empowerment, domination or subjugation?

Cleaver, Frances (2001). Institutions, Agency and the Limitations of Participatory Approaches to
Development, In Cook, B. & Kothari, U., Participation: The New Tyranny? New York: Zeed Books

Cornwall, Andrea & Brock, Karen (2005). What do Buzzwords do for Development Policy? A critical
look at 'participation', 'empowerment' and 'poverty reduction'. Third World Quarterly, Vol 26, No 7, pp
1043-1060

Ferguson, J. (1990). The “Development” Apparatus. In The Anti-Politics Machine. 'Development',

Depoliticization and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. Cambridge: University Press

Foucault, M. (1980). Two Lectures (1976). I C. Gordon, "Two Lectures." Power /Knowledge: Selected
Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977. Ed. Brighton: Harvester

Freire, Paolo. (1960). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum Books

Helling, L., Warren, D., & Serrano, R. (2005). Linking community empowerment, decentralized
governance and public service provision through a local development framework. Washington DC:
World Bank

Kothari, Uma. (2001). 'People's knowledge', participation and patronage: operations and
representations in rural development. In Cooke, B. & Kothari, U.: Participation: The new tyranny?
London: Zed Books

Li, Tania Murray (2007). The will to improve: Governmentality, Development and the Practice of
Politics. Durham: Duke University Press

Scott, James (1985). Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. Yale University
Press

Scott, James (1992). Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. Yale University Press

World Bank (2000/2001). WORLD DEVELOPMENT REPORT. Attacking poverty: Opportunity,

Empowerment and security. UNDP

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