Me

Tom Yarrow
Room d117
Email: t.g.yarrow@durham.ac.uk
Office hours: Tuesdays 12-3.00
 This Term
Anthropological and ethnographic perspectives on key
development concepts:
1. Progress and Development
2. Modernisation
3. Neo-liberalism and Globalisation
4. NGOs and Civil Society
5. Participation and Indigenous Knowledge
6. Corruption
7. Expertise
8. Development People
9. Applying Anthropology
Progress and Development

A Brief History
 Key Questions:
• How did concepts of progress and
development emerge?
• How have these changed in relation to
different social and political contexts?
• What practical consequences do these have
for shifting relationships between different
parts of the world?
What is development?
 What is Development?
Enlightenment views
• Economic growth?
• Improvement (spiritual, religious, education,
healthcare?)
• A better society?
• A fairer society?
• Planned intervention to produce change?
• Sustainability?
 What is Development?
Romantic views (including many
anthropologists)
• Environmentally destructive
• Erases traditional practices and beliefs
• Promotes economic values to detriment of
others
 Teleology of development theory
(Porter 1995)
• Successive improvement in ideas
• Learning from problems and mistakes
• New policies/paradigms build on old ones
• These enable increasingly ‘better’ interventions.

Kuhnian Knowledge
 Vs. ‘Master metaphors’ of
development
Powerful underlying complex of ideas:
• Structure how we think and act
• Define ‘what is’ and ‘what aught to be’
• Endure over time
 Master Metaphors
• maintain and legitimate regimes of
governance
• control a diverse range of situations
• justify centralised authority
• deny agency of ‘others’
Genealogies of Development
 Pre-modern (Medieval) Europe
• No overall linear
progress
• Cycles of growth and
decay
• Economic development
a spontaneous process
(when it happened)
Contemporary depiction of
• Government played a medieval peasant society
marginal role (if any)
 The Enlightenment
• ‘Universal, continuous and
uninterrupted effort to better their
own condition’ (Adam Smith, 1776)
• Application of science and
technology to production of goods
and services
• link between science and material
Nature as object of
progress intervention
• idea man could understand, predict
and manipulate nature positively
 Progressive Futures (Koselleck
2004)
Late eighteenth century onwards: ('progress')
- Christian ideas of ‘end times’ replaced by ideas
of ‘the golden future’
•‘The future’ predictable and subject to planning
 Nineteenth Century: Industrial Change
associated with:
• Proliferation of new technologies and goods
• Increase in material wealth
• Increased sense of European superiority
• Increased sense of problems of progress (and
need to manage these)
 Clock-time (E. P. Thompson 1967)
• Sequential and progressive
• Measureable
• Regular
• Commodifiable
• Independent from space
Leeds town hall: clock
• Synchronicity of ‘Imagined time becomes public
Communities’ (Anderson 1983)
 19th century Britain
• Emergence of new fields of knowledge
– Hygiene
– Statistics
– Geographic
• Connected to new social technologies
– Welfare
– Planning
– Colonial administration
 Colonialism
Intellectual rationale:
• ‘Civilisation’
– Moral and intellectual
development
– Triumph of reason
• [‘economic improvement’]
 Colonialism
Underlying economic interests
• Early colonialism
– ‘Free trade’ supported European Industry
• Later colonial ‘imperialism’
– Desire to exploit new mining opportunities
– Fears of cheap labour competition
– ‘world welfare’
– Empire as pre-requisite for western development
 Evolutionism
‘Progressive’ ideas transformed through
Victorian scholarship on
• Social evolution
• Biological evolution

(see Stocking 1982)

Darwin (1871, The Descent of Man)
• chain between Ape and
Modern European
• different cultures as
different 'races'
• these represent
physiologically different
stages of evolution
• evolution of all races
through same basic
stages
 Social Evolutionism
e.g. Marx, Durkheim, Tylor
– Contemporary social
diversity reflects man’s
evolution
– Societies evolve in a
linear way from
‘primitive’ to ‘modern’
– Links between progress
in:
• Economics
• Politics
• Intellect
‘The visage of crisis is, and was, built into
development from the beginning.’

(Watts 1995: 46)

 Romantic Rejection of Progress
Gandhi, India
• economic growth accentuates 'the
evil nature of man'
• Modernity increases famine and
spreads plague
• Displacement of tradition (e.g.
Handicraft)
 Arts and Crafts and Romantic
movements, UK
Progress associated with
- Destruction of heritage
- Destruction of traditional skills
- Fragmentation of community
- Alienation of individuals from
work

(William Morris, John Ruskin1865)

 Summary
• Ideas of ‘development’ and ‘progress’ have a
long and complex genealogy
• These ideas emerged in relation to social,
political and economic changes, but in turn
effected these processes
 Seminar One: “Development
entrenches political power and
economic inequality”
Alphabetically by group:
-Top half ‘for’ the motion
-Bottom are ‘against’
-Read at least one reading and think critically
about how it relates to the question
 Feedback on Formatives
• Consult DUO
• Feel free to discuss with me/Ben
 Some general feedback:
• ‘Big’ topics/issues are fine, but make sure you focus –
for instance geographically/ethnographically
• Ethnography is not just illustration: use it to explore,
complicate, question, critically examine…
• Make sure you chose a project/essay where relevant
literature and ethnography can be found – you may
need to retro-fit the topic to what you can find.
• It is fine to propose research, but make sure this is
not an excuse for not doing it! i.e. use existing
sources to frame issues and context.
 References
Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism. London, Verso.
Arndt, H. W. (1989). Economic Development: the History of an Idea. Chicago,
University of Chicago Press.
Porter, D. J. (1995). Scenes from Childhood: The homesickness of development
discourses. Power of Development. J. Crush. London and New York, Routledge:
63-86.
Ruskin, J. (1865). The Seven Lamps of Architecture. New York, John Wiley and Sons.
Stocking, G. (1982). The Dark Skinned Savage: the image of primitive man in
evolutionary anthropology. Race, Culture and Evolution: esays in the history of
anthropology. G. Stocking. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
Thompson, E. P. (1967). "Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism." Past and
Present Society 38: 56-97.
Watts, M. (1995). ‘‘A new Deal in Emotions’: Theory and practice and the crisis of
development. Power of Development. J. Crush. London and New York, Routledge:
44-62.