Overview

Billions of dollars are spent on foreign aid (building dams, schools, wells) in the Global South. Yet, many projects fail. The well breaks, the school sits empty. Why? Often because the donors didn’t understand the local culture. Development Anthropology tries to bridge the gap between the World Bank bureaucrat and the village farmer.

Core Idea

The core idea is local knowledge. The people being “developed” are not ignorant; they are experts on their own lives and environment. Ignoring their knowledge leads to disaster. Development should not be something done to people, but with people.

Formal Definition

The branch of applied anthropology that focuses on social issues in economic development. It involves both working within development agencies (to design better projects) and critiquing the industry of development itself.

Intuition

An NGO wants to boost nutrition, so they encourage farmers to grow a high-protein crop. The farmers refuse. The NGO thinks they are “backward.” The anthropologist discovers that the crop requires harvest during the holy month when work is forbidden, or that it tastes bad to them. The anthropologist explains the “why” behind the refusal.

Examples

  • The Anti-Politics Machine: James Ferguson’s famous study of a project in Lesotho. The project failed to help the poor, but it succeeded in expanding the power of the state bureaucracy. He argued that development often depoliticizes poverty, treating it as a technical problem rather than a political one.
  • Microfinance: Anthropologists have shown that while small loans can help, they can also trap women in debt and increase domestic violence, challenging the “magic bullet” narrative.
  • Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA): A method where villagers draw their own maps and prioritize their own needs, rather than having experts tell them what they need.

Common Misconceptions

  • Anthropologists just say “No”: They are often seen as troublemakers who slow down projects by pointing out complexities. But their goal is to make the project actually work in the long run.
  • Development is always good: Anthropologists (like Arturo Escobar) argue that “Development” is a Western ideology that imposes a capitalist, industrial model on the world, destroying sustainable local alternatives.
  • Sustainable Development: Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the future.
  • Neoliberalism: The economic policy (free markets, privatization) that dominates modern development aid. Anthropologists often critique its impact on the poor.
  • NGOization: The process where NGOs replace the state in providing services, often weakening local democracy.

Applications

  • Health: Designing culturally appropriate responses to epidemics (like Ebola), where understanding burial rituals is key to stopping the spread.
  • Agriculture: Promoting “agroecology” that respects traditional farming methods.

Criticism / Limitations

  • Complicity: Can you work for the World Bank without becoming part of the problem? Some argue applied anthropologists are just “handmaidens of imperialism.”
  • Scale: Anthropologists are good at the village level, but sometimes struggle to offer solutions at the national or global economic level.

Further Reading

  • Ferguson, James. The Anti-Politics Machine. 1990.
  • Escobar, Arturo. Encountering Development. 1995.
  • Farmer, Paul. Pathologies of Power. 2003.