Study notes for ANTH 212 (Anthropology of Development) Course.
Bolded lines are important concepts.
If a slide does not have any bold, that means it is all important
- Many civs have made great tech advancements, but did not colonize the world (ex: Islamic, Chinese, Meso-American empires)
- 'The West' has been the global political and economic hegemon for centuries
- Impact of Western dev on African, Asian and Latin American societies profound
- 500 BC to 400 AD: Roman empire dominant in Europe
- Sophisticated admin, trade, and cultural output
- 400 AD to 1300 AD: Middle or Dark Ages
- Roman territories lost to Islamic and Germanic kingdoms
- Deterioration of living standards in Europe due to wars and plagues
- Christian dogma stifled invention and cultural output
- Creationism: humans had always been as they were: perfect
- The Enlightenment (1700s)
- Idea of development emerged
- Religious dogmas in Europe looser following Protestant Reformation
- Colonialism began exposing Europe to new cultures, lands, species
- Creativity, invention, and debate; astronomy, anatomy and philosophy flourished
- Human experience was now valued as source of new knowledge
- Reason, common sense, empirical inquiry, exploration, discovery
- Africa bridge
- "Look at what we can build" more than help
- In attaining reason, European societies felt justified in colonizing and judging others
- Societies 'without reason' were considered 'barbaric', 'uncivilized', 'primitive' or 'savage'
- Valuable advance were made, but science empowered colonial conquest
- Charles Darwin's 'Origin of Species' (1859)
- Proposed that species improve over time
- Wrote about bodies, but also minds and social organization
- natural selection: species succeed by beating, outsmarting others
- Euros took this as being more evolved => needed to help other civs
- Focused on taking resources and returning it to the metropole
- Colonialism was an economic intervention
- Colonialism was thought to bring improvement
- Euros used rivalries between indigineous groups to their advantage
- More evolved == more Euro
- Ex: German's chose Tutsi over other Afriacan groups because they looked more civilized
- Following WW2, Euro colonialism declined
- Among other reasons, the WW revealed that colonial ambitions were risky
- African, Asian, and Latin American nations were free to pursue their own goals, but most countries had weak infrastructures and were socially divided
- Formerly colonized nations could not simply return to old way
- All former colonies had elites, many educated in Europe or served in colonial armies
- Many elites believed in elightenment logics
- Progress was not problem, but lack of freedom was
- Leaders were out of touch with their population
- Many countries were political fabircations
- Corruption, authoritarianism has undermined dev in many post-colonies
- Anthros argue the modern era of dev born with Truman Doctrine
- Countries would be aided or 'sped up' on the path to national dev
- Dev was defined in economic terms
- Freedom was ideological priority
- Capitalism guaranteed democracy, democracy guaranteed freedom. Cold war politics rev up.
- A coherent group of tested propositions that can be used to predict or explain a phenomena
- A proposed explanation that experts test and debate upon
- Theory is extremely important and political in dev studies
- Debates about dev occur on unstable ground
- All theories explored in this class have strengths and weaknesses
- Post WW2: the West experience intense social and economic optimism
- People thought that war was won because democracy and reason prevailed
- World was 'free', all nations could find their own success
- As Truman said, Western nations had a responsibility to make the benefits of West available to the world
- All nation could develop easily with help
- Most influential dev theory of our time
- Countries progress along a linear path towards a higher standard of life
- Dev as 'movement' towards more complex, modern society
- Industrialization, urbanization, democratization taken as indicators of dev
- Follows logic of evolutionism & the enlightenment
- Optimistic: assumes that all societies eventually experience dev if they try
- Modernization Theory says that dev can occur anywhere and irrespective of social conditions
- Dev is ideologically neutral and non-political; no ulterior motives, something all can agreee upon
- Development is intrinsically good, benefits are self-evident
- Culture can distract societies from making pragmatic choices. Learning to compartmentalize culture is part of dev process
- Involves overcoming barriers, solving problems
- Rooted in a style of thinking that emerged during The Enlightenment
- Right after Truman Doctrine (1940)
- Rivals Modernization Theory
- Based on Marxism
- Development depends on other, wealthier nations
- ex: unpayable loans issued to poor countries
- Development creates industiries and expectation most nations cannot sustain
- Neocolonialism: new form of extration
- Poor countries cannot break dependence without inflicting harm on themselves
- ex: Democratic Republic of Congo, although independnt from Belgium, they still go back to them seeing they don't have the means to develop sometimes
- Argues that development is a disguise for global capitalism
- Argues that without radical change, poor nations will become poorer
- Modernization is a ladder going up
- Dependency is a downward spiral
- Both theories treat people as passive recipients of developments
- Anthropologists do not fully support either theory
- Pessimistic: can discourage people from working to resolve poverty
- Does not offer practical or constructive solutions
- Treats poor societies as powerless to change on their own
- Discourse refers to the power relations contained within everyday language
- The way we speak to each other
- Discourse found within cltures of instituions
- gov, aid organizations, media, Hollywood, etc.
- Moral perceptions are shaped by the messages we heard in everyday life
- Hidden message behind what people say
- Michel Foucault (1926-1984)
- Power of language
- Truman Doctrine defined people from colonies poor, which convinced people they needed help. He created the Third World with the use of his words
- Popularized in early 90s by Arturo Escobar
- Argued that the division between rich and poor societies was largely a fabrications that began with Truman's declaration in 1949
- Societies were made poor in the minds of Western citizens and policymakers
- Escobar influenced by Foucault and Edward Said
- Orientalism depicts the Orient (Asia and Africa) as dangerous, mysterious
- Said observed if the Orient was uncivilized, Europen supremacy was unthreatened, defined
- Escobar concluded that Western nations are attracted to political opportunities development offers
- If most of world poor, supremacy of West is unthreatened
- As a verb, development refers to growth or positive change
- As an adjective, inherently judgemental; involves a standard against which things are compared
- While 'they' are undeveloped, or the the process of being developed, 'we' have already reached that state of success
- Dev is a response to a problem. But who is defining these problems and how?
- 50s-90s: helping the world's poor was inseparable from Cold War politics
- Soviet Union and NATO countries competed to fund and support developing nations
- Real dev was sometimes undermined by politics. Military aid often went to suppreasing peasant resistance, for example
- Democracy was seen as a prereq for dev
- People who lack recognizable democracy have often been seen as poor in Western eyes
- Cold War politics continue to shape social understanding of the world
- First World: democratic nations (USA, Canada, Australia, Western Europe)
- Second World: Soviet and communist states (China, Yugoslavia, Cuba, USSR)
- Third World: formerly colonized countries where both sides sought influence (Vietnam, Indonesia, Tanzania, Ghana, Brazil ,Nicaragua)
- 'The Third World', as Escobar argues, is an especially problematic term.
- Groups diverse places and peoples into one powerless category
- Though division of world in socio-economic categories has problems, we must recognize the structural advantages/disadvantages shaping our world
- Global North and Global South are preferred terms today
- Experts agreed that Cold War rivalries had undermined dev
- 'The End of History': some believed the world would be simpler then on
- Some thought capitalism and democracy could now prevail everywhere else
- On the contrary, 90s was a difficult decade in Global South
- Vacuum of NATO and Soviet support gave rise to many conflicts
- War to oust Mobutu from Congo often called Africa's World War. Deadliest conflict since WW2
- Liberia, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Somalia, East Timor, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Nepal, Chechnya, Chiapas – All rooted in the poverty and alienation of citizen
- In unis, anthros and others were confronting intellectual dilemmas
- Enlightenment Thinking
- There is such a thing as right and wrong and humans can easily tell the difference
- Modernism
- There is such thing as right and wrong, but humans will struggle to tell the difference
- Post-Modernism:
- Defining right and wrong is imposible due to the number of opinions to consider
- Scholars today hesitant to diagnose and propose solutions to dev problems
- End of Cold War coincided with rise of neoliberalism
- Response to the rising strength of labor unions in USA and Europe in 1970s
- Low taxes, free trade, small govs, etc
- Different from classical capitalism in its treatment of 'the individuals'
- Neoliberalism made economic success the business of all persons
- People would take capitalism 'home with them'; make it a part of their social life
- Zero-sum
- The logic that in order to succeed, other must be beaten
- Networking, gig economies, self help, outsourcing are all products of neoliberalism
- 90s: neoliberal economy policies were forced on many nations
- Spending on education, healthcare, gov jobs were slashed
- Poor become 'entrepreneurs', must invest in their own future
- Modern dev is not 'helping people', but rather 'helping people to help themselves'
- 'Empowerment' and 'entrepreurialism' are the two most heard words in dev
- Economic growth witness in Global South is unquestioned
- But, short-term jobs, no welfare, unstable economies, corruption, environmental degradation, inequality
- New countries are entering the dev game
- Many recognize that helping others is politically attractive
- Gulf States, South Korea, Russia, have their own dev programs
- Chinese investment in Africa totals billions each year
- Investment is needed, but corruption, human rights, climate change are concerns
- Are the poor being helped or made into consumers?
- Private philanthropy
- Bill Gates gives 30 billion USD
- Funds for Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Horn of Africa driven by 'war on terror'. Fears that poor will turn to terrorism
- By 1870, Social Darwinism was prevalent in Western thought
- Racial and cultural supremacy of Europeans accepted
- Non-Euros had no power to say otherwise
- Mid 1800s: scientists started studying 'primitive peoples'
- Cultures were disappearing
- Scientists agreed that should be documented
- Among the Iroquois ins NY stat by Lewis Henry Morgan
- Trained as lawyer
- Morgan noticed that Iroquois lineage patterns not random, but highly sophisticated
- Morgan opened door to idea that non-Euros could be sophisticated
- Did not involve argument that all humans were equal
- 1887, German immigrant to USA, mainly geographer, worked as museam curator
- Researched natives on Canada West Coast and Arctic
- Mucho discrimination at that time
- Argued that it's not our bodies that made us different, but our culture (things we learn, not what we born with)
- Considered founder of American anthro
- Originates from Latin 'colere', meaning to cultivate
- Anthropology comes from 'anthropos' and 'logos', aka 'human' and 'reason'
- Reason about humans, knowledge about humans
- Cultural anthro: knowledge about aspects of humanity which are not natural, but which are acquired
- Hundreds of defs for culture
- Give life meaning, provides identity, shpes how we see and interact with others
- Everyone has culture
- Promoted by Franz Boas
- Doctrine that cultures are different but equal
- Scientifically absurd to rank cultures
- Anti-evolutionist
- One of anthropology's two most important tools
- 1914: Bronislaw Malinowski went to study New Guinea, controlled by Britain
- Highly unprecedented
- Stranded there for 4 years during WW1
- Learned native language
- Collected a lot of data
- Participated in everyday life of people he studied, very odd at time
- Malinowski established long-term fieldwork as a requirement for anthropologists
- Impossible to practice as an ethical principle
- Taken to extreme, it might lead to nihilism (no morality at all)
- Fieldwork lead anthropologists to learn something about themselves. VERY KEY
- A good anthropology study not only tells us something about the culture being studied, but also about culture of anthropologist.
- Friction between cultures is valuable
- To what extent are all humans different/same?
- Tension between universal and particular has been immensely productive in anthropology.
- Discipline's driving question
- Early anth was response to evolutionism of late 1800s
- Non-Western cultures were disappearing and anthropologists wante to document them (salvage anthropology)
- Culture: something everyone has, things we learn from our society
- Some say globalization has made the concept of culture useless, even risky
- Fieldwork
- Cultural relativism
- Malinowski felt that colonialism would happen anyways, ask anthros to mitigate harms
- Anthros were pioneers in cross-cultural tolerance
- For Anthros, knowledge about culture is valuable in itself
- If and how anthro knowledge should be used or shared always been controversial
- 1926: began fieldwork in Sudan, then a British territory
- First Euro to do long-term fielwork among Azande and Nuer people
- Groundbreaking discoveries (organization, enforced law, religious beliefs, etc)
- Studies funded by the UK Gov, entitling them access to his results
- Britain wanted to use his data to control Sudanese people more effectively
- Anthropology has been of interest to those who seek to understand people, their choices, behaviors, beliefs
- Govs, corporations, media,anyone who engages/governs public, law enforcement and social welfare services
- Corporations use anthros for market research or human resources
- International dev
- Anthros often looked to as 'cultural translators' or 'mediators'
- Some see application of anthropology as betrayal or corruption of the craft
- Applied anthro accused of complicity with those who create rather than solve social problems
- Most anthros say their duty is to mediate knowledge, not to hand it over
- Colonial regimes often looked to anthros for info useful in governing
- Anthros worked in land mgmnt, tribal governance, language research, and in training colonial staff
- Anthropology sometimes called 'handmaiden of colonialism'
- Some African scholars claim this is why anthro is unpopular in African unis
- In USA, anthros worked in mgmnt of Native populations
- Application of anthro in war zones especially controversial
- When colonialism ended, Western anthros saw their access to study subjects and areas shrink
- Anthropologists and anthro schools multiplied. More purists and fewer practitioners for a time
- 60s: anthropology recognized as ally of sexual revolution, civil rights and feminist movements
- Margaret Meade: among first scientists to describe sex as natural, universal (radical in 60s America)
- Many anthros supported independence of colonies
- Cold War: some anthros went to work in intelligence (Project Camelot, Latin America)
- Large scale CIA op to weed out people in Latin America
- Application of anthro in conflict zones always been controversial
- Betrayal, corruption
- Concerns assume anthro has something important to say to begin with
- How to employ people trained in anthro is a growing issue
- Foxboii worked at a bank and got fired for asking too many questions
- Applied antrho = reaction against cultural relativism since does not regard culture that is applying anthro as equal of culture to which anthro is applied
- Modern era of dev began with Truman doctrine
- Goal: spped formerly colonized nations along the path to modernity
- 50s and 60s: dev initiatives led by govs
- ex: Green revolutions in India, Mexico, Braizl. Tech from West, but new govs in charge. Significant social spending too
- 70s: World bank and IMF gained power. Began pressing nations to privatize dev. Free market. Foreplay to neoliberalism
- Non-state development orgs (NGOs) assumed leading role (USAID, DFID, OXFAM, UN, ILO, etc)
- Large NGOs are where anthros have ben most active in dev
- Many large NGOs emerged in post-war period, enthusiasm for international cooperation
- Strong global leadership ethic
- Often called neocolonial. Set rules for international law and commerce, sometimes against interests of Global South
- Palaces of Hope: utopianism, goals that are sometimes not only hopeful and ambitions, but willfully and blindly impossible
- in addition to funding big NGOs, Western states created their own dev bodies in the 60s
- USAID: first dev body to recruit anthros in 70s
- Detailed, qualitative, people-centered data could help make dev efforts more effective
- Not dealing with countries, but people (how can we understand our partners better)
- Anthros did surveys, impact assessments, made recommendations
- 70s and 80s: Golden Age for Development Anthro. After heyday of social engineering but before strong neoliberalism
- Dev often conceived around projects (schools, clinics, roads, factories, dams, businesses, etc)
- Dev is not simply aid, it equips people for future success
- Projects time-bound, careful planning
- Anthros survey the 'human terrain' and gauge whether a plan will work
- Sometimes combined with academic anthro research
- ex: McGill's Richard Salisbury's study of hydro-electric project in northern Quebec
- Anthros often believe that well-planned projects can improve lives
- Anthros often skeptical of projects too
- Today: dev synonymous with failure, wasted money, social disruption
- Reason: dev projects often rely on 'social engineering' (attempt to change behaviors and ideas on a large scale)
- ex: Collectivization of Soviet union, Stalin's 5-year plans
- Involved in creating new industries, economies, cities, communities, political values in a short time
- ex: Tanzania's Ujamaa
- People tend to resist social engineering. Benefits not evident, so force used
- By 1990s, govs and banks funding NGOs enforced neoliberal ideals
- All expenditures had to be justified; hard to do with anth knowledge
- 'Audit culture': NGOs had more money, but very constrained in spending it
- Anthros in dev claim they were turned into managers and bookkeepers
- Work became more data-centered, less qualitative, less concerned with people
- NGOs applied Result Based Management: clear goals have to be achieved before more money can be made available
- Neoliberal: improving conditions for economic purposes
- Quality: Long-term fieldwork not a priority. Specific goals, rigid timeframe, can overlook key issues
- Objectivity: Employees cannot be neutral. Work may be 'tainted' by gob or corporate interest. Others say it is better to have a seat at the table
- Ethical integrity: For what and by whom is data used? Could data be used to harm people being studied?
- Opportunism: Some say applied anthros profit from discipline, but fail to give knowledge back
- Recent decades: international dev work has largely been the business of international NGOs and financial institutions (IFIs). 'Palaces of Hope'
- Dev 'projects'. Specific plans for improving people's lives. Projects using 'social engineering' have a high rate of failure
- Many anthros have worked for NGOs and IFIs in past decades
- 'Audit culture' now in place; heavy emphasis on economic efficiency
- Social investment and anthro knowledge must often be justified in economic terms
- In addition to working in dev, anthros also study it
- International Development Studies (IDS), a large and popular academic field. Anthros are large playes, along with political scientists, economists
- 'Anthropology of Development' considered a distinct sub-field, like legal anthropology, medical anthropology, etc
- Line between pure and applied anthropology very blurry
- Gardner and Lewis group anthro studies of dev into 3 areas:
- The social and cultural effects of economic change, in general
- The social and cultural effect of specific dev projects (like Richard Salisbury)
- The internal workings and discourses of dev sector i.e. the culture of the people who carry out dev on the ground or make dev policy (like Ron Niezen and Arturo Escobar)
- Industrialization, urbanization is hard on people, even if it benefits them long term
- Traditions and identities do not go away when people move to cities. They transform or adapt into something new.
- How are traditions maintained in the face of dev and modernity?
- Modernization theorists thought dev would transform people of Asia, Africa, Latin America into recognizably Western persons
- Ethnicity was supposed to give way to new national identities
- What kind of new people and societies has dev produced instead (Congo dandies)
- New expectations can create new disappointments
- Another key book by James Ferguson, 'The Anti-Politics Machine'
- 80s: World Bank wanted farmers in Lesotho to sell their cattle to access cash
- Cattle act like banks in some cultures, a way to store value for the future
- World Bank offered farmers other ways to keep their money. Banks would allow farmers to grow savings, invest
- But farmers did not want money to buy consumer goods. In Lesotho, cows were status symbols. People wanted cows
- Participants blamed for laziness, ignorance. But, sometimes there are good reasons why people resist projects
- The WB could not figure out why this failed. James Ferguson told them.
- Modernization theorists originally ignored gendered aspects of dev.
- Men and women experience dev differently.
- This went ignored for a time.
- Before colonialism, women were leaders in trade and agricultural production, especially in Africa
- Ester Boserup, 'Feminization of Subsistence' theory popularized in 1970. Argues modernist dev took women out of work, confined them to home
- 60s: women in Global North were largely confined to the home. This ideal was imposed globally
- Dev planning envisioned men as breadwinners
- Men received training and education above women
- Empowerment of women now a focus, but some say gender relations in Global North were made worse under Truman Doctrine
- Social and cultural effects of economic change. Urbanization, migration, industrialization, transformations in culture
- The social and cultural effects of specific dev projects. The logics of capitalism not always accespted in Global South. Projects that use coercion often fail. What side-effects might projects leave?
- The culture of people who work in dev. How is dev shaped by actors and decision-makers? Does dev simply reproduce colonial social relations?
- Modernization theorists originally ignored gendered aspects of dev
- Before colonialism, women were leaders in trade and agricultural production - especially in Africa
- Ester Boserup - 'Feminization of Subsistence' theory popularized in 1970. Argues modernist dev took women out of work, confined them to home.
- In the 60s, women in Global North were largely confined to the home. This ideal was imposed globally
- Planners envisioned men as 'breadwinners'. Men received training and education above women.
- Some anths argue that dev was bad for gender relations for years
- How is dev shaped by people who manage, staff, and dream it into being?
- Dev involves 'experts', but expertise is a social construct
- This is one of most important but sensitive topics in dev studies
- Expatriate communities are impactful and controversial in Global South
- Tens of thousands of non-Africans live in Kenya to work in dev. Economic footprint is massive. Some Kenyans say they're parasites
- Pay inequities in the dev sector a huge problem. Few good jobs created for locals.
- Some critics say dev provides exciting, low-accountability work for privileged Westerners
- How do we measure the economic benefits of this sector agains potential social costs?
- We have moved into an era of study called 'post-development'
- Assumption that 'progress' should or must be led by Global North has been rejected
- Issues of Dev are visible everywhere
- studies have moved beyond the confines of projects and NGOs
- Return to fundamental qestions about how people 'live a good life'
- Attention to different genders, ages, sexualities, and forms of social organization are of interest to anths of dev
- Strong atention to relations of power and discourse
- Anth has become more focused and sensitive to ethical issues
- New gen of anthros is more divers. More women, but also many anthros from Global South
- Imperative to break barriersbetween researchr and subject
- Anthropologists now often appear as characters in their books.
- Some old school purists fear objectivity is being lost
- Today, we recognize that poverty is not only a Third World problem
- ex: Black Lives Matter, Idle no More, Occupy Wall Street, #MeToo (all dev concerns)
- Migrant crises in USA, Mediterranean
- Migration, housing, unemployment, opioid crisis, global demographic change, mental health
- Downward social mobility amon millenials in Global North. What future for charity?
- Are people interested in helping others if their own sense of fortune diminishes?
- Today, there is a strong enthusiasm for anthro that engages with public
- Linked to neoliberalism and the need to justify spending. Most anthros agree making work accessible is important
- Govs who fund research should demand something back, some say
- Funding requires anthros to have plans for sharing results
- Results should be made comprehensible to partners and public
- Many indigenus groups in Canada won't allow research unless they will receive tangible benefits
- Anthros are encouraged to use video, photography and arts to tell stories
- The lines between pur and applied anth have been blurred.
- A more radical form of public anthro. Anthros take sides
- Reasearch projects are designed with the input of participants, in an attempt to effect a specific public or policy responses
- Indigenous rights, worker's rights, tenants rights - common foci
- Activist anthropology involves many dilemmas
- Risks endorsing political movements that use violent tactics, for example
- Political motives can alienate participants and prevent anthros from understanding full context. Creates tension with funding bodies, universities
- Some say activism in anthro should be embraced, an honest reflection of the contradictions people face in real life
- Is it realistic to ask anthros to be neutral in today's world?
- ex: David Graeber
- How do ideas drive dev? Often through discourse: the power realtions embedded in the ways we speak about the world
- Escobar said that speaking of the world as being 'poor' had complex effects. Created problems that were not necessarily there.
- Development industry is a community with its own culture and language (Developmentspeak)
- Devspeak is 'elastic' - adapts to new obstacles
- Many buzzwords: terms in which different people can see their own interests reflected
- Buzzwords evoke power, strength, progress, change. Positivity without specificity
- Emerge organically; absorbed by institutions, individuals. Shared by dev orgs, institutions large and small
- Today, 'entrepreneurialism', ;innovation' and 'trust' are leading buzzwords
- 'Empowerment', 'gender', 'participation' were leading buzzwords in the past
- Studing buzzwords helps us track changes in dev policy nd discourse
- Late '60s, critics feared dev was treating people as pasive - reflected in social engineering logic
- Brazil's Paule Frieire: dev needed to emphasize education
- People lacked thes skills and knowledge to escape poverty. Human consciousness needed expanding.
- Frieire's message controversial in the climate of Cold War Latin America. Was exiled.
- Nevertheless, 'empowerment' made it's way into dominant dev discourse
- Education as a critical thinking rather than transfer of knowledge
- Today, education is valued almost everwhere for dev. What role education plays in dev remains a hot debate
- Esther Boserup's 'Feminization of subsistence' in the early 70s was a landmark
- Nordic countries were early adopters of gender initiatives in international dev
- Feminist movements in Global North played a role
- UN Decade for Womer (1975-85): changes in how gender was approached
- USAID adopted the buzzword'phrase 'women in development' in the early 80s
- 'Women in dev' stated that women were an untapped dev resource. Women should be included, consulted, given leadership roles, and training
- WID spoke of women in isolation. Little concern for gender relations
- Attached women's value to economic production
- Policy changes under WID were a sharp turn. Big responsibilities thrust on women who had been deprived of education by the 'feminization of subsistence'
- WID's fiercest critics: women from Global South.
- WID reflected preoccupations of Western feminists
- Dev responded with Gender and Development (GAD). Sounds different, but what is different?
- Gender is now a priority in dev. But, is dev making women 'victims' the way it has made people 'poor'?
- Questions important in light of Islamophobia
- Scholars disagree on whether WID/GAD was a meaningful policy approach, or if whether it was intended to appease dev critics
- Are efforts to integrate women in dev earnest or just intended to impress Western donors? No one answer; each dev project is unique
- By 90s: neoliberalism brought new demands for accountability to dev
- Spending for dev had to be justified and clearly in line with the priorities of Govs and institutions like the UN
- Funding for alternative, experimental projects is now non-existent
- Some say dev is much better now that there are clearer standards
- Others say dev work has become a box-ticking exercise
- To achieve funding, dev projects must fulfill a list of reqs
- Sustainable, inclusive, collaborative, gender-sensitive, transparent, environmentally friendly, etc.
- If a project is not ALL of these things, it cannot receive funding
- Is it realistic to ask dev projects to be all these things at once? Dev projects rarely can, but they need to look like they can, regardless
- Issue of Add-on. "You forgot the gender! no worries. We'll just add it!"
- is dev as impactful as its claims?
- Dev as a photo-op. Gvs and corpos look good
- Dev orgs spend big on PR and media outreach
- Top heavy: HQs with well paid staff support small teams in Global South
- Often large carbon footprints. Frequent travel for conferences. WEF criticized
- Should we trust the world's richest and most powefrul to help the poor?
- Think about how to use money to help others instead of hosting meetings in large hotels about how to help that costs a lot
- Test will focus on concepts and case studies covered in lectures and conferences
- conference material will (may) be tested
- must choose BEST response
- Course is about ideas, not brute facts
- poverty is always relative
- Enlightenment
- Modernization Theory
- Dependency Theory
- Arturo Escobar
- Orientalism
- Edward Said
- Goal of Western was done to improve lives of other people, but also to keep them underdeveloped so they could stil feel safe
- How did 'European way is the right way' become commonly accepted? orientalism explains this
- Post Modernism
- Euros know the right way to life. Others don't. Job of Euros is to teach them
- Modernism: there is such thing as right and wrong in the world. Humans might be biased.
- Maybe should give some consideration to what the colonized people are doing
- Cultural relativism
- Franz Boas founder of US anthropology
- During a time that racism was big, believed that bodies made you different, less evolved.
- Franz Boas
- Culture
- Erik Andersen essay on my courses, will test on this
- Field Work
- (insert Polish name here, initials BM)
- What athro has been used for
- World Bank + United Nations
- MNY PEOPLE OF THE WORLD, ESPECIALLY GLOBAL SOUTH, DO NOT THINK THEY ARE GOOD FOR POLICY MAKINg
- basically these organisations set the rules that need to be respcted, otherwise there will be reprimand
- understand pros and cons of arguments for/against these organizations
- Anthropology of dev
- To some extent all anthros are anthros of dev.
- The way most anthros define dev as a process is 'the things that people do to improve the lives of people who are not part of their community'
- Anthros try to ask people 'what is it that you desire to improve your lives'
- Best example of anthros
- James Ferguson telling World Bank why their project didn't work. Farmers in Lesotho kept their cattle instead of suggestion to sell because it was seen as a status symbol
- Env is not the same as nature
- Nature: aspects of the world that are beyond human control
- Enlightenment thinking involved belief that nature and humans were separate
- humans were not part of nature, nature was external and could be controlled
- Env: our surroundings, nature and artificial features
- Ecology: how we interact with and make use of the world around us
- How people understand and interact with their environment is among the most cultural features of human life
- He talked about Pocahontas for a while, might watch the movie, idk I'm wild
- Values of environmental care are expressed in many philosophies and religions
- Andeans, Aztecs, Islamic civs had sophisticated env mgmnt
- Pre-industrialization, public enviro mgmnt limited in Europe
- Disease, open sewers, plagues
- Livestock and humans lived together
- Germs and contagion were not understood in Europe until the 19th century
- Waste needed to be disposed of, but its potential dangers not understood
- Graham called us bad people for not separating our organics in our trash; he doesn't do it either
- French Revolution (1799) called for improved heath and living standards for common people
- In London and Paris, sewers only served areas where royals and aristocrats lived
- Low income areas vulnerable because of living density. Victim blaming
- Public health emerged in 1800s. Broad street cholera outbreak in London was significant
- The idea that env was crucial to health of population first took hold
- Colonialism of Americas was environmentally catastrophic. Extirpation of megafauna and death of indigenous peoples from disease
- Colonialism was extraction. Environmental harm was not a concept
- Spanish conquerors believed the earth called out begging to be used
- Enlightenment thinking: colonizers mastered, tamed, and controlled land
- Indigenous people were seen as part of the land itself. In a class with animals
- Euros and horses were hit by disease in the tropics. Settlement of Australia, South Africa, America is explicable by climate
- Industrialization and urbanization transformed relations with nature
- People not dependent on nature directly. Nature was looked at for aesthetic value
- Thoreau's Walden (1854). Promoted the spiritual value of interacting with nature
- Yosemite National Park created 1890
- The automobile Sunday Drive (1920s and 1930s). Families left the city and immersed themselves in nature
- Environmentalism emerged as a result of industrialization and alienation from nature
- Can environmentalist ethic be held by societies that have not experienced industrialization?
- Thinking nature is an escape is a Westerner/city peeps thing. Not all people think like that
- Farmers love rain, urbanites hate it
- Post WW2, Development meant industrialization. Military-industrial complex, building, growing, consuming
- Soon, dev was noticed to be taking a toll in Global South.
- Urbanization and pollution
- Environmentalism rose in the 70s, notion that earth is a living thing
- Spaceship Earth, Nature has no political borders, Gaia hypothesis
- 1960s: env movement emerged. Dev was the enemy. Early enviros were unapologetic for dismissing needs of people
- Brundtland report (1983) introduced 'sustainable dev'
- Economic successes should not hinder the success of our children.
- Report said dev was approaching env limits
- Dev will outgrow the resources of the earth
- If all nations of the world experience success like USA, the world would implode for a loack of resources or be ruined by pollution
- Many societies are just beginning their own industrial, urban, consumer revolutions
- Calls for emission reductions rejected by world's biggest polluters
- Many anths pessimistic about env futures.
- Reason: know how challenging it is to make people act in ways that are culturally counter- intuitive
- Some of the world's poorest regions are rural and isolated
- No infrastructure
- Informal economies
- People who do not trust gov
- Northern Kenya: never dev by British because no resources. Region was closed and left alone (no one can go in or out of it)
- People depend on rivers, pastures, but those resources are declining. Populations have grown thanks to drought relief and medicine
- How can poor, rural areas be made economically productive and sustainable
- Nature gentrification made 'seeing land' attractive to wealthy classes
- Safari tourism in south Kenya for decades, north Kenya recently
- Game parks in Kenya created in colonial period. Reserved animals for hunting by whites
- Kenya banned hunting in the 70s as elephants near extinction, result of poorly regulated hunting
- Greatest wildlife threat today: habitat loss, not poaching
- White kills animal: hunter. Black kills anima: poacher
- Population growth and climate change causing ecological challenges
- Env decline in rural areas an existential threat. Few institutions to support people if langs fail
- Community-base conservation: mobilize people to manage, protect natural resources. Rivers, forests, pastures, and wildlife
- Tourism and conservation often go together. Tourism creates the imperative to protect land. People are paid to use land and resources less.
- Idea: people buy food from stores instead of using land
- In theory, community-based conservation is an appealing dev model. Autonomy, sustainability, grassroots, etc.
- Conservation and dev are often treated as though they are synonymous, despite core differences in what they mean
- Convervation: the act of keeping things how they are.
- Protection, preservation, stopping change
- Conservation does involve innovation. New strategies to maintain the old
- Conservation cannot take place in isolation. It is a reaction to a threat or change
- Scholars disagree on the extent to which conservation and dev are compatible.
- Like dev, communitty-based conservation is often associated with failure
- Good at protecting land, not as good as protecting people
- People resent and resist being told how to use land
- Weak trust in gov and outsiders
- Jobs created by conservation are few
- Tourism brings wealthy into contact with the poor
- People objectified
- Divisions created within communitiy
- Tourism is vulnerable to global economic and political instability
- Domestic market for safari tourism small or non-existend in most African countries
- Conservation negatively associated with exploitation and whiteness
- Communities involved in conservation programs face contradictory expectations
- Conservation asks people to limit their desires
- Accept their status as 'people of the land'
- Embrace tradition, reject consumption
- But, people who experience economic growth naturally desire more
- They want dev
- Is conservation asking people to improve by returning to old ways?
- Conservation, in general, tries to protect land and animals from people
- For who or what is the land being protected?
- In anth, conservation is often critisized for its social side-effects
- How does protecting land make people feel about each other?
- Conservation policies are dictated by large NGOs (ex: WWF, TNC, AWF)
- Global South govs have little say in convervation programs
- Questioning conservation is diplomatic suicide
- National parks, ecotourism, are big sources of cash for gov
- The British Royal Family and other symbolically powerful actors are very influential in conservation
- Conservation often treated as non-political
- Good for everyone
- Intrinsically positive
- Global North 'teaching' the South how to care for land 'properly'
- Humanitarianism is a short-term response to a problem.
- Famine, conflict, natural disaster, displacement, etc.
- Development aimed at structural issues of poverty.
- Lack of infrastructure, poor public services, weak democratic institutions
- Humanitarianism operations often happen in conflict zones or highly precarious political conditions
- Development efforts, by and large, happen with the participation or cooperation of states
- Efforts led and funded by some of the same actors
- UN, USAID, etc
- Driven by similar logic: the need to help
- Dev logic, today, can largely be explained by neoliberalism.
- Creation of new markets
- Global economic strength
- Studies of humanitarianism often debate cultural relativism
- Why do we sometimes help others? Why do we sometimes not?
- Industrialization in Europe had drastic social impacts.
- Urbanization
- Wage labour
- New social problems: alcohol, crime, sex trade, hedonism, child labour, slavery
- Abolitionism, temperance, child labour advocates emerged in response (1800s)
- Movement often led by Christian groups
- 1864: Red Cross for providing war relief
- In short, 'progress' was recognized as creating new problems as it went
- Missionaries had complex, sometimes conflicting, ideas about their role in colonialism
- David Livingstone called for 'Commerce and Christianity'
- Capitalism as godly and civilizing
- The Protestant Ethic
- Other missionaries saw capitalism as destructive and conflicted with administrators
- Administrators saw missionaries as helping 'civilize people'.
- Laying social groundwork for dev
- Missionaries have had a constant presence in Global South since
- Different attitudes than dev professionals, who often have graduate degrees, politically liberal, and well paid
- Missionaries: more modest conservative backgrounds.
- Many Mormon or Evangelical
- More likely to learn languages, forge close relations, work for longer in places unattractive to development professionals
- Cultural relativism understood differently. Sometimes, harsh stances on social issues like family planning
- Churches have massive economic, social, political power in Global South
- Only region of growth for many sects
- Importance of religious groups as dev actors is understated.
- They go, they stay, they build relationships
- Feed, educate, and provide health to tens of millions
- Also blamed for AIDS crisis, female oppression, abuse, and corruption
- 1942: Oxfam created by Quakers to respond to famine in Greece
- UN created in response to WW2 and Holocaust
- 1948: Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
- 1949: Geneva Convention. 'Responsibility' to help others was gaining force
- Once Europe was recovered, attention shifted to the 'Third World'
- Humanitarianism wound together with dev throughout the Cold War
- End of Cold War spelled conflicta across Global South
- Retreat of Cold War politics weakened govs, neoliberalism didn't help
- Rebeliions, coups, small conflicts
- Before, wars were often fought between countries. Now, wars fought over who had power and the right to exist
- Global humanitarian mission was challenged
- To what extent should the world interven in the domestic affairs of nations?
- Where do we draw the line between universal and specific problems
- A country ethnically divided by colonialism
- Civil war began in 1990, involved a tense standoff between rival groups
- Canadian Romeo Dallaire was head of UN Peacekeeping mission
- Role to facilitate negotiations between leaders
- UN underestimated potential for violence
- Over 1M people killed in 100 days
- 2M refugees fled to Tanzania and Congo
- UN intervention in Rwanda was weak. EU nations rescued citizens but did not intervene
- Trial of OJ Simpson dominated news in USA
- USA and UN had recently lost soldiers in intervention in Somalia
- Dallaire claimed the world acted with racism
- "Another African war." Dismissed as "tribalism"
- Dallaire refused to evacuate peacekeepers and staff
- Scorned by Belgium for failing to protect their soldiers (10 died)
- Not blamed for failing to stop the genocide, but rather for allowing non-Africans to die trying
- Dallaire called the Global North out for "a failure of humanity" in Rwanda
- Daillare suffered PTSD. Members of his staff suicide
- To some, Dallaire represents the humanitarian ethic Canadians embrace. To others, he represents the futility of humanitarianism
- Often said that world (especially USA) feels 'guilt for Rwanda'. Massive aid and investment
- Since 1994, Rwanda has gone from one of Africa's poorest nations to one of its wealthiest
- Much public and scholarly fascination with people who carry out humanitarian work
- Accepted as being some of the most emotionally strenuous work on Earth
- These figures are sometimes lionized, sometimes politically scorned
- Why do some people help while others do not?
- When does helping others become too costly?
- Acts of violence and compassion often happen in concert. What does this tell us about humanity?
- World Commision on Culture and Development Report (1995) said dev must engage better with cultural lives of people
- The 90s saw many civil conflicts in Global South
- Could not be ended only by cease-fire.
- New strategies needed to repair
- New recognition of failure in engagement and participation
- New recognition of popularity of sports in Global South
- Neoliberalism: sport fit well with idea of empowerment
- 2005: UN Year of Sport and Physical Education
- Sport beneficial for physical and mental health
- Community-building and conflict reconciliation
- Leadership, youth empowerment, mentoring
- Dev of democratic institutions and values
- A useful platform for education of all kinds, including env and health awareness
- Sports is a form of play. Play is universal
- Sport is a rehearsing of physical and intellectual skills valued by cultures
- Games helps us to recognize, showcase, and improve our skills and strengths
- Entertainment in playing or watching others
- Players of games are objects of admiration because they embody the traits societies value most
- Speed, strength, stamina
- Most popular sports invented by Euros in mid-late 1800s
- Golf, tennis, cricket, baseball, basketball, field hockey
- Rise of sport coincided with industrialization and gentrification of nature
- Sports exported to globally with colonialism.
- Colonial subjects often couldn't play. When they did, it was a 'privilege'
- 'Sport clubs': significant class institutions worldwide, including Global South
- Indigenous sports often marginalized
- ex: Lacrosse in North America
- Post colonial nations embraced sport as a showcase of skills, pride, and unity
- Often, resources for sport dev were limited
- Football (soccer) popularized in Latin America earlier (circa 1900)
- Football grew in Africa. Cricket in Asia, Caribbean. Track sports globally
- Inseparable from some national cultures
- Sport and sectarian violence are associated everywhere
- Sports' relationship to peace and conflict is complicated
- Many sports kept battle skills sharp in peacetime
- Rowing, archery, javelin, fencing, etc
- Today, sport is often regarded as a tool of peace. Some evidence supports this
- Rivalries can play out peacefully, create dialogue
- European football especially known for sectarian violence. Hockey cricket, other sports too
- Does sport bring us together or hold us apart?
- Character dev aspect of SID has been controversial
- Some projects emphasize value of short-term interaction between communities and volunteers
- Right to Play (R2P), a high profile Canadian NGO, especially criticized on this front
- What benefits do people gain by playing sports with people of other cultures?
- Darnell argues that R2P's programs advance the idea of "white benevolence" and "expertise": that Westerners are wise and always well-meaning when dealing with non-Western peoples
- Sport has complex relationship to race and class, especially in USA
- Desegregation in baseball and football in 1947
- African-Americans heavily represented in sport.
- Disagreement about what this means
- Is it the bodies or cultures of people that makes them excel? What is at stake in debate?
- Debates about intelligence vs brute strength.
- Coaching, leadership often white
- Public spending on sports controversial
- Does sport enrich society or degrade it?
- Sport has been exclusionary to women for reasons of nature and culture
- Reflects the male-dominated nature of European and postcolonial societies
- Role of masculinity in sport debated.
- Concerns about violence, homophobia
- Sports remains one of the world's most conservation practices and institutions
- Does sport really equip people to lead or excel? If so, how?
- Role of athletes in post-colonial politics controversial, though this happens everywhere
- Corruption by FIFA and IOC sets bad example
- Cases of sport providing lasting mobility are rare
- Success as 'escape': sport promotes itself as an escape door from poverty
- Distracts from structural issues
- Spread of digital technology making sport fandom accessible.
- Satellite TV, social media followings, online gambling
- Clothing, shoes, sport paraphernalia, all growth markes in the Global South
- Invest in sport training criticized as exploitation of talent
- Aspiring athletes in Global South major targets for scams
- Does sport amount to a distraction from larger issues? If so, does that make it bad?
- Assumes communities aren't engagin in organized sport
- Assumes time, energy, space, and desire for sport is available
- Assumes communities lack cohesion.
- Who is being brought together?
- Assumes people lack self-esteem
- Assumes that playing sports can do no harm
- Assumes that sport teams or institutions are inherently democratic and progressive
- Voluntourism: a portmanteau of 'tourism' and 'volunteering'
- A form of tourism, often aimed at youths in the Global North, that purports to make a social contribution to those being visited
- Participants work with or for an NGO or community organization
- Provides youth with experience to aid university or job applications
- Run by high schools, universities, NGOs, churches, and corps
- Many young peoples' first exposure to Global South
- Concerns anths of dev for reasons similar to sport
- Does Global South need social or technical support? How can we ensure that dev doesn't have detrimental side-effects
- Rise of voluntourism explainable through gentrification and neoliberalism
- Decades ago, many people avided travelling to the Global South because it was 'unsafe', 'poor', or lacked tourism infrastructure
- Now, Global South is attractive for those same reasons
- Many jobs or grad schools require people to have experience
- Relatively new phenomenon reflecting neoliberal ideologies
- Voluntourism, say some critics, allows people to buy experience in making social contribution to the worlds
- 'Exploration' is also now embraced as a part of Western youth
- A ritual marking the passage into adulthood
- A recent generational phenomenon
- 'Gap years' in Britain rose in the 70s.
- Popularized by Royals and elites.
- Beatles in India, too
- Launched by JFK to foster 'global friendships'
- Often 2+ year posts that emphasized living intimately with communities
- Teaching English a popular occupation, but young medical and technical professionals also sought
- A legitimate career foundation for diplomats and global policy shapers
- "To promote world peace and friendship through a Peace Corps, which shall make available to interested countries and areas men and women of the US qualified for service abroad and willing to serve, under conditions of hardship if necessary, to help the peoples of such countries and areas in meeting their needs for trained manpower"
- In recent decades, overseas volunteering has grown and been privatized
- Experiences began costing people money, and so they had to get shorter
- Of that short time, more of it had to be dedicatied to tourism activities
- Once people were paying, hardships and discomforts had to be reduced
- Volunteers go from being there to help, to being customers who must be kept happy
- Voluntourism must involve the right destinations
- Poor, but also stable, secure and stimulating
- Countries with natural beauty and tourism infrastructure are the most popular destinations
- ex: Costa Rica, Bolivia, Kenya, Thailand, India
- Sometimes, volunteering takes place entirely within the tourism env.
- Cooking schools, animal sanctuaries, organic farms
- Often manual labor
- School building, well digging, tree planting
- Participant often unskilled, or limited by language barriers
- 'Leading by doing'
- Value as role models is emphasized
- Dominant ideology: 'doing something is better than doing nothing'
- 'GO', 'DO', 'ACT', 'NOW' are all words commonly used in this industry
- Tourism is sometimes the reward for volunteering
- Dev is explicit in voluntourism literature and discourse
- Activities are explained as 'making a difference' or 'doing something worthwhile', 'making change'
- Capacity for change is there, people are unmotivated to reach it
- Voluntourists as role models
- A universal 'journey of development'
- West leads the way
- Research shows that volunteers had heightened sense of difference from others
- Povert happens outside of Global North
- People express gratitude and satisfaction with conditions at home
- Attribute their privilege to 'luck'
- Contributes to 'justice of fate' idea
- Those who deserve will succeed
- To recognize one's luck is for the experience to have been worthwhile
- Blinds higher income youth to the challenges in their backyards
- Historical or political conditions of communities often unexplored
- Voluntourism involves an 'externalized' conception of dev
- The motivation and tools for change must come from outside the community
- Needs of the community are not properly assess or identified
- Needs/problems may be created where they don't exist
- Many dev organizations do not accept foreign volunteers because they can be a drain on human resources
- Mixing volunteering and study with travel major interest to universities
- These programs are often more equitable
- Depends on school running them, their partners, and the attitude of students
- Help attract high-achieving and high income students
- Help raise a school's global profile
- A common step towards graduate studies and long-term collaborations
- Some programs involve compensations for partners that participating students aren't aware of
- Get international organizations to help
- culture relationship with nature changed
- Not dependent on it anymore, but missed nature
- NAture as a place of leisure rather than work
- Rural areas that are extremely impoverished and affected by man-made climate change
- Few institutions to support people
- Ecotourism: way to make rural lands productive without disrupting them through ex: mining
- Leave land alone, make money by welcoming people to visit
- Resent people telling them how to use their land and do tourism
- Jobs and opportunities under ecotourism do not deliver under the results they promise
- Why is it that we as humans feel the impulse to help people?
- Why do we help certain people instead of others
- Humanitarianism is short-term, dev is long term
- Efforts led by same actors
- Driven by similar logic: need or responsibility to help
- Ex: China eery active in international dev but not so much in humanitariasm
- Many churches have development mandate
- Help people by providing service and through christianism
- Romeo Dallaire
- In what situations should the global community be willing to intervene?
- Introspection about Global North countries in these countries
- Dallaire: rooted in racism and colonialism
- Why sport is a dev tool?
- Simon and Darnell
- What was Darnell's argument about sport and development?
- People are poor because people aren't working (fake news, people are too busy)
- Assumes communities lack cohesion
- Assumes that people don't know each other
- Assumes people lack self-esteem
- Assumes people don't have capacity to lead
- Assumes that sports teams or institutions are inherently democratic and progressive
- Something about internships and experience
- Universities are sexy
- 1960s: voluntourism started through peace corp
- Conceived by JFK in the context of truman doctrine and cold war
- Vietnam: peace corp embedded very deeply in community, even its danger
- Voluntourist went from being an employee to a customer
- Told they are right when they aren't
- Not as much contribution
- Not too great for volunteering
- Kate Simpson: research among upper middle class young people that participated in voluntourism
- Troubling impact on people that had participated in them
- Instead of coming back with sense of shared experience, they came back with a heightened sense of difference between them and people they helped
- Students expressed heightened appreciation for comfort and privilege they have in their own community