Differentiating Development: Beyond an Anthropology of Critique

ISBN 10: 0857453033 ISBN 13: 9780857453037

Verlag: Berghahn Books, 2012

Inhaltsangabe

Over the last two decades, anthropological studies have highlighted the problems of 'development' as a discursive regime, arguing that such initiatives are paradoxically used to consolidate inequality and perpetuate poverty. This volume constitutes a timely intervention in anthropological debates about development, moving beyond the critical stance to focus on development as a mode of engagement that, like anthropology, attempts to understand, represent and work within a complex world. By setting out to elucidate both the similarities and differences between these epistemological endeavors, the book demonstrates how the ethnographic study of development challenges anthropology to rethink its own assumptions and methods. In particular, contributors focus on the important but often overlooked relationship between acting and understanding, in ways that speak to debates about the role of anthropologists and academics in the wider world. The case studies presented are from a diverse range of geographical and ethnographic contexts, from Melanesia to Africa and Latin America, and ethnographic research is combined with commentary and reflection from the foremost scholars in the field.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Soumhya Venkatesan lectures in Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester. She is the author of Craft Matters: Artisans, Development and the Indian Nation (Orient Blackswan 2009).

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Over the last two decades, anthropological studies have highlighted the problems of "development" as a discursive regime, arguing that such initiatives are paradoxically used to consolidate inequality and perpetuate poverty. This volume constitutes a timely intervention in anthropological debates about development, moving beyond the critical stance to focus on development as a mode of engagement that, like anthropology, attempts to understand, represent, and work within a complex world. By setting out to elucidate both the similarities and differences between these epistemological endeavors, the book demonstrates how the ethnographic study of development challenges anthropology to rethink its own assumptions and methods. In particular, contributors focus on the important but often overlooked relationship between acting and understanding, in ways that speak to debates about the role of anthropologists and academics in the wider world. The case studies presented are from a diverse range of geographical and ethnographic contexts, from Melanesia to Africa and Latin America, and ethnographic research is combined with commentary and reflection from the foremost scholars in the field.

"This is a book whose time is overdue It is a welcome addition to a burgeoning field of anthropological studies in which development plays a part, a book that will be widely read and appreciated [It is]sophisticated, relevant, sufficiently up to date and interesting in the way in which it framed the new forms that anthropological engagement with development might take." · Andrea Cornwall, University of Sussex

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Berghahn Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2012
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0857453033
• ISBN 13: 9780857453037
• Einband: Bibliothekseinband
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 260
• Herausgeber: Venkatesan Soumhya, Yarrow Thomas
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: preigu GmbH & Co. KG; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; Niedersachsen; 49078; Deutschland