An Anthropological Critique of Development: The Growth of Ignorance

by Mark Hobart (Editor)

Overview

Questioning the utopian image of western knowledge as a uniquely successful achievement in its application to economic and social development, this provocative volume, the latest in the EIDOS series, argues that it is unacceptable to dismiss problems encountered by development projects as the inadequate implementation of knowledge. Rather, it suggests that failures stem from the constitution of knowledge and its object.
By focussing on the ways in which agency in development is attributed to experts, thereby turning previously active participants into passive subjects or ignorant objects, the contributors claim that the hidden agenda to the aims of educating and improving the lives of those in the undeveloped world falls little short of perpetuating ignorance.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781134896318
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	05/03/2002
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	248
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Mark Hobart is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and is a co-founder of EIDOS.

Table of Contents

Introduction: the growth of ignorance? 1 Segmentary knowledge: a Whalsay sketch 2 Processes and limitations of Dogon agricultural knowledge 3 Cultivation: knowledge or performance? 4 His lordship at the Cobblers’ well 5 Is death the same everywhere? contexts of knowing and Doubting 6 Scapegoat and magic charm: law in development theory and Practice 7 Knowledge and ignorance in the practices of development Policy 8 The negotiation of knowledge and ignorance in China’s development strategy 9 Bridging two worlds: an ethnography of bureaucrat[1]peasant relations in western Mexico 10 Potatoes and knowledge