Professor Deborah James, A506

For MSc Social Anthropology, MSc Anthropology and Development, MSc China in Comparative Perspective, MSc Health, Community and Development, MPA Public and Economic Policy/MPA Public Policy and Management and MSc Human Rights.

This course considers a range of contributions made by anthropologists to the analysis of development. It assesses the reconcilability of two divergent perspectives: development anthropology, with its corpus of writings by practitioners working on practical projects, and the 'anthropology of development', comprising a series of critiques of development theory and practice by anthropologists. It examines the historical background, showing how development and its discourses were made in the wake of the colonial encounter, and exploring the role played by anthropologists in this process. Post-modern critiques of both state-planned and market-driven development are considered and weighed against the ethnographic evidence, and anthropological studies of development organisations, institutions and ‘the aid industry’ considered. Topics covered include the anthropology of planning and policy; actor-centred perspective on development, indigenous technical knowledge and its use in agricultural projects; micro-credit schemes, fertility and reproductive health. Regional ethnographies used include those from various parts of Southern and West Africa, China, the Caribbean, Latin America, South and South-East Asia.

Lectures AN436 weekly LT, Seminars AN436.A weekly LT.

Students are expected to prepare discussion material for presentation in the seminars.

Cooper, F & R Packard (Eds), International Development and the Social Sciences (1997); Escobar, A Encountering Development: the making and unmaking of the third world (1995); J Ferguson, The Anti-politics machine “Development”, depoliticization and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho (1994); K Gardner & D Lewis Anthropology, Development and the Post-modern challenge (1996); S Greenhalgh (Ed), Situating Fertility: anthropological and demographic enquiry (1995). Grillo, R D and R L Stirrat  Discourses of Development: anthropological perspectives, Berg, Oxford; Gudeman, S 2001 The Anthropology of Economy Oxford, Blackwells; Long, N 2001 Development Sociology: Actor Perspectives, London, Routledge; Mosse D 2004 Cultivating Development: an ethnography of aid policy and practice, London, Pluto Press; Rapley, J 1996 Understanding Development: Theory and Practice in the Third World. Lynne Reiner Robertson, A F 1984 People and the State: an anthropology of planned development, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press Detailed reading lists are provided at the beginning of the course.

There is a two-hour examination in the ST.