Anthropology and Sociology of Development Anthropology, Development and Development Studies

Introduction 1.Contributions-*anthropological approaches, *anthropological research and the produced knowledge 2.Drawbacks-*time consuming, *forms and language of presentation of research findings is not so popular to the inter-disciplinary team, *generally recommendations are negative 3.Consequently-*focus is on the contribution of the anthropologists to the development projects, *instead of the contribution of anthropology in understanding the process of development itself 4.Impact-*introduction and continuation of a sterile debate about the performances of anthropologists in development , *creation of a false division between the practical usefulness of the discipline and its theories

Anthropology: As a Discipline Anthropology and Development Studies Anthropologists and Development Projects

As a Discipline Doing fieldwork, searching for general features of human culture, documentation of cultural diversity Different Theories and the Changes

Evolutionary theories Origins of anthropology as a discipline and the idea of social evolution. Late nineteenth century (Lewis Henry Morgan, E.B.Tylor). Australian Aborigines or Native Americans vs. civilized Europeans. Non-Western societies are considered as living fossils because of their early developmental stages that were already passed by the Western societies. The new field of anthropology thus tried to locate the different stages of development and collect observations of savage and barbarian peoples. That on the other helps to study the earlier stages of human history.

Evolutionary theories Three underlying premises embedded in nineteenth century social evolutionism: 1- different societies need to be understood as discrete individuals where each society making its evolutionary progress independently, 2- though discrete still all societies proceed for the same destination (human history is one story, not many), 3- differences between different societies are to be explained as differences in their level of development.

Anti-evolutionism and relativism Criticism of nineteenth century evolutionism as ethnocentric and speculativeby Boas ( Historically oriented school) and Malinowski (Functionalist school) in the early twentieth century.

Practical anthropology and postwar modernization After world war two along with the postwar planning of colonial empires the origins of a global project of development can be found. New project of official modernization and applied work of development reject the idea of academic world of theory. The idea of planned social change gave birth to different ‘development agencies’, ‘development projects’ as well as disciplines like ‘development studies’ and ‘development anthropology’. By 1970S the coining of the term development anthropology is noticed.

Neo-Marxist critique The rise of dependency theory, criticism of modernization theory and traditional anthropology. Neo-Marxist critique of 1970s fundamentally challenged two pillars of developmentalist thought in anthropology.

Development anthropology The radical theories and the study of development in the context of an increasingly radicalized and politicized discipline. The wider institutional context was changing dramatically by mid-1970s. Mainstream development agencies developed and they placed a new emphasis on the basic needs of the poor and on the distinction between mere economic growth and real development.

Anthropology and Development Studies Anthropological research methods like intensive fieldwork and the approaches (different theories) in studying human behavior and cultural diversity can contribute to the understanding of development processes This contribution is important and relevant as well for future development projects Critical examinations of some dominant development paradigm like ‘ tradition-bound peasant model’ is also possible Still we may notice confusions whether anthropologists will work positively for the well-being of the community in question

Anthropologists and Development Projects Anthropologists, specially in the Third World countries, needed to bear the criticism mentioned earlier because of the discipline’s colonial heritage Because of the application of the structural-functionalist theory anthropologists failed to study the wider processes of colonial domination (however, colonial domination was intellectually supported by the 19th century theories of social evolution that were criticized heavily by the structural-functionalist theory of the colonial era.

Continued, Anthropologists tried to criticize the basic assumptions of colonialism not only through their writings, but also through their behavior, for example, in time of field research they emphasized on the importance of staying with the community under study instead of maintaining their contacts with the Europeans. Anthropologists are too academic (to overcome this problem it is important to open new fields that can be considered as possible places for employment)

Continued, For anthropologists the question is not whether but how and for whom to involve themselves in development In three different ways anthropologists may influence the planning of development projects-1-as advocates, 2- as mediators, 3-as monitors

References Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology—Alan Barnard, Jonathan Spencer Encountering Development, The Making and Unmaking of the Third World—Arturo Escobar Anthropology and Development, in P. Leeson and M. Minogue (eds.) Perspectives on Development. Manchester University Press, Manchester, pp. 126-59.