Development Brokers and Translators: The Ethnography of Aid and Agencies

Description

The success of any international development agency depends on an understanding of the ways in which a community and individuals relate to ideas and resources. David Lewis and David Mosse have brought together a number of anthropologists engaged in development research to show how ethnography can be an indispensable tool for understanding these complex and dynamic relationships. The world that this ethnography of development reveals does not divide neatly into the developers and the developed, perpetrators and victims, domination and resistance, or the incompatible rationalities of scientific and indigenous knowledge. It is a world in which interests and practices are always hybrids, where the realms of reason and the real world are not neatly separate, and in which rational policy representations frequently conceal the messiness of practice that precedes the ideas and technologies of development. The wealth of new ideas offered in this collection will be especially valuable to graduate students in anthropology and development studies, but also to undergraduates and those working in development organizations who wish to run more effective operations on every level. Contents List of Maps Abbreviations and Acronyms Acknowledgments Contributors 1. Theoretical Approaches to Brokerage and Translation in Development • David Mosse and David Lewis 2. Aid Policies and Recipient Strategies in Niger: Why Donors and Recipients Should Not Be Compartmentalized into Separate “Worlds of Knowledge” • Benedetta Rossi 3. Resources, Ideologies, and Nationalism: The Politics of Development in Malaysia • Amity A. Doolittle 4. Governing Land, Translating Rights: The Rural Land Plan in Benin • Pierre-Yves Le Meur 5. Translating, Interpreting, and Practicing Civil Society in Vietnam: A Tale of Calculated Misunderstandings • Oscar Salemink 6. Brokering Fair Trade: Relations between Coffee Cooperatives and Alternative Trade Organizations—A View from Costa Rica • Peter Luetchford 7. Ethnographic Research in a Non-governmental Organization: Revealing Strategic Translations through an Embedded Tale • Wiebe Nauta 8. Inside Out: Rationalizing Practices and Representations in Agricultural Development Projects • Bina Desai 9. “They Can’t Mix Like We Can”: Bracketing Differences and the Professionalization of NGOs in Nepal • Celayne Heaton Shrestha 10. Rethinking the Mechanics of the “Anti-Politics Machine” • Tim Bending and Sergio Rosendo Index