An Anthropological Critique of Development: The Growth of Ignorance (EIDOS)

248 Pages·1993·0.94 MB·English

by  Mark Hobart

An anthropological critique of
development
The latest volume in the EIDOS series challenges the Utopian view of western
knowledge as a uniquely successful achievement in its application to economic
and social development. The contributors, all well-known European professional
anthropologists with experience of development, provide an ethnographic and
theoretical critique of western knowledge in action. They focus on the importance
given in development to ‘experts’, who often turn previously active participants
into passive subjects or ignorant objects.
Making use of detailed ethnographic case studies, from Europe, Africa, Asia
and Latin America, the contributors examine the ways in which indigenous
knowledges often prove more effective than expert western knowledge and explore
the relationships between the two kinds of knowledge. They stress the importance
of understanding knowledge in the particular contexts of its use and show how
western experts, by dismissing local knowledges in favour of an exclusive scientific
Knowledge, contribute to the growth of ignorance rather than the growth of
knowledge.
Arguing strongly against the separation of theory and practice, An
anthropological critique of development bridges the gap between the practical
concerns of developers and theoretical interest in the power implications of
knowledge in the post-colonial world. It will be of great value to anthropologists
and development workers in training and practice, and to geographers, economists,
sociologists and political scientists.
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.
EIDOS (European Inter-University Development Opportunities Study-Group) was
founded in 1985 and brought together British, Dutch and German anthropologists
actively engaged in the study of development. The broad purpose of EIDOS
workshops has been to assess critically the dissemination and specialization of
anthropological and sociological knowledge in different European centres and to
further the understanding of the ways in which that knowledge has directly
influenced development.

Editorial Board
David Parkin (School of Oriental and
African Studies, University of London)
Hans-Dieter Evers Philip Quarles van Ufford
(University of Bielefeld) (Free University, Amsterdam)
Editorial Committee
Franz von Benda-Beckmann (Wageningen Agricultural University)
Elisabeth Croll (School of Oriental and African Studies, London)
Mark Hobart (School of Oriental and African Studies, London)
Rüdiger Korff (University of Bielefeld)
Norman Long (Wageningen Agricultural University)
Günther Schlee (University of Bielefeld)
An anthropological critique
of development
The growth of ignorance
Edited by Mark Hobart

London and New York
First published 1993
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002.

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

© 1993 Mark Hobart, the edited collection as a whole; individual
chapters to the contributors
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

ISBN 0-203-41021-1 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-71845-3 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-07958-6 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-07959-4 (pbk)
Contents
List of figures vii
Notes on contributors viii
Preface x
Introduction: the growth of ignorance?
Mark Hobart 1
1 Segmentary knowledge: a Whalsay sketch
Anthony P.Cohen 31
2 Processes and limitations of Dogon agricultural knowledge
Walter E.A.van Beek 43
3 Cultivation: knowledge or performance?
Paul Richards 61
4 His lordship at the Cobblers’ well
Richard Burghart 79
5 Is death the same everywhere? contexts of knowing and
doubting
Piers Vitebsky 100
6 Scapegoat and magic charm: law in development theory and
practice
Franz von Benda-Beckmann 116
7 Knowledge and ignorance in the practices of development
policy
Philip Quarles van Ufford 135
8 The negotiation of knowledge and ignorance in China’s
development strategy
Elisabeth Croll 161
vi Contents
9 Bridging two worlds: an ethnography of bureaucrat-
peasant relations in western Mexico
Alberto Arce and Norman Long 179
10 Potatoes and knowledge
Jan Douwe van der Ploeg 209
Name index 228
Subject index 232
Figures

2.1 Dogon habitation: a cross-section 45
4.1 First purification of the well: Escherichia coli readings
before and after 89
4.2 Third purification of the well: Escherichia coli readings
shortly before purification and on the five days thereafter 94
5.1 Degrees of dialogicality in Sora shamanism, psychoanalysis
and clinical psychiatry 112
8.1The mass line in policy formulation and implementation 165
8.2 Patterns of policy implementation 169
8.3 Mechanisms of purification and rectification 170
10.1The structure of peasant-managed potato selection 215
10.2 The structure of scientific potato selection 218
10.3 Interlinkages as established in the process of innovation 221
Contributors
Alberto Arce is Lecturer in Sociology of Development at the Agricultural University
of Wageningen. He is author of many articles on rural development. He is currently
working on changing patterns of agricultural consumption in the West and the
nature of transformations in the third world countryside.
Walter van der Beek is Associate Professor at the Department of Cultural
Anthropology, Utrecht University. He is author of The Kapsoko and Higi of the
Mandara Mountains (1987), co-author of Symbols for Communication (1984) and
has edited several volumes on African religions. He is currently working in Mali
among the Dogon.
Franz von Benda-Beckmann is Professor in the Department of Agrarian Law at
the Agricultural University of Wageningen. He is author of Property in Social
Continuity (1979) and co-editor of Law as a Resource in Agrarian Struggles (1992).
He is currently working on rural social security and property relations in developing
countries.
Richard Burghart is Professor of Ethnology at the University of Heidelberg. He
has edited several books on Hinduism and is the author of a forthcoming study of
the Maithili language in southeastern Nepal. Among his current interests are the
workings of democratic institutions in provincial Nepalese society.
Anthony Cohen is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh.
His books include Whalsey: Symbol Segment and Boundary in a Shetland Island
Community (1987) and The Symbolic Construction of Community (1985). He is
presently writing a cultural examination of Anthropology and Selfhood, entitled
Self-Consciousness, to be published by Routledge.
Contributors ix
Elisabeth Croll is Reader in Chinese Anthropology and Chair of the Centre of
Chinese Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies. She is author of a
number of works on various aspects of development in relation to China. Her
latest book is From Heaven to Earth: Images and Experiences of Development in
China (1993).
Mark Hobart is Senior Lecturer in South East Asian Anthropology at the School
of Oriental and African Studies. He is academic editor of Context, Meaning, and
Power in Southeast Asia (1986). He is at present writing a critique of ethnocentrism
in anthropological explanation and interpretation entitled Dwarves Reaching for
the Sky.
Norman Long is Professor of Sociology of Development at the Agricultural
University of Wageningen. Among his numerous books are An Introduction to the
Sociology of Development (1977) and, most recently, with A.Long Battlefields of
Knowledge: the Interlocking of Theory and Practice in Social Research and
Development (1992).
Jan Douwe van der Ploeg is Professor of Rural Sociology at the Agricultural
University of Wageningen and Scientific Coordinator of CERES (Circle for Rural
European Studies). He is the author of Labour, Markets and Agricultural Production
(1990). His current research is on the endogenous development processes in
European agriculture.
Philip Quarles van Ufford is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Development
Sociology and Anthropology at the Free University, Amsterdam. He has edited
several works on development. He has also been directly involved in development
in several capacities and strongly believes that anthropology is a moral science.
Paul Richards is Professor of Anthropology at University College London and,
from January 1993, Professor of Technology and Agrarian Development at the
Agricultural University of Wageningen. His publications include Indigenous
Agricultural Revolution (1985) and Coping with Hunger (1986).
Piers Vitebsky is Head of Social Sciences at the Scott Polar Research Institute,
University of Cambridge. He is the author of a work on the Sora in India, Dialogues
with the Dead (1993). His current research interests are on shamanism and
environmentalist ideology in Siberia.