22 Modernization and dependency/Theories in development Anthropology

Minakshi Gogoi

Contents

Introduction

1. Theories and Models in Development

1.1 Modernization

1.2 World Systems Theory

1.3 Post Development Theory

2. Institutional Approaches to Development

2.1 Large Scale Development Institutions

2.2 Grassroots Approaches

2.3 The Development Projects

2.4 The Anthropological Critique of Development Projects

3. Indigenous People and Development

3.1 Women and Development

4. Urgent Issues in Development

5.Cultural Anthropology and the Future of Development

Learning Outcomes

• To learn about different theories and models of development
• To know about the concept of institutional approaches in development
• To gain knowledge about indigenous people and development
• To discuss the role of developmental anthropology and cultural anthropology with development

Introduction

Development means the change that is directed towards the improving of human welfare. Development Anthropology mainly concerns with how culture and development interact to improve people live by reducing poverty. So development anthropology considers the concept which is related to the change and development and various approaches to development. To have a better understanding of the subject matter focuses is given in the development of the indigenous people and women to some extent. It also gives a look at the important issues in development and contribution of cultural anthropology towards the development.

1.   Theories and Models in Development

This section reviews the theories and models of development and various kinds of institutions and organizations that involves in various developmental activities and how do the anthropologists work with them are discussed. This writings mainly concerns with the Modernization theory, World Systems Theory, Post Development Theory; all these theories differ in terms of how they define the development and how they achieve the development.

1.1 Modernization

Modernization is a form of change marked by economic growth through industrialization and market expansion, political consolidation through the state, technological innovation, literacy and options for social mobility. It originated in Western Europe in the beginning of the seventeenth century with the emerging emphasis on secular rationality and scientific thinking as the pathways to progress (Norgaard 1994).

As the modernization implies social mobility; a mobile society has to encourage rationality for the calculus of choice. It ultimately shapes the individual behavior; they come to see the social future as manipulable rather than ordained and their personal prospects in terms of achievements rather than heritage. The major goals of modernization are material progress and individual betterment leading to the improvement in people’s lives everywhere.

This modernization theory presents that the traditional societies will develop as they begin to adopt more modern practices.

There are many supporters and critics of modernization both in the poorer and richer countries. According to the supporters, modernization is worth the costs to the environment and society by improving transportation, telecommunication, technology, health care etc. They are of the opinion that modern sates are more powerful and wealthier and their citizens are free to enjoy a higher standard of living. On the other hand according to the critics of modernization, it is problematic because of its focus on over-increasing consumption level and heavy use of non-renewable recourses. Moreover, modernization of a society required the destruction of the indigenous culture and its replacement by a more westernized culture. Traditional religious beliefs and practices, a cultural trait usually becomes less important as modernization takes hold.

1.2 World Systems Theory

World Systems Theory is a structural theory that explains the reason why underdeveloped countries lag behind developed countries. It is because of the reason that the world economy is set up such that the developed countries exploit underdeveloped countries. In different kinds of activities related to the economy, some countries engage in highly valued economic activities and some others are seen to involve in law economic activities. These kinds of interactions between those types of countries results in a transfer of wealth from the less wealthy countries to more wealthy countries. Thus the World System Theory explains what occurs in the world economy by pointing out the relationship among the nationals. There are three types of countries that can be understood in terms of their relationship with one another.

Core Countries: Core countries primarily engaged in highly valued economic activities like sophisticated manufacturing and servicing activities. These service activities depends on the input of cheap raw materials and the products of cheap labour, which in other words can be said as the monopolization of market resulting the high profit margin and that can be used to further accumulate capital and to raise the national standard of living.

Semi Periphery: Semi periphery are the countries where is some highly valued manufacturing and some capital concentration but not as much as in case of the core countries.

Periphery: These are the countries which exports raw materials and agricultural products, low end manufactured and semi manufactured goods. After that these are proceed in core countries either for their own use or shipped backed to peripheral countries in the form of manufactured goods.

Thus it is seen that semi periphery countries act almost like a intermediate country between core and periphery country because they represent a country which is able to climb out of a state of underdeveloped and thus they represent as an inspirational state that tempts the peripheral countries to continue cooperating in the world economy and rather than attempting to overturn it. Similarly, the core countries are able to extract surpluses from peripheral countries leading to the continued lack of development and widening the gap between the core and periphery in terms of standard of living and capital accumulation.

1.3 Post Development Theory

Post development refers to a school of thought in anthropological development theory which is basically critical of the ideas of development and promotes the alternative ways of thinking and acting beyond this idea.

Arturo Escobar in “Anthropology and Development Encounter” critics the past approaches of developmental anthropology as problematic. Escobar focuses on the epistemology of development, the Anthropologists complicity in the modernization development approach and the world system theory of development that pervade the discourse of development.

Escobar argues that “development has functioned as a mechanism of power for the production and management of the Third World…through the systematic elaboration of forms of knowledge concerning all aspects of importance in the life of Third World Societies, and through the creation of corresponding fields of intervention” (ibid., 676).

Escobar’s points to anthropologists and post development theorists who critically engage the development process and complicit academicians and he addresses “alternatives to development” which abandon “the whole epistemological and political field of postwar development” (ibid. 675). The alternatives to the development offers:

1. “a critical stance with respect to established scientific discourse and….a rejection of the ethnocentric, patriarchal, and ecocide character of development models”
2. “a defence of pluralistic grassroots movement, in the belief that these movements and ‘new social movements’ in general may be providing a new basis for transforming the structures and discourse of the modern developmentalist states in the third world”
3. “a conviction that we must work towards a relation between truth and reality different from that which has characterized Western modernity in general and development in particular” (ibid.).

2. Institutional Approaches to Development

Cultural Anthropologists are seen to be increasingly aware about the importance of examining the organizations, institutions and specialists that are involved in development policy making, programs and projects. With the help of this knowledge the cultural anthropologists have a better chance to shape various development policies and programs. Institutional research includes both small scale and large scale institutions for studying the management system.

2.1 Large Scale Development Institutions

Two major types of large-scale development institutions i.e. multilateral institutions and bilateral institutions exist. Multilateral institutions are those that include several countries as “donor” members. Similarly, the bilateral institutions are those that involves only two countries i.e. a “donor” and a “recipient”.

The largest multilateral institutions are the United Nations and the World Bank. The United Nations was established in the year 1945 including more than 160 members’ countries. Each member country contributes money according to their ability. There exist several United Nations agencies by fulfilling a range of functions such as the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

The World Bank was founded in the year 1944 and it is supported by the contributions of 150 member countries. The main strategy of the World Bank is to promote economic growth worldwide by providing international investment through the loans.

The World Bank headquarters are located at Washington DC, and includes International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Development Association (IDA). IBRD provides loans for large infrastructure projects to the poor countries which are in a very bad condition in world commercial market.

Other than these there are some bilateral institutions which are different in terms of their size and support. Some of them are Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Japan International Corporation Agency (JICA), Swedish Agency for International Development (SAID) etc.

2.2 Grassroots Approaches

There are also several countries where grassroots approaches or locally initiated small scale projects have been introduced. Most of the local grassroots organizations of the world generally use social capital and there basic aim to provide basic social needs.

2.3 The Development Projects

Various developmental projects are also run by different Non-governmental Organizations and other multilateral organization. A set of activities is designed by these organizations to put the developmental activities into action. Many of such projects have fulfilled their respective goals and many of them have failed also. The failures may be because of their poor project design. In this respect it can be said that the cultural anthropologists have gained a reputation in development circles as trouble shooters because while evaluating the projects, they know the context as well as the local people which is very much helpful while implementing the projects to those particular people. So applied anthropologists can provide an proper insight into how to achieve the success of a particular project in a particular culture. For example, the Anthropologist Gerald Murray played a positive role in redesigning a costly and unsuccessful reforestation project supported by United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in Haiti in the year 1987 while the deforestation was dramatic with an estimated 50 million tress cut annually. That deforestation was encouraged by the demand of wood for construction at the market and for charcoal in the capital city of Port-au-Prince as well as the land needs to clear for growing crops and grazing their cattle.

2.4 The Anthropological Critique of Development Projects

Early Development Anthropology was dominated by the Traditional Development Anthropology, where the Anthropologists take the roles to help the development policies and programs to work better. There are also negative effects of development projects among the some of the local people and their surrounding environment. For example a comparison of the welfare of the local inhabitants of the middle Sengal River Valley before and after the construction of large dams shows that people’s level of food insecurity increased after the dam was built (Horowitz and Salem-Murdock 1993). Periodic floods of the plain areas before the dam was constructed supported the population in fishing, agriculture, herding and foresting. The people downstream lacked sufficient water for their crops as the water was released less often after the dam was constructed and hence fishing was also no longer dependable source of food for them. Moreover the dam managers also released a large flood of water which often damages the farmers’ crop. Many downstream populations have to leave the place because of the effects of the dam. Thus there are many negative effects of some of the developmental projects also which lead to the destruction of the economy, social organization and so on of the local people including the environment. Many of them leave that particular affected area and rebuild their own houses in other places and some of them on the other hand tried to cope with that situation.

According to Barbara Miller, the growing awareness of the detrimental effects of many supposedly positive development projects had lead to the emergence of Critical Developmental Anthropology. In this approach the Anthropologists takes on a critical thinking role. The question is not what can I do to make this project successful? Instead the Anthropologists ask, Is this a good project from the perspective of the local people and their environment? If the answer is yes then the applied anthropologists take a supportive role. If the answer is no then the anthropologists can intervene with relevant information. In case of the Senegal River Dam project applied anthropologists worked in collaboration with engineers and the local people to device an alternative management plan for the water flow in which regular and controlled amount of water were released. In many other cases, the process has a less positive outcome, with planners ignoring the anthropologist’s advice (Loker, 2000).

3.    Indigenous People and Development

It is a common scene that the indigenous people are seen to be victimized in many aspects of growth oriented development. But now it is seen that these group of indigenous people are redefining development and taking the development into their own hands. The indigenous people generally occupy a remote area and which is often rich in case of natural resources. To some extent remoteness has protected them from the outsiders. Now the government officials, tourists and the conservationists and others have recognize that the lands of these indigenous people contains several valuable natural resources which leads to their cultural attraction. Rough estimates of the total population of indigenous people worldwide ranges between 300 million to 350 million people, or about 5 percent of the world’s population (Hughes 2003). The greatest numbers of indigenous people are in distributed in Asia, including central Asia, South Asia, East Asia, and Southern Asia.

Although they have a great source of natural resources to develop independently, many of the indigenous groups of people and their culture have been exterminated as a result of contact with outsiders. At the same time it is seen that many indigenous people have formed organizations for change themselves into development from within themselves. For example, in Ethiopia, several NGOs organized by local people have sprung up since the 1990s (Kassam 2002). Hundee, one organization in the Southern region seeks to provide a model of development based on the oral folk traditions of the Oromo people. This model combines the elements of Western-defined development with Oromo values and traditional laws and thus offers an approach that recasts external notions of development in terms of Oromo ways f life. Hundee’s goal is to empower Oromo communities to be self-sufficient taking the view that Oromo culture is a positive force rather than a barrier to social and economic change. By using a participatory approach the Hundee members consult with traditional legal assemblies to identify needs and after that to shape the projects by addressing those needs. The Oromo feels that those are the basic elements of good development, as distinguished from the outsiders’ bad development.

3.1 Women and Development

Women are also seen to be taking active role in defining development in their own terms. Boserup (1970) and Tinker (1976) began to notice and write that development projects were male biased. Many projects completely targeted man for the initiatives to grow cash crops as well as to learn about the new

technologies which also contributed to increase gender inequality. Moreover Women’s projects were typically focused on the domestic domain-for example, infant feeding practices, child care and family planning. This emphasizes led to the domestication of women worldwide, meaning that their lives became more focused on the domestic domain and more removed from the public domain (Rogers 1979).

Women have improved their status by forming organizations in most of the countries of the world. These organizations are local and small scale others include global like Women’s World Banking. This is an international organization that was started in India and Bangladesh to grow out of the credit programs for poor working women. An example of such Non-governmental organization is Society of Muslim Women (SMW). This organization considers domestic violence as a problem of private matter which in the views of them should be dealt with the Islamic Kazakh values instead of giving the matters to police and civic activities to consult who provide secular responses that involve criminalization of the offence, arrest of offenders as well as other public procedures.

4.      Urgent Issues in Development

Developmental projects are the main mechanisms through which developmental organizations implement their goals. These projects may be varied from small scale to large scale developmental programs. Some of these projects easily fulfill their goals and some of them fail to fulfill their desired goals. Many of such projects violate the local people’s human rights and also lead to destruction of the environment including the loss of biological diversity, deforestation soil erosion, and air and water pollution and so on. Despite of such destruction in many aspects some organizations are seen to consult with the cultural anthropologists about the local people interest and probable causes of destruction of their surrounding environment. For example, Rio Tinto, one of the world’s largest mining companies, seek to use cultural anthropologists expertise to find the ways to treat “affected people” more fairly and to do a better job of ensuring that environmental “mitigation” will occur once a mine is closed (Cochrane 2008).

5.    Cultural Anthropology and the Future of Development

Culture is going to be a major factor of change in terms of local, regional and international development. The most notable thing is that to determine how the knowledge of cultural anthropology can contribute more effectively for a better human future by questioning or studying “what is” rather than “what might be”. At the same time as almost all the local people everyday around the world is redefining development by their own way and reclaiming their culture which ultimately is helping in redefining the theory and application of the cultural anthropology.

References

• Boserup, Ester. 1970. Woman’s Role in Economic Development. New York: St. Martin’s Press
• Cochrane D. Glynn. 2009. Festival of Elephants and the Myth of Global Poverty. Boston: Pearson.
• Escobar, Arturo. Anthropology and Development Encounter: The making and Marketing of Development Anthropology. American Ethnologist 18(4).1991, pp.658-682.
• Gardner, Katy and David Lewis 1996. Anthropology, Development and the Post-Modern Challenges. Sterling, VA: Pluto Press.
• Horowitz, Michael M. and Muneera Salem-Murdock. 1993. Development-Induced Food Insecurity in the Middle Senegal Valley. GeoJournal 30 (2): 179-184.
• Hughes, Lotte. 2003. The No-Nonsense Guide to Indigenous Peoples. London: Verso.
• Kassam, Aneesa. 2002. “Ethnodevelopment in the Oromia Regional State of Ethiopia”. In Participating in Development: Approaches to Indigenous Knowledge (pp.65-81). Paul Sillitoe, Alan Bicker, and Johan Pottier, eds. ASA Monographs No. 39. New York: Routledge.
• Loker, William. 2000. Sowing Discord, Planting Doubts: Rhetoric and Reality in an Environment and Development Project in Honduras. Human Organization 59:300-310.
• Miller, Barbara. 2011. Cultural Anthropology. New Jersey: Pearson Education.
• Norgaard, Richard  B.  1994.  Development  Betrayed:  The  End  of  Progress  and  the Coevolutionary Revisioning of the Future. New York: Routhledge Washington, DC: Overseas Development Council.
• Rogers, Barbara.1979. The Domestication of Women: Discrimination in Developing Societies. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
• Tinker, Irene. 1976. “The Adverse Impact of Development on Women”. In Women and World Development (pp.22-34). Irene Tinker and Michele Bo Bramsen, eds.