The anti-politics machine : "development," depoliticization, and bureaucratic power in Lesotho
Development, it is generally assumed, is good and necessary, and in its name the West has intervened, implementing all manner of projects in the impoverished regions of the world. When these projects fail, as they do with astonishing regularity, they nonetheless produce a host of regular and unacknowledged effects, including the expansion of bureaucratic state power and the translation of the political realities of poverty and powerlessness into "technical" problems awaiting solution by "development" agencies and experts. It is the political intelligibility of these effects, along with the process that produces them, that this book seeks to illuminate through a detailed case study of the workings of the "development" industry in one country, Lesotho, and in one "development" project. Using an anthropological approach grounded in the work of Foucault, James Ferguson analyzes the institutional framework within which such projects are crafted and the nature of "development discourse," revealing how it is that, despite all the "expertise" that goes into formulating development projects, they nonetheless often demonstrate a startling ignorance of the historical and political realities of the locale they are intended to help. In a close examination of the attempted implementation of the Thaba-Tseka project in Lesotho, Ferguson shows how such a misguided approach plays out, how, in fact, the "development" apparatus in Lesotho acts as an "anti-politics machine," everywhere whisking political realities out of sight and all the while performing, almost unnoticed, its own pre-eminently political operation of strengthening the state presence in the local region
Bibliographic Information
| Format: | Book |
|---|---|
| Author: | Ferguson, James, 1959- |
| Subject: |
Rural development projects Thaba Tseka Rural Development Program Bureaucracy Decentralization in government |
| Publication Year: | 1990 |
| Language: | English |
| Published: | Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, ©1994 |
| ISBN: | 9780816624379 0816624372 |
| Notes: | Originally published: Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1990 Revision of the author's thesis (Ph. D.)--Harvard University, 1985 Includes bibliographical references (pages 304-313) and index Part I. Introduction. Introduction. --- Part II. The development apparatus. 2. Conceptual apparatus: the constitution of the object of development -- Lesotho as less developed country -- 3. Institutional apparatus: the Thaba-Tseka Development Project --- Part III. The target population. 4. The setting: aspects of economy and society in rural Lesotho -- 5. The Bovine mystique: a study of power, property, and livestock development in rural Lesotho --- Part IV. The deployment of development. 6. Livestock development -- 7. The decentralization debacle -- 8. Crop development and some other programs of the Thaba-Tseka Development Project --- Part V. Instrument-effects of a development project. 9. The anti-politics machine |
| Course: |
HIST350 |
Availability at HKSYU Library
| Location | Call number | Status |
|---|---|---|
| English Book (4/F) | 338.186885 FER 1994 | Available |