Discourses of Development: The View from Anthropology

TLDR: A crucial element in Escobar's programme for a new type of practice is a concern with "discourse", and anthropological studies of development discourse are among the most important contributions to work in the anthropology of development.

Abstract: The attention paid to development since the early 1980s seems ironic in that during the same period, anthropology in Britain and the United States became increasingly self-absorbed with postmodernism and reflexivity. The 'development' investigated by social anthropologists generally involves directed social and economic change in a contemporary context, especially in the 'Third World', and indeed, that is the context within which all the papers in this volume are set. The anthropology of development is particularly strong in Britain and Holland, as these four volumes testify, but almost all countries in which the social anthropological tradition is established on the eastern side of the Atlantic have contributed to work in this field. A crucial element in Escobar's programme for a new type of practice is a concern with 'discourse', and anthropological studies of development discourse are among the most important contributions to work in the anthropology of development.