What do buzzwords do for development policy? a critical look at ‘participation’, ‘empowerment’ and ‘poverty reduction’
TL;DR: In the fast-moving world of development policy, buzzwords play an important part in framing solutions as mentioned in this paper, and today's development orthodoxies are captured in a seductive mix of such words, among which 'participation', 'empowerment' and 'poverty reduction' take a prominent place.
Abstract: In the fast-moving world of development policy, buzzwords play an important part in framing solutions. Today's development orthodoxies are captured in a seductive mix of such words, among which 'participation', 'empowerment' and 'poverty reduction' take a prominent place. This paper takes a critical look at how these three terms have come to be used in international development policy, exploring how different configurations of words frame and justify particular kinds of development interventions. It analyses their use in the context of two contemporary development policy instruments, the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). We show how words that once spoke of politics and power have come to be reconfigured in the service of today's one- size-fits-all development recipes, spun into an apoliticised form that everyone can agree with. As such, we contend, their use in development policy may offer little hope of the world free of poverty that they are used to evoke. The past 10 years have witnessed a remarkable apparent confluence of positions in the international development arena. Barely any development actor could take serious issue with the way the objectives of development are currently framed. This new consensus is captured in a seductive mix of buzzwords. 'Participation' and 'empowerment', words that are 'warmly persuasive' 1 and fulsomely positive, promise an entirely different way of doing business. Harnessed in the service of 'poverty reduction' and decorated with the clamours of 'civil society' and 'the voices of the poor', they speak of an agenda for transformation that combines no-nonsense pragmatism with almost unimpeachable moral authority. It is easy enough to get caught up in the emotive calls for action, to feel that, in the midst of all the uncertainties of the day, international institutions are working together for the good, and that they have now got the story right and are really going to make a difference.
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TL;DR: The authors The language of development is subject to interpretation; whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth. (Friedrich Nietzche) Words make worlds.
Abstract: All things are subject to interpretation; whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth. (Friedrich Nietzche) Words make worlds. The language of development...
422 citations
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...The moral unassailability of the development enterprise is secured by copious references to that nebulous, but emotive, category ‘the poor and marginalised’ (Cornwall and Brock 2005)....
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TL;DR: In this article, sport officials, policy makers, and advocates often have relatively unsophisticated understandings of sport development, and sport development has become both a watchword and a fascination in sporting circles worldwide.
Abstract: “Development” has become both a watchword and a fascination in sporting circles worldwide. Yet sport officials, policy makers, and advocates often have relatively unsophisticated understandings of ...
332 citations
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...…must be carefully defined and theorized, as they can be easily co-opted into a benign methodology that legitimizes a neoliberalist agenda to train the disenfranchised and the disempowered in the logics of free markets (Cornwall & Brock, 2005; Crewe & Harrison, 1999; Rahnema, 1992; Sharma, 2008)....
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that participation was originally conceived as part of a counter-hegemonic approach to radical social transformation and represented a challenge to the status quo and, as such, it gained legitimacy within the institutional development world to the extent of achieving buzzword status.
Abstract: Participation was originally conceived as part of a counter-hegemonic approach to radical social transformation and, as such, represented a challenge to the status quo Paradoxically, throughout the 1980s and 1990s, ‘participation’ gained legitimacy within the institutional development world to the extent of achieving buzzword status The precise manipulations required to convert a radical proposal into something that could serve the neo-liberal world order led to participation's political decapitation Reduced to a series of methodological packages and techniques, participation would slowly lose its philosophical and ideological meaning In order to make the approach and methodology serve counter-hegemonic processes of grassroots resistance and transformation, these meanings desperately need to be recovered This calls for participation to be re-articulated within broader processes of social and political struggle in order to facilitate the recovery of social transformation in the world of twenty-first c
314 citations
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...Linked to Voices of the Poor were the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs), an initiative also led by the World Bank, that sought to articulate poverty reduction with participation, ‘with empowerment as an implicit adjunct’ (Cornwall and Brock 2005 : 1045)....
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that the fact that gender equality and women empowerment have been eviscerated of conceptual and political bite compromises their use as the primary frame through which to demand rights and justice.
Abstract: The language of ‘gender equality’ and ‘women’s empowerment’ was mobilised by feminists in the 1980s and 1990s as a way of getting women’s rights onto the international development agenda. Their efforts can be declared a resounding success. The international development industry has fully embraced these terms. From international NGOs to donor governments to multilateral agencies the language of gender equality and women’s empowerment is a pervasive presence and takes pride of place among their major development priorities. And yet, this article argues, the fact that these terms have been eviscerated of conceptual and political bite compromises their use as the primary frame through which to demand rights and justice. Critically examining the trajectories of these terms in development, the article suggests that if the promise of the post-2015 agenda is to deliver on gender justice, new frames are needed, which can connect with and contribute to a broader movement for global justice.
271 citations
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TL;DR: The 2012 edition of the 2012 edition vii Preface xlv as discussed by the authors is a collection of essays about development and the anthropology of modernity, with a focus on post-development.
Abstract: Preface to the 2012 Edition vii Preface xlv CHAPTER 1: Introduction: Development and the Anthropology of Modernity 3 CHAPTER 2: The Problematization of Poverty: The Tale of Three Worlds and Development 21 CHAPTER 3: Economics and the Space of Development: Tales of Growth and Capital 55 CHAPTER 4: The Dispersion of Power: Tales of Food and Hunger 102 CHAPTER 5: Power and Visibility: Tales of Peasants, Women, and the Environment 154 CHAPTER 6: Conclusion: Imagining a Postdevelopment Era 212 Notes 227 References 249 Index 275
4,882 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1971
TL;DR: Althusser's "For Marx" (1965) and "Reading Capital" (1968) had an enormous influence on the New Left of the 1960s and continues to influence modern Marxist scholarship as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: No figure among the western Marxist theoreticians has loomed larger in the postwar period than Louis Althusser. A rebel against the Catholic tradition in which he was raised, Althusser studied philosophy and later joined both the faculty of the Ecole normal superieure and the French Communist Party in 1948. Viewed as a "structuralist Marxist," Althusser was as much admired for his independence of intellect as he was for his rigorous defense of Marx. The latter was best illustrated in "For Marx" (1965), and "Reading Capital" (1968). These works, along with "Lenin and Philosophy "(1971) had an enormous influence on the New Left of the 1960s and continues to influence modern Marxist scholarship. This classic work, which to date has sold more than 30,000 copies, covers the range of Louis Althusser's interests and contributions in philosophy, economics, psychology, aesthetics, and political science. Marx, in Althusser's view, was subject in his earlier writings to the ruling ideology of his day. Thus for Althusser, the interpretation of Marx involves a repudiation of all efforts to draw from Marx's early writings a view of Marx as a "humanist" and "historicist." Lenin and Philosophy also contains Althusser's essay on Lenin's study of Hegel; a major essay on the state, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses," "Freud and Lacan: A letter on Art in Reply to Andre Daspre," and "Cremonini, Painter of the Abstract." The book opens with a 1968 interview in which Althusser discusses his personal, political, and intellectual history."
3,547 citations
Book•
14 Nov 1994TL;DR: The 2012 edition of the 2012 edition vii Preface xlv as discussed by the authors is a collection of essays about development and the anthropology of modernity, with a focus on post-development.
Abstract: Preface to the 2012 Edition vii Preface xlv CHAPTER 1: Introduction: Development and the Anthropology of Modernity 3 CHAPTER 2: The Problematization of Poverty: The Tale of Three Worlds and Development 21 CHAPTER 3: Economics and the Space of Development: Tales of Growth and Capital 55 CHAPTER 4: The Dispersion of Power: Tales of Food and Hunger 102 CHAPTER 5: Power and Visibility: Tales of Peasants, Women, and the Environment 154 CHAPTER 6: Conclusion: Imagining a Postdevelopment Era 212 Notes 227 References 249 Index 275
2,094 citations
2,091 citations