Journal ArticleDOI
What do buzzwords do for development policy? a critical look at ‘participation’, ‘empowerment’ and ‘poverty reduction’
Andrea Cornwall,Karen Brock +1 more
Reads0
Chats0
TLDR
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.read more
Citations
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
Poverty Reduction through Entrepreneurship: Microcredit, Learning and Ambivalence amongst Women in Urban Tanzania.
TL;DR: The authors explored women's experiences of their roles as entrepreneurs, and reflected on how the learning processes and outcomes associated with micro-credit schemes "shape the self" often in quite unpredictable ways.
Journal ArticleDOI
World Bank-directed development? Negotiating participation in the Nam Theun 2 hydropower project in Laos
TL;DR: In the context of the Nam Theun 2 (NT2) hydropower scheme in Laos, the authors examined the effects of the World Bank's participatory agenda in one of its flagship projects, and showed that participation is a negotiated performance whereby competing representations emerge through the interaction between village, state and international actors.
Journal ArticleDOI
Feminism, interrupted? Gender and development in the era of ‘Smart Economics’
TL;DR: The authors assesses feminist accounts of co-optation and appropriation in gender and development policy and conclude that although accounts of feminism's cooptation are flawed in their misrepresentation of a diverse and dynamic movement, the transformations wrought by these misrepresentations are real and profound.
Journal ArticleDOI
Hope Movements: Naming Mobilization in a Post‐development World
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that social mobilizations that are devoted to contesting development and creating alternative economic arrangements conducive to the pursuit of a dignified life are not adequately captured by the term social movements and propose to name them "hope movements" to account for the collective action directed to anticipate, imperfectly, alternative realities that arise from the openness of the present one.
Dissertation
Disaster resilience in development and humanitarian interventions
TL;DR: In this article, the authors determine the extent to which development and humanitarian interventions promote resilience in disaster-prone areas, and conclude that resilience and vulnerability are confirmed as discrete constructs, the one not being the ‘flip side' of the other.
References
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World.
Susan Greenhalgh,Arturo Escobar +1 more
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.
Book
Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays
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.
Book
Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World
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.