What are we doing here?
Two years ago if I had been answering that question, I would have said that Ethan and I work on development projects with Tibetan communities in China. Since then, however, I have completed an MA in the Anthropology of Development and Social Transformation and nothing will ever be that simple again. Now the very mention of the word 'development' raises a horde of questions: whose development are we talking about, who decides what consitutes development and by what measure is it a good thing anyway? Read James Ferguson's "The Anti-Politics Machine" and you will never be able to say or write the word without quotation marks again. And let me not get started on the word 'community'. But that is why I did the MA in the first place, so that after 7 years working in the field I could take the time to ask these questions and ponder some of their answers.
It is a little ironic then, that after all the questioning we both did (because Ethan did most of the reading with me and had already done all the thinking and plenty more in his own anthropology graduate studies and had spent his 7 years working in development posing these sort of questions, at some personal cost because, let's face it, few people working in development want to question the fundamental worth of their activities), here we are back in China in the service of one of the biggest of all development agencies.
That is, Ethan is working for Winrock International as Chief of Party on a project funded by USAID, to strengthen Tibetan communities’ capacity for meeting their socio-economic needs, while conserving the environment and preserving their cultural heritage. I am not working officially, although a suprising amount of my time goes into helping out here and there with editing this or discussing that.
So why did we get into this again if we think it is all a waste of time? If so much ‘development’ work leads nowhere, spending a lot of money but leaving its intended beneficiaries no better off, only perhaps a little less themselves, a little bit more just like the rest of the world? The answer must be that we don't think this is inevitable, that it is still possible to achieve something. I didn't come out of my degree with a totally cynical perspective on development, just a much more cautious one. I believe that any person or organisation setting out to 'develop' people in a different country needs to rigorously question what they are doing, to set it in historial and cultural context, to work as much as is humanly possible from a local perspective.
Ethan has been working in the area for 20 years, speaks the languages, is as culturally aware as anyone can be. He also has many local friends who are keen on the project and willing to work with him. And this opportunity did have something of a karmic feel to it: back in China, back working on development with Tibetan communities. It felt like the right thing to do. Now we just have to make it worthwhile.
It is a little ironic then, that after all the questioning we both did (because Ethan did most of the reading with me and had already done all the thinking and plenty more in his own anthropology graduate studies and had spent his 7 years working in development posing these sort of questions, at some personal cost because, let's face it, few people working in development want to question the fundamental worth of their activities), here we are back in China in the service of one of the biggest of all development agencies.
That is, Ethan is working for Winrock International as Chief of Party on a project funded by USAID, to strengthen Tibetan communities’ capacity for meeting their socio-economic needs, while conserving the environment and preserving their cultural heritage. I am not working officially, although a suprising amount of my time goes into helping out here and there with editing this or discussing that.
So why did we get into this again if we think it is all a waste of time? If so much ‘development’ work leads nowhere, spending a lot of money but leaving its intended beneficiaries no better off, only perhaps a little less themselves, a little bit more just like the rest of the world? The answer must be that we don't think this is inevitable, that it is still possible to achieve something. I didn't come out of my degree with a totally cynical perspective on development, just a much more cautious one. I believe that any person or organisation setting out to 'develop' people in a different country needs to rigorously question what they are doing, to set it in historial and cultural context, to work as much as is humanly possible from a local perspective.
Ethan has been working in the area for 20 years, speaks the languages, is as culturally aware as anyone can be. He also has many local friends who are keen on the project and willing to work with him. And this opportunity did have something of a karmic feel to it: back in China, back working on development with Tibetan communities. It felt like the right thing to do. Now we just have to make it worthwhile.
posted by Cat Platt at 12:01 pm
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