The Anthropology of Development: Discourse, Agency, and Culture

1996 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 165 ◽  
Author(s):  
David D. Gow ◽  
Mark Hobart ◽  
Arturo Escobar
Journal ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tanya Jakimow

Recent work exploring student reactions to the anthropology of development highlights the importance of going beyond simply imparting practical skills, or alternatively delivering content that offers an unrelenting critique (Djohari 2011; Handler 2013). In this paper, I argue that by casting an anthropological eye on the classroom, teachers can provide a learning environment in which students transform into reflective ‘novice’ practitioners equipped for lifelong learning. This involves making explicit the processes of knowledge construction in the classroom, and by extension, the development field. It entails providing the resources through which students can become social beings in the development sector, with attention to expanding the possibilities for the formation of multiple identities. 


2021 ◽  
pp. 194277862199344
Author(s):  
Joseph Mensah ◽  
David Firang

That dialectics, as a mode of reasoning, is routinely used to explain the worlds of both nature and society per their inherent complexities, contradictions, and states of flux makes it quite amenable to robust theorizations of development. However, since many are those who see Africa(ns) in simplistic and wholly pessimistic terms, it is unsurprising that there is a conspicuous dearth of dialectical analysis of Africa’s development challenges and prospects. This paper examines Africa’s development from the standpoint of dialectics, showing how the key tenets and concepts of dialectics—including negation, sublation, the transformation of quantity to quality, the interpenetration of opposites, and the interchangeability of causes and effects—could help us understand the trajectory and dynamics of Africa’s development. The paper conceptualizes development as a dialectical process and, consequently, sees efforts in development discourse to set Africa (or any other part of the world, for that matter) in strict binary opposition to another region as unsustainable.


Author(s):  
Sol Pérez Jiménez

The hegemonic development discourse continues to promote mining as an activity that generates progress despite the considerable evidence to the contrary. The article analyzes Grupo Mexico’s history, the largest mining consortium in the country, as part of the power elite. It shows how it achieved a monopoly of the leading copper deposits in the north of the country thanks to its alliances with the Mexican State. Later on, we present the cartography of the expansion of its operations in the north of the country, including the opening of controversial mining projects in strategic areas for biodiversity conservation such as the Sea of Cortés, the Baja California peninsula and, the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve in Michoacán. Therefore, it is argued that it is important to consider companies’ environmental and social records when evaluating mining concessions’ renewal or revocation.


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