David Mosse – författare

Anthropological interest in new subjects of research and contemporary knowledge practices has turned ethnographic attention to a wide ranging variety of professional fields. Among these the encounter with international development has perhaps been longer and more intimate than any of the others. Anthropologists have drawn critical attention to the interfaces and social effects of development’s discursive regimes but, oddly enough, have paid scant attention to knowledge producers themselves, despite anthropologists being among them. This is the focus of this volume. It concerns the construction and transmission of knowledge about global poverty and its reduction but is equally interested in the social life of development professionals, in the capacity of ideas to mediate relationships, in networks of experts and communities of aid workers, and in the dilemmas of maintaining professional identities. Going well beyond obsolete debates about ‘pure’ and ‘applied’ anthropology, the book examines the transformations that occur as social scientific concepts and practices cross and re-cross the boundary between anthropological and policy making knowledge.

Process" approaches to economic and social development appear to be more flexible and offer greater prospects of success than traditional "project" methods.Development as Process addresses the questions raised by the different natures of the two approaches. The authors examine development projects through experience in water resources development in India and in organizational learning by a Bangladeshi NGO. Inter-agency contexts are examined in the setting of an aquaculture project in Bangladesh and in the setting of agriculture and natural resources development in Rajisthan, India. Finally, the role of process monitoring is explained in the context of policy reform, with illustrations from forestry in India and land reform in Russia.

Process" approaches to economic and social development appear to be more flexible and offer greater prospects of success than traditional "project" methods.Development as Process addresses the questions raised by the different natures of the two approaches. The authors examine development projects through experience in water resources development in India and in organizational learning by a Bangladeshi NGO. Inter-agency contexts are examined in the setting of an aquaculture project in Bangladesh and in the setting of agriculture and natural resources development in Rajisthan, India. Finally, the role of process monitoring is explained in the context of policy reform, with illustrations from forestry in India and land reform in Russia.