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Development? The title of the book sets the tone for Crewe and Harrison's deconstruction of categories and assumptions in international development. Through rich ethnographic data drawn from their work in Africa and Asia with an international NGO and a multilateral agency, the authors scrutinize models of development which rely on simple juxtapositions of 'developer / recipient' 'local / non-local', 'traditional / modern' and 'us / them'. They negate any assumptions of structured behavior which are typically seen to underlie these sets of relationships within international development. They argue that ideologies of gender, race, and development interweave with individual experiences to make the practice of development and its outcomes a multi-layered process, with negotiated and unintended consequences. In doing so, they debunk several 'silent' tenets of international development: traditions hold people back; material gain is the prime motivation for people to engage in development; technology is man-made (versus people made); and development is an evolutionary process. What is valuable about their analysis is that they do not limit this discussion to the 'intervention' end of the development process. Rather, they explore the disjunction between the development rhetoric and the practices adopted by various individuals and groups at all levels of the international development process. Drawing from their work within international development agencies as social scientists and as women, they demonstrate the influence of biases inherent in certain 'silent' development traditions on these institutions' policy, internal task assignment, and selection of target 'recipients' of aid. They carry their analysis further to show how these 'silent' traditions perpetuate and maintain ideologies that serve to legitimize the influence and power of certain groups over others. They give the example of the popular term development 'partner', which assumes equality between all parties, yet possesses inherent inequities between the aid giver and aid recipient. These inequities continue to be ignored in development planning not because they are not recognized by those involved, but because they are not 'officially' articulated by planners or participants in project implementation and evaluation. Through the example of the project life cycle, the authors argue that though categories like 'partner' and 'recipient' may be important for analysis, their reification only limits our understanding of their dynamic nature. Their case studies reveal that in the practice of development, categories are not immutable, nor is their membership fixed. The authors highlight the fuzzy nature of categories and the fluidity of their boundaries, where membership can overlap, with certain individuals and groups maneuvering their way into and away from these categories. Thus, a woman 'recipient' of stove making technology in Africa, through her personality and her particular domestic context, becomes a 'developer' by training other women's groups to make stoves and publicizing the work of the development agency on the radio. Crewe and Harrison's examples capture well the interconnectedness of institutions in different arenas of social organization; the real and perceived interests of the donors and the recipients; and the intersection of gender, class, age and ethnicity in forging and redefining relations of power and partnerships set within specific social and cultural contexts. Their relational exploration of the issue, or as Marcus and Fischer note, "a move from a simple interest in the description of cultural others to a more balanced purpose of cultural critique which plays off other cultural realities against our own," is a valuable contribution of this work (1). In laying bare the dissonance between development theory and its practice, Crewe and Harrison's goal is not to provide answers to the quandary development practitioners may face in choosing the best way/s to plan and conduct development projects. Instead, they hope that the 'disjunction between assumptions and experiences becomes too large to accommodate', resulting in an open discourse of those 'silent' development biases which still guide development practice. The wide peripheral vision this approach affords will be valuable to researchers, practitioners of development, and policy makers alike for its in-depth look at the functioning of development-on-the-ground, and its recognition of how development ideologies and practices are created, negotiated and re-defined. (1) Marcus, George E., and Fischer, Michael M. J. 1986. Anthropology
as Cultural Critique. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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