Learning objectives
Introduction to development anthropology: culture, identity and power. <br />
The main aim of this course is to place development interventions and issues within the context of cultural and social systems and to develop tools for analysing these contexts, which are taken to be profoundly interconnected with development processes themselves, whether endogenous or related to external interventions. Increasing agricultural productivity or guaranteeing primary education can easily be identified as important goals; however, beyond these and other immediate goals, in order to identify problems in their complexity and their possible solutions, complex analytical tools are required. Different development policies in fact respond to different and often conflicting interpretations of contexts. Politics, culture, power and the characteristics of social organisation are extremely important elements in identifying problems and proposing solutions. The aim of this course therefore is to develop the anthropological and social tools of analysis that enable development policies and strategies to be framed within a broader perspective. <br />
Course unit content
The course is structured around three main themes: culture, identity and difference, and power. <br />
The first part of the course will be dedicated to an exploration of the history of cultural and social anthropology, giving special attention to how culture has been theorised by various schools of thought, up to the debate of the 1970s between French and British and American anthropologists regarding what culture is and how to define it. More recently the concept of culture as a static, coherent set of meanings shared by homogeneous, undifferentiated societies has been called into question. Today culture is analysed today as a series of processes where the issues of power and the construction of meaning as a clash between different interpretations of reality assume vital importance. <br />
Attention to the issues of identity and difference in the social sciences goes hand in hand with a reflection on questions of representation and positionality which have also begun to be raised in anthropology, starting from the postmodernist critique. Anthropologists, who have studied the questions of identity and difference for decades as detached observers, instead today raise fundamental methodological questions, which have to do with how the anthropologist or the development officer enter into relations, starting from their own experience, values and identity, with those perceived as “other”. <br />
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The second part of the course will expand on issues connected with identity and difference by concentrating in particular on the importance of these concepts for the study and practice of development, focusing on gender identities and examining the relation between individual and collective identity. <br />
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What is power? How can it influence self-consciousness, participation in processes of development and individuals’ capacity to act? Much has been written about the opportunity to apply participation techniques and processes in identifying objectives, in monitoring and assessing development projects and about the importance of giving weight to local knowledge and techniques in solving problems; however, scant attention has been paid to how participation itself, above all of marginal groups and subjects, and processes of change can in fact be influenced by the dynamics of power. <br />
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The third part of the course discusses how dynamics of power can in fact limit the action and participation of certain subjects, with a view to deconstructing the current emphasis on participation as the keyword in development strategies and policies. <br />
Bibliography
The course will tackle the issues outlined above, making constant reference to concrete examples of development interventions in various geographical contexts. A list of compulsory and recommended reading texts will be prepared and distributed to attending students before the start of the course. Students unable to attend will be provided with a number of essential reading texts for the final oral exam.
