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Discursive Development Order and Local Informal
Practices. Edition No. 1
VDM Publishing House, May 2009, Pages: 164
To what extent does development discourses shape
development practice? Drawing on post-structural
approaches to development, this monograph provides
an ethnographic account of a development projects in
Northern Ethiopia. Grounded in empirical research,
it analyses the discrepancy between a donor's
rhetorical claims of a participatory and bottom-up
approach and the practices of how recipients relate
to external knowledge-power formations. This study
shows how a small development project is embedded in
a global development discourse which has profound
effects of inversing attempts of a bottom-up
approach. Recipients are, however, not powerless
victims. Combining post-development theory’s
discursive approach with a focus on actors’ everyday
practices yields a more nuanced picture of
development discourse’s formative power. In the
interface between donor and recipient, actors not
only adopt but also translate, contest and
manipulate external knowledge. As such, this book is
both a substantive contribution to the ethnography
of aid as well as an important input to the
theoretical debate on the interrelationship of
discourse and agency.
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