Whose Development?: An Ethnography of Aid

by Emma Crewe, Elizabeth Harrison

The 'anthropology of development' is already challenging the received wisdom of development thought and practice. In this book, Crewe and Harrison build on existing work by using their own experience of aid projects in Africa and Asia to examine a number of deep-seated assumptions in the minds of 'developers'. Flawed notions about progress, gender, technology, partnership, motivation, culture and race persist, and there are yawning gaps between these and the policies and actual practices of development.

Through ethnographic case material from two different organizations - one an international NGO, the other a multilateral agency - the authors explore what actually happens when expatriate development personnel, local government officials and the intended beneficiaries of aid interact with one another. They describe how power inequalities based on race, class and gender are reflected in the processes of aid.

This is a work of considerable subtlety. The authors find the dichotomies between 'us', the 'developers', and 'them', the 'beneficiaries' of development, inadequate. They question the apparently monolithic power of the developers, and show the need for a more nuanced, contextual account of the complex and often ambiguous relationships that exist within the aid industry. And while it refuses to provide simple answers, this book greatly enriches our understanding of the cultural and structural dynamics of the development process.

Genres: Ethnography, Anthropology

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

Reviews

[David]

A good overview of some of the problems with international aid programs planned and carried out by "Global North" countries without regard for the on-the-ground realities in the countries these initiatives aim to help.

[Mark Kaech]

A great study of the anthropology of development (the roles cultural understanding (and misunderstanding) plays in successful development program designs. Some really amazing case studies, but also depressing that so many problems and failures have occurred.

[Bushra Hassan]

“Whose Development?: An Ethnography of Aid” by Emma Crewe and Elizabeth Harrison is a book I read as part of my course in Social Anthropology in University of Oxford. It was part of the reading list by Prof. Laura Rival and I have read it multiple times.

The book is based on real life experiences and highlights the divide between “developers” and “beneficiaries”, the “us” and the “them”. It focuses on the flaws in the traditional development models and its flawed, incomplete understanding of the influences of culture and individual agency in a development context. It highlights the dynamics between those with power and those without, and how the processes of aid can accentuate those realities.

This book doesn’t provide you with answers but it broadens your mind to the dynamics at play in a development setting. It questions our views around gender, technology, participation and deconstructs the design of traditional development programmes while encouraging new ways of thinking about the way we work.

This book is not just relevant for practitioners of development agencies, or government or academics – but it is relevant for all of us – who are, without realizing it, beneficiaries of development planning and are impacted by the power structures that it is hosted within.

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