Assignment 2

GEC
Masnoon Khair
760 words
In this essay, I will be looking at the works of Elyachar, Mosse and Perry, and attempt to
make a comparison in the way they see development. The idea is that development is not a
monolithic, one sided process, but rather involves several actors with different aspirations and
ideas. I will then try to apply these ideas with my research in Ghana, especially at mining
sites.
Mosse (2004) looks at development from the perspective of practice, shifting away from the
previous anthropological understanding of development which focused on discourses of
power, similar to Foucauldian thought. Mosse instead suggests to look at how development
projects are put into practice, and to look at it as a social phenomenon, taking into account
agendas, aspirations and formulations that go in with ideas of development and the people
who are involved with it (Mosse, 2004). For example, we must not look at if a development
project succeeds, but instead how success is defined in the rubric of development. The idea of
development requires a definition of problem, identifying it and then finding a solution, and
different actors might have different reasoning for choosing how to solve a given problem
(Mosse, 2004). Development becomes a site for ethnography which is inclusive of the paper
involved with it, instead of creating a distance from them. It then becomes a complex multisited process with different actors legitimizing development differently, instead of a
monolithic regime whose ideas are based on a single notion of global hegemony.
On the other hand, while Elyachar (2002) also starts with ideas of discourse- such as effects
of structural adjustment on the people at the ground level she also looks at practice. Her
ethnography in Egypt which looks at the poor and also includes the role of how development
institutions formulate their ideas of helping the poor. Perry (2004) on the other hand
similarly looks at how ideas of development and poverty are constructed in their local
contexts, and that at times metanarratives can shift focus away from the main problems at the
ground level. Similar to Elyachar, she looks at development from the perspectives of both
discourse and practice.

Elyachar is relevant because using her ethnography of poor in Egypt, she looks at how the
idea of development has changed in the recent years. She looks at how there was a rediscovery community in the recent scheme of development, in empowering the people,
especially through means such as microcredit. There has been a scaling down of operations
from looking at the people from top, now from the bottom (Elyachar, 2002). The process then
becomes a sort of ethnography, in trying to understand peoples culture, and then using the
knowledge for development projects. A significant part of Elyachars work also lies in the
terminology or words used in the development discourse, especially the shift from illegal to
informal (Elyachar, 2002). This has allowed the government and other institutions to work
with the poor, instead of seeing them as nuisance to the state. This legitimizes operations of
development such as lending and as a form of intervention into the markets that were once
deemed illegal. Thus, the focus of Elyachar is to consider all the actors involved and what
stake they have in development. What informal poor traders lack is credit and money, and
thus the poor can be fit in the market, as corporations can lend them money with interest rates
and get a profit in return. It is thus necessary to see how both of the actors the poor and the
institutions interact with one another.
The concepts of development, both in discourse as well as practice would be an important
tool for my research in Ghana. It would be interesting to see what language and discourses
development institutions use in illegal mining sites in Ghana. Rather than completely
undermining the illegal mining sites, they have become a very important part of the Ghanian
economy, almost becoming materialized in a form of informal market. It is relevant to make
connection between this market and the corporations involved with them. It would also be
relevant to see how issues of environmental problems such as water issues caused by mining
fits into the schemes of development. At the same time, it is also necessary to look at the
power relations of development institutions as well as the state in the context of Ghana,
especially in the ways development issues of Ghana are defined. Including these variables
would make for a study that tries to capture not only people working at the ground level, but
also trying to look at how development institutions try to justify their work.

References
Mosse, David (2004): Is good policy unimplementable? Reflections on the ethnography of
aid policy and practice, in: Development and Change, 35 (4), pp. 639-671.
Elyachar, Julia (2002): Empowerment Money: The World Bank, Non-Governmental
Organizations, and the Value of Culture in Egypt, in: Public Culture 14(3), pp. 493-513.
Perry, Donna L. (2004): Muslim Child Disciples, Global Civil Society, and Children's Rights
in Senegal: The Discourses of Strategic Structuralism. Anthropological Quarterly 77 (1), pp.
47-86.