Depoliticizing Development

Depoliticizing Development
Author: John Harriss
Publisher: Anthem Press
Total Pages: 162
Release: 2002
Genre: Economic development
ISBN: 184331049X

The idea of social capital, meaning, most simply put, "social connections" was unheard of outside a small circle of sociologists until very recently. Now it is proclaimed by the World Bank to be the "missing link" in international development and it has become the subject of a flurry of books and research papers. This book explores the origins of the idea of social capital and its diverse meanings in the work of James Coleman, Pierre Bourdieu and of Robert Putnam, who is responsible, more than any other, through his work on Italy and the United States, for its extraordinary rise. John Harriss then asks why this notion should have taken off in the dramatic way that it has done and finds, in its uses by the World Bank the attempt systematically to obscure class relations and power. Social capital has thus come to play a significant part in "the anti-politics machine" that is constituted by the discourses of international development. This powerful and lucid critique will be of immense value to all those interested in development studies, including sociologists, economists, planners, NGOs and other activists.

Depoliticizing Development

Depoliticizing Development
Author: John Harriss
Publisher: Anthem Press
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2002-07-01
Genre: Economic development
ISBN: 1843310481

'Depoliticizing Development' explores the meaning of social capital.

Why International Organizations Hate Politics

Why International Organizations Hate Politics
Author: Marieke Louis
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 157
Release: 2021-04-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0429883269

Building on the concept of depoliticization, this book provides a first systematic analysis of International Organizations (IO) apolitical claims. It shows that depoliticization sustains IO everyday activities while allowing them to remain engaged in politics, even when they pretend not to. Delving into the inner dynamics of global governance, this book develops an analytical framework on why IOs "hate" politics by bringing together practices and logics of depoliticization in a wide variety of historical, geographic and organizational contexts. With multiple case studies in the fields of labor rights and economic regulation, environmental protection, development and humanitarian aid, peacekeeping, among others this book shows that depoliticization is enacted in a series of overlapping, sometimes mundane, practices resulting from the complex interaction between professional habits, organizational cultures and individual tactics. By approaching the consequences of these practices in terms of logics, the book addresses the instrumental dimension of depoliticization without assuming that IO actors necessarily intend to depoliticize their action or global problems. For IO scholars and students, this book sheds new light on IO politics by clarifying one often taken-for-granted dimension of their everyday activities, precisely that of depoliticization. It will also be of interest to other researchers working in the fields of political science, international relations, international political sociology, international political economy, international public administration, history, law, sociology, anthropology and geography as well as IO practitioners.

Governance and the Depoliticisation of Development

Governance and the Depoliticisation of Development
Author: Wil Hout
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2008-11-24
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1134037988

This book seeks to understand how governance agendas are constructed at both the global and national levels and asks what factors define success and failure in their implementation. It features case studies drawn from Africa, Latin America and Asia.

The Anti-Politics Machine

The Anti-Politics Machine
Author: James Ferguson
Publisher: CUP Archive
Total Pages: 344
Release: 1990-06-14
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780521373821

Attributes Canadian withdrawal from the Thaba-Tseka rural development project largely to problems accompanying the expansion of state power ("etatization"). Includes an introductory literature survey on development planning and evaluation in general.

Development Discourse and Global History

Development Discourse and Global History
Author: Aram Ziai
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 351
Release: 2015-08-27
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1317622146

The manner in which people have been talking and writing about ‘development’ and the rules according to which they have done so have evolved over time. Development Discourse and Global History uses the archaeological and genealogical methods of Michel Foucault to trace the origins of development discourse back to late colonialism and notes the significant discontinuities that led to the establishment of a new discourse and its accompanying industry. This book goes on to describe the contestations, appropriations and transformations of the concept. It shows how some of the trends in development discourse since the crisis of the 1980s – the emphasis on participation and ownership, sustainable development and free markets – are incompatible with the original rules and thus lead to serious contradictions. The Eurocentric, authoritarian and depoliticizing elements in development discourse are uncovered, whilst still recognizing its progressive appropriations. The author concludes by analysing the old and new features of development discourse which can be found in the debate on Sustainable Development Goals and discussing the contribution of discourse analysis to development studies. This book is aimed at researchers and students in development studies, global history and discourse analysis as well as an interdisciplinary audience from international relations, political science, sociology, geography, anthropology, language and literary studies. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781315753782, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Tracing the Political

Tracing the Political
Author: Matt Flinders
Publisher: Policy Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2016-06-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1447334582

Over the past two decades politicians have delegated many political decisions to expert agencies or ‘quangos’, and portrayed the associated issues, like monetary or drug policy, as technocratic or managerial. At the same time an increasing number of important political decisions are being removed from democratic public debate altogether, leading many commentators to argue that they are part of a ‘crisis of democracy’, marking the ‘end of politics’. Tracing the political uses a broad range of international case studies to chart the politicising and depoliticising dynamics that shape debates about the future of governance and the liberal democratic state. The book is part of the New perspectives in policy and politics series, and will be an important text for students of politics and policy, as well as researchers and policy makers.

Participation

Participation
Author: Samuel Hickey
Publisher: Zed Books
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2004-10
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9781842774618

Participatory techniques have established themselves in both project implementation in developing countries and community interventions in industrial countries. Recently, participation has been fashionably dismissed as more rhetoric than substance, and subject to manipulation by agents pursuing their own agendas under cover of community consent. In this important new volume, development and other social policy scholars and practitioners seek to rebut this simplistic conclusion. They show how participation can help produce genuine transformation for marginalized communities. This volume is the first comprehensive attempt to evaluate the state of participatory approaches in the aftermath of the "Tyranny" critique. It captures the recent convergence between participatory development and participatory governance. It revisits the question of popular agency, as well as spanning the range of institutional actors involved--the state, civil society and donor agencies. The volume embeds participation within contemporary advances in development theory.

The Anti-politics Machine in India

The Anti-politics Machine in India
Author: Vasudha Chhotray
Publisher: Anthem Press
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2011
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 0857287672

This book assesses the validity of 'anti-politics' critiques of development, first popularised by James Ferguson, in the peculiar context of India. It examines the extent to which it is possible to keep politics out of a highly technocratic state watershed development programme that also seeks to be participatory.

Anti-politics, Depoliticization, and Governance

Anti-politics, Depoliticization, and Governance
Author: Paul Fawcett (Political scientist)
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 326
Release: 2017
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0198748973

There is a mounting body of evidence pointing towards rising levels of public dissatisfaction with the formal political process. Depoliticization refers to a more discrete range of contemporary strategies that add to this growing trend towards anti-politics by either removing or displacing the potential for choice, collective agency, and deliberation. This book examines the relationship between these two trends as understood within the broader shift towards governance. It brings together a number of contributions from scholars who have a varied range of concerns but who nevertheless share a common interest in developing the concept of depoliticization through their engagement with a set of theoretical, conceptual, methodological, and empirical questions. This volume explores these questions from a variety of different perspectives and uses a number of different empirical examples and case studies from both within the nation state as well as from other regional, global, and multi-level arenas. In this context, this volume examines the potential and limits of depoliticization as a concept and its position and contribution in the nexus between the larger and more established literatures on governance and anti-politics.