Paper short abstract:

This paper presents an anthropological framework for assessing local and regional development initiatives with examples from Australian regional development. It analyses how actions for change by different actors reveal or suppress local knowledges to create different on-the-ground impacts.

Paper long abstract:

Local and regional development aims to improve socioeconomic conditions in particular places. Around the world, these actions for change may come from any of a number of actors: multilateral organisations, governments, NGOs, local community organisations, and others - at different scales from the international to local. The actual impacts range from positive to negative, but a defining factor in the success or failure of initiatives has been shown to be the involvement of people with in-depth knowledge of on-the-ground conditions. This paper presents an anthropological framework for assessing actions for change with reference to the positionality and relationships of key actors in change initiatives. Beyond dichotomies of 'bottom up' and 'top down' development action, this framework offers a nuanced understanding of how different configurations of development actors can drive very different impacts. Four common configurations - imposed development, incentivised development, enabled development and linked-up development - and their variations can all be observed in the Australian context, as actors with differing local knowledges seek to improve the socioeconomic conditions in diverse Australian regions.