Paper short abstract:

This paper reflects on how anthropology has engaged with development thinking and considers the implications of global change – with the vast movement of people, ideas, objects and commodities – for how knowledge issues are addressed within an anthropology of development.

Paper long abstract:

<b>Co-author: Eleanor Fisher, University of Swansea</b></br>

There is little doubt that anthropology has challenged traditional wisdom that development amounts to the imposition of Western world views and ideas of change. Some anthropologists have stressed the incompatibility of different forms of knowledge in achieving progress; others have concentrated on demystifying science and western expert systems, or on bridging the gap between experts and local people through forms of participation and support for endogenous development. Clearly it is necessary to take stock of these positions and to situate them in both a theoretical and practical context in order to challenge current ideas that we have achieved an era of 'post-development'. In this respect, with regard to knowledge issues, the relationship between anthropology and development needs to be reflected on, especially in the context of emerging global tendencies that apparently de-locate or de-territorialise actors' actions and the knowledge upon which they are based. To what extent this is the case needs to be thoroughly debated and empirically examined: perhaps what is emerging is a different way of displaying the global at the local level, which leads to questions concerning whether existing interpretations about indigenous or local knowledge in development can encompass people's creative action in dealing with these new realities of global change at the local level. By implication this also generates a need to critically reflect on what constitutes 'practical development' in the contemporary era and what contribution knowledge debates can make to a conceptual reformulation of an anthropology of development, which addresses issues of power and encompasses an understanding of people's creative action for shaping development. The paper will try to examine these issues using illustrations of artisanal mining in East Africa and forestry in Central America.

(to be co-authored with Eleanor Fisher)