Paper short abstract:

Anthropological engagement with the development industry tends to consist of critique or collaboration. This paper suggests other possibilities. It draws on twenty years of working against the grain within and at the interface of development, and argues for an activist role for anthropology in provoking uncertainty and engaging disquiet.

Paper long abstract:

Anthropological engagement with development has tended to consist either of critique or collaboration. This paper suggests that there are other possibilities of interaction with the development industry. It draws on twenty years of working against the grain as an anthropologist within and at the interface of development to argue for the role of anthropology in engaging disquiet - with the assumptions, orthodoxies, conventions and comfort zones of the industry - and using this to provoke critical reflection, if not also to bring about change.

The paper will draw on a series of interventions with/in the development industry, telling a story about a form of anthropological activism that seeks to make uncertain and provoke disquiet. It will range from methodological experiments to encounters with the beast of bureaucracy in a bilateral aid agency to using a donor-funded programme of research on one of the most slippery of development buzzwords as an avenue for bringing into radical question development agencies ways of doing and ways of viewing.