Bendedikt Korf, Berlin:
Die Ordnung der Entwicklung: Zur Ethnographie der Entwicklungspraxis und ihrer
ethischen Implikationen
The Order of Development:
On the ethnography of aid practice and its et
hical implications
Poststructuralist critiques
of development following the Foucauldian archaeology of discourses have
explored the historical evolution of the order of development and how this
rationalised the hegemony of the West over the rest of the World. These
studies, however, have told us little about the ways in which development is
socially produced or organised at
different levels and the multiple disjunctures that open up in its practice.
This paper explores development as a system for ordering, representing and
giving meaning – a system for the organisation of thought and action. Yet
order implies disjuncture – between contradictory interests, power and
powerlessness, politics and management, policy texts and practices etc. Policy
and its projects and programmes are attempts to create a ‘forced coherence’
among disparate individuals and collectives each pursuing their own agendas.
This article discusses the basic idea of an ethnography of aid practice, its
epistemological and ethical implications and its relevance for geographical
development research as a theory of and in practice.