Discursive Development Order and Local Informal Practices

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To what extent does development discourses shape development practice? Drawing on post-structural approaches to development, this monograph provides an ethnographic account of a development projects in Northern Ethiopia. Grounded in empirical research, it analyses the discrepancy between a donor's rhetorical claims of a participatory and bottom-up approach and the practices of how recipients relate to external knowledge-power formations. This study shows how a small development project is embedded in a global development discourse which has profound effects of inversing attempts of a bottom-up approach. Recipients are, however, not powerless victims. Combining post-development theory's discursive approach with a focus on actors' everyday practices yields a more nuanced picture of development discourse's formative power. In the interface between donor and recipient, actors not only adopt but also translate, contest and manipulate external knowledge. As such, this book is both a substantive contribution to the ethnography of aid as well as an important input to the theoretical debate on the interrelationship of discourse and agency.