Li, Anthropological Engagements with Development

6 important questions on Li, Anthropological Engagements with Development

Li distinguishes 3 types of anthropological engagement. Name these 3 types.

1. service of programming/ big development
2. Critical engagement with programming
3. As study of small development (specific conjuctures.

  1. Anthropology in the service of programming or bin “D” development: ‘governing’ (Foucault), ‘the will to improve’. Explain this

The attempt to intervene in social, economic, ecological and other processes to adjust or redirect them in an ‘improving’ direction, ‘programming’
  • programmers are people working for transnational agencies, government departments, and NGOs, as well as specialists and consultants (including anthropologists) who support them.

The second type of anthropologyical engagement - critique - in instrinsically linked to the first. What do they mean with by critique?


It consists in the constant, vigilant questioning of government.
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The third, which we could call ethnography as such, is not connected to programming. What do they mean by ethnography in anthropological engagement?


It is the attempt to understand the world as it
is, in all its diversity, complexity and flux.

Fieldwork in the service of programming

Anthropologists have to enhance in the practices of problematization and rendering technical

Anthropology as study of historically specific conjunctures, and the politics that emerge from them, i.e. small “d” development

Our training as anthropologists gives us the skills to examine the processes that produce poverty, violence, or other emergencies, in all their complexity and their situated specificity

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