The Ghost in the Machine: Agency in "Poststructural" Critiques of Development

Anthropologists inspired by works of Michel Foucault have described as a discourse imposed on by powerful institutions. In defining power of such agencies (especially Bank) these authors focus not on practices of or sets of actors, but rather on ability of such institutions to shape perceptions of and to limit ways of thinking about world and imagining change. While focus on language is helpful to understanding how agendas are deployed throughout world, many critics overlook important role of local elite groups as well as agency of development's populations. The uses of, and popular responses to, development and other strategies in Bogota, Colombia, show that discourse is neither so monolithic nor so hegemonic as some critics suggest. Because of sustainable development's vague mandate and imprecise terminology, it has been easily manipulated and rewritten at local level. [development, environment, agency, poststructuralism, Latin America] Recent works in anthropology and other social sciences have advanced important task of unraveling practice and malpractice from Bretton Woods to present-day interventions including Women In Development, Sustainable Development, and Participatory Planning.1 These critics describe as a powerful discourse, or as a regime of representation, which imposes itself on peoples. This discourse facilitates not only governance and control of Third World by the West, but also imposes a hegemonic view of reality which defines non-western as underdeveloped. The consequence of this discourse for those who are its target, critics say, is perpetuation and expansion of global inequalities, and disqualification of non-Western knowledge systems (Escobar 1995a 13). In other words, development, as both an idea and a set of practices, has become so pervasive and so powerful, that it is increasingly difficult to imagine alternatives that are outside of framework. Such critiques have shown ways in which community shapes perceptions of while systematically failing to meet most of its own stated objectives. Yet these critiques lack, to varying degrees, a meaningful sense of agency or process. We still know very little about who practitioners of are, and how policies are shaped by struggles and conflicts within and between institutions. For some, resistance on part of development's subjects is a way out of nightmare. Yet, in-depth discussions of how target groups have resisted and reshaped programs to date are lacking in such critiques. In fact, arguments of poststructural or postmodern critics of share many of weaknesses of those of their Marxist predecessors, in that they tend to portray subject peoples as incapable (or nearly so) of autonomous intellectual thought (reminiscent of false consciousness concerns of some Marxists), and especially in that they tend to ignore important role of local and national elite groups in importing and redefining western strategies? A look at uses of sustainable and ecology claims in Bogota suggests that local (planners, environmentalists, politicians, neighborhood residents, activists) are conscious participants in encounter. While poststructuralist critique of teleological Marxist analyses of in 1970s is a useful step in recognizing unintended consequences of development, I do not agree with view of as a subject-less process. This decentered approach to (most notable in works of Ferguson 1990 and Escobar 1995a, discussed below) is based on assertion that events unfold not by will of knowing subjects, but rather behind backs of or against wills of even most powerful actors (Ferguson 1990: 18). …