'Functional' and 'Dysfunctional' Communities: The Making of National Citizens

This article argues that 'development' is not simply about the delivery of a range of social goods, or about the building of public infrastructure. Instead, it presupposes an ethical norm, a moral register, such that development is about the capture of those being 'developed' into a certain normative conception of the good citizen. The article attempts both to describe this ethical imaginary and to consider the limits to its realisation in South Africa.