Download A Macat Analysis of James Ferguson's The Anti-Politics Machine: "Development," Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho AudioBook Free
Shared in 1990, The Anti-Politics Machine is American anthropologist Wayne Ferguson's first reserve. It talks about international development projects: the way they are conceived, researched, and put into practice. Notably, it also looks at what these projects actually achieve. Ferguson is crucial of the idea of development and argues that the process will not take enough account of the daily realities of the neighborhoods it is supposed to advantage. The projects put too much emphasis on providing technical alternatives for responding to poverty, such as better resources or improved upon infrastructure. But these alternatives often disregard the fact that we now have social and political measurements to poverty. So the constructions that development projects put in place could have unintended implications for their goal community, such as strengthening the state electric power that allowed the projects to get underway in the first place. Ferguson argues these problems start in the planning levels of an development project because of this of the info gathered and the very language used to discuss it. Ferguson's work shows that before process becomes less formulaic plus more reflective, development projects will continue to fail.
