Anthropology and Development Workshop
9 May 2008
LIDC
Meeting Report
This informal workshop was organised to bring together
anthropologists interested in international development from across
the Bloomsbury Colleges to share their interests and work and
explore what opportunities for cooperation might exist.
Summary of presentations
The informal meeting included a series of presentations and a
general discussion. The following is a brief summary:
David Mosse (SOAS) surveyed the role of anthropology in
international development. He noted that anthropologists are often
brought in on development projects as experts to feed into the
planning process. Sometimes development agencies expect them to
“bring in the social dimension” or provide cultural brokerage with the
intended beneficiaries of aid. More often than not anthropology is
engaged to examine the failure of aid, which is attributed to “people
factors”, while success is attributed to the right policy or technology
and not evaluated.
Perhaps the most important opportunity for anthropology in aid is to
study aid itself, to understand how it works. For instance, the aid
system has a preoccupation with the importance of research-based
policy, of particular relevance to academics which supply much of
that evidence base. But it pays less attention to the relationship
between policy and what actually happens.
Wenzel Geissler (LSHTM) described the activities of his group in
LSHTM, one of several working on anthropology. They focus on the
anthropology and history of African biosciences, with a particular
focus on how African institutions approach and respond to bioscientific enquiry. Their work is methodologically broad, as are their
projects, which include work on entomology-based control
programmes, pharmacy, government health institutes, health
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programmes in charities, field workers, clinical trials and the
geography of scientific institution in Africa. Their work, for instance on
people’s perceptions of benefits and risks around medical research,
or on collaborative interactions in transnational research programmes
can help researchers and public health implementers to understand
and improve their work.
Nicole Blum (IoE) described her work on environmental education in
Central America. Most studies in this area are narrow, focused on a
particular school or projects. Working across a community of
environmental groups and projects, schools and stakeholders like
students and parents, she found very different interpretations of
environmental education, ranging from the strongly scientific to the
strongly social. There was a mismatch between government policy
and the local reality of environmental education.
More generally, Nicole explained how the field of education has a
very structured and interview-based view of anthropology and that
broader, and development focused, anthropology was not well
developed in the education research sector.
Michael Heinrich (School of Pharmacy) explained how their
anthropological work on medicinal plants was embedded in a
scientific programme linked to the discovery and development of
drugs and health supplements. This means the anthropology element
is relatively limited, but on the other hand, it is well integrated with
other disciplines and directed at practical, problem-solving research.
Social science in Pharmacy (also in the Department of Policy and
Practice) focuses largely on the relationship between pharmacists
and patients.
Cicely Marston (LSHTM) described her work on “inaccessible
communities” that, in fact, were not so inaccessible, and her
particular focus on understanding young people’s sexual behaviour
and sexual health. She identified a number of issues where there
might be shared interests, one being the issue of translation in public
health research – e.g. when interviews are conducted in one
language, then analysed in translation, and the implication of this for
common understanding in different cultures, and another being the
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lack of anthropological/pedagogic theory input into health promotion
programmes.
Common perspectives which emerged!
There were a number of similarities and commonalities between the
interests and work of anthropologists in different Colleges. It was
noteworthy that many of the participants had, themselves, interdisciplinary backgrounds, involving anthropology and other areas of
social or natural science.
Some common interests were quite specific, and these highlighted
opportunities for further contacts between individuals or groups, for
instance - work on anthropology of pharmacy in both LSHTM and
School of Pharmacy, common geographical interests in
anthropological research in Africa and Mexico/Central America.
David Mosse identified five broader areas of similarity between
groups that emerged in our discussion. These may be areas on which
to build further collaboration:
1. a common anthropological interest in the disjuncture between a
scientific model for a development activity and the messy reality
of it all.
2. the spatial dimension of anthropological study in development
(e.g. the geography of research establishments relative to
beneficiary communities or of inaccessible communities), and
the potential to engage geographers.
3. the importance of language – e.g. interpretations of
“environmental education” and health concepts and advice
distorted in translation
4. the broader issue of how anthropology is embedded in
disciplinary institutions like some of our Colleges.
5. shared methodological innovations, particularly for groups
interested in the same communities for different reasons.
There was a strong common view that, in an interdisciplinary LIDC
programme, anthropologists could too easily be asked to provide
nothing more than a service to natural science or development
research, i.e. just brought in when a “social perspective” was needed.
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While this may be of interest in certain circumstances, there was a
consensus that the involvement of anthropologists in LIDC and
interdisciplinary research should be more imaginative and
anthropology-driven.
There was a lively discussion about the extent that anthropological
research for development should be aimed at solving problems or
understanding issues, and whether these were really different. The
concept was introduced of anthropology as three academic
Departments –of Hope, of Politics/Adminstration and of Critical
Reflection, which are not to likely to ever come together. The trick is
to keep moving between them.
Ideas about working together
All agreed that many development issues would benefit from
anthropological study not of the social dimensions of specific projects,
but of the development institutions themselves, and their interactions.
This resonates with LIDC activities, because they are focused on
emerging novel (and often interdisciplinary) development initiatives
involving different players from different cultures, for instance, the
NGO, government and company communities in public-private
partnerships on drugs for neglected diseases, or veterinarians and
public heath professionals in emerging zoonotic diseases.
Here are some other ideas, focused particularly at anthropologists
working together across Colleges:
1. This meeting was useful and should be repeated – LIDC should
organise one about once a year
2. LIDC should provide a source of information on people working
in anthropology and development in the Colleges – the
upcoming members database will make it possible to search for
research interests like this.
3. Joint PhD studentships – collaborative opportunities emerged
for which a joint PhD may be appropriate. LIDC is keen to help
anthropologists submit winning proposals to the annual
Bloomsbury PhD Studentships competition, and will seek
additional studentships from sponsors.
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4. Capacity building – helping develop anthropological skills in
developing countries. There was some discussion as to
whether developing academic departments in this context were
the best approach, or simply projects to help build skills in
individuals.
5. UK-based training courses and how they could be improved for
anthropology. It was noted that the fragmentation of educational
activities into packages of materials, often dissociated from
degrees or an academic context, was a potential problem and
an interesting area of study – how does this modularization of
knowledge transfer affect the impact of training.
Was it worthwhile?
It would seem so. One participant said that, before this meeting, there
was no community of anthropologists working on development in the
Bloomsbury Colleges, and now there was.
LIDC is keen to support this area – please let us know if you do get
together across Colleges as a result of this meeting. If you have any
ideas about working together, LIDC is able to help staff collaboration
between Colleges with workshops, joint publications, studentship and
research grant preparation. We will pursue some leads from this
meeting, and please let us know if you have any ideas for interCollege initiatives in anthropology for international development.
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