An Ethnography of ‘Participation’ as Governance

Abstract

This article reviews two recent books that both address the relationship between policy and practice internal to the aid apparatus. Both volumes aspire towards an ethnographic approach to the development apparatus, and give particular attention to the policy-practice nexus of development in relation to the embraced idioms of participation and ownership. Cultivating Development provides a strong ethnographic account of these issues with regard to a particular development project in India, and argues that policy follows practice rather than directing it; in other words, established practices gain legitimacy. The Aid Effect follows a similar trajectory in the study of multilateral development, and argues that recent changes in international development comprise a new aid framework with new forms of governance relations between donor and recipient institutions. Both volumes build an argument that participation and ownership have not altered the aid hierarchy. Rather, they serve to maintain established patrimonial relations between donor and recipient institutions through new forms of control and governance, akin to governmentality.

Keywords:

• ethnography of aid
• anthropology
• development
• policy
• practice
• governmentality
• participation
• ownership
• governance