The Fiction of Development: Literary Representation as a Source of Authoritative Knowledge

Abstract

This article introduces and explores issues regarding the question of what constitute valid forms of development knowledge, focusing in particular on the relationship between fictional writing on development and more formal academic and policy-oriented representations of development issues. We challenge certain conventional notions about the nature of knowledge, narrative authority and representational form, and explore these by comparing and contrasting selected works of recent literary fiction that touch on development issues with academic and policy-related representations of the development process, thereby demonstrating the value of taking literary perspectives on development seriously. We find that not only are certain works of fiction ‘better’ than academic or policy research in representing central issues relating to development but they also frequently reach a wider audience and are therefore more influential. Moreover, the line between fact and fiction is a very fine one, and there can be significant advantages to fictional writing over non-fiction. The article also provides an Appendix of relevant works of fiction that we hope academics and practitioners will find both useful and enjoyable.

Acknowledgements

The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors alone, and not necessarily those of the respective institutions with which they are affiliated. For helpful discussions and comments the authors are grateful to two anonymous referees, Xavier de Souza Briggs, Sean Fox, Paola Grenier, Scott Guggenheim, John Harriss, Craig Johnson, Naila Kabeer, Jenny Kuper, Vijayendra Rao, Sue Redgrave, Imogen Wall and the 2002–03 and 2003–04 LSE Development Studies Institute MSc student cohorts. The usual disclaimers apply.

Notes

1. This culminated in Benjamin's celebrated Arcades Project, an unfinished palimpsest of assorted notes, quotations and aphorisms which attempted to put together a new theory of history embodied in a new literary and philosophical historiography (see Benjamin, 1999).

2. In this paper, we are limiting ourselves to works of literary fiction due to limitations of space but, we fully recognise that other forms of fictional representation, such as films and plays, constitute important communicative mediums for addressing key themes in development. In the future we hope to write a separate paper on ‘development’ as addressed in films (tentatively titled ‘The projection of development’).

3. See Narayan et al. (2000a, 2000b), and Narayan and Petesch (2002). See also the ‘Voices of the Poor’ website at: http://www.worldbank.org/poverty/voices/.

4. See Shakespeare's 1611 play The Tempest, Act IV, scene 1, line 155.

5. Horace's original expression was that literature – and more specifically poetry – should be both ‘sweet and useful’ (see Horace, 1959: 75). Its oft-cited formulation ‘to teach and to delight’ is generally attributed to the sixteenth century soldier-poet, Sir Philip Sydney in his famous Apology for Poetry (2002 [1595]).

6. Indeed, as Mark Moore (1987: 80) astutely notes, the ideas that become dominant public ones frequently do so insofar as they ‘distinguish heroes from villains, and those who must act from those who need not. … [T]o the extent that these distinctions fit with the aspirations of the parties so identified, the ideas will become powerful. If powerful people are made heroes and weaker ones villains, and if work is allocated to people who want it and away from people who do not, an idea has a greater chance of becoming powerful’.

7. See also Scott (1998) for a discussion of similar processes in relation to the development of the modern state.

8. The same can be said of some academic contributions – see, for example, Collier and Gunning (1999).

9. Indeed, on the basis of his close engagement over many years with a large development project in Western India, David Mosse (2004) in fact goes so far as to suggest that policy documents are largely ex post rationalisations of development practice, with both means and ends shifting in accordance with political fortunes and (perceived) project efficacy. At the same time, see Bebbington et al. (2004) for a response by ‘insiders’ to the use of public documents to divine and assess the logic of World Bank social development policy.

10. In some respects there are parallels between this article and Sherman (2001), who uses literary sources to document changing public attitudes toward the poor at the turn of nineteenth century Britain. See also, Herman (2001) on the rendering of the poor in nineteenth century Russian literature.

11. This is an issue that has been extensively taken up within the emergent field of ‘cultural studies’, as part of its effort to achieve a synthesis of social science and literary studies. In particular, it aims to ‘dismantle the elitism of the distinction between high and popular culture within literary studies’ (Schech and Haggis, 2000: 26), which in many ways we see as analogous to our interest by questioning the distinctions between different types of knowledge about development. Cultural studies as a discipline is, however, much broader and also concerned with the relationship between society and the production of texts, which is an issue that it is beyond the scope of this paper to explore in detail, although obviously relevant.

12. Changing emphasis to a completely different subject matter, Fielding later went on to write the hugely popular and influential Bridget Jones ‘chick-lit’ novels.

13. Many other scholars and practitioners have made similar use of literature to highlight an issue, although few explicitly use their logic for doing so as clearly as Hilhorst. Von Struensee (2004), for example, uses Nigerian writer Buchi Emecheta's novel The Bride Price (Emecheta, 1976) as a means of introducing the subject of bride price in a recent overview paper on the domestic relations bill in Uganda. In a related manner, it is common for social scientists to preface their work with literary citations, implicitly because they are revealing of the issue being written about (and, no doubt, because this also tends to generate a certain aura of cultural sophistication).

14. For two examples of academic works that attempt to create a fictionalised ‘ideal type’ of their object of study based on but not limited by the empirical reality of their underlying research, see Taussig (1996) and Hecht (2006), respectively on the nature of the state in Latin America and on the plight of street children in Brazil. Such works are extremely rare within the social sciences, however, and it is interesting to note that both of these originate from anthropology, perhaps the most empirical of social science disciplines.

15. A Fine Balance was also the winner of the 1996 Commonwealth Writers Prize and was selected by the US television personality Oprah Winfrey as her ‘book of the month choice’, all of which is also likely to have boosted its sales.

16. Of course, it is important to note that the power of literary fiction as a widespread and significant source of popularised information to shape public opinion can also be appropriated to promote ideas and notion that could be construed as ‘anti-developmental’. The controversy surrounding Michael Crichton's novel, State of Fear (Crichton, 2004) and its message about the ambiguities of global warming is a case in point (see Crowley, 2006).

17. In a recent discussion held by the Development Studies Association with senior staff from DFID, it was acknowledged that learning more about, and contributing to the strengthening of, public understanding of development through development education was a key DFID priority for the future.

18. It is interesting to note that the novel also pokes fun at academic work. At one point, Nazneen's husband Chanu cites the London School of Economics ‘World Happiness Survey’ to support his argument for returning to Bangladesh: ‘Research led by professors at the London School of Economics into links between personal spending power and perceived quality of life has found out that Bangladeshis are the happiest people in the world. And LSE is a very respectable establishment, comparable to Dhaka University or Open University.’ (Ali, 2003: 290). A further irony here is that despite this LSE study being cited from time to time in the press and on websites, we are unable to find any conclusive evidence that it ever existed.

19. Naila Kabeer, personal communication.

20. While this paper is primarily concerned with fiction in the form of the novel, it could also be claimed that similar objectives could be achieved through a greater prominence of ethnographic writing about development – a topic that would require a separate paper.

21. We are grateful to James Dunkerley for bringing this citation – and that previously quoted by Sir Thomas More – to our attention in his inaugural lecture for the Institute for the Study of the Americas delivered at the Chancellor's Hall, Senate House, University of London, 25 October 2004.

22. See for example, Honigsbaum (2005) and Romero Rodríguez (2000).

23. Cited in Gill, 1970: 10.