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Book Cover for: Anti-Politics Machine: Development, Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho, James Ferguson

Anti-Politics Machine: Development, Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho

James Ferguson

Paperback
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Development, it is generally assumed, is good and necessary, and in its name the West has intervened, implementing all manner of projects in the impoverished regions of the world. When these projects fail, as they do with astonishing regularity, they nonetheless produce a host of regular and unacknowledged effects, including the expansion of bureaucratic state power and the translation of the political realities of poverty and powerlessness into "technical" problems awaiting solution by "development" agencies and experts. It is the political intelligibility of these effects, along with the process that produces them, that this book seeks to illuminate through a detailed case study of the workings of the "development" industry in one country, Lesotho, and in one "development" project.Using an anthropological approach grounded in the work of Foucault, James Ferguson analyzes the institutional framework within which such projects are crafted and the nature of "development discourse," revealing how it is that, despite all the "expertise" that goes into formulating development projects, they nonetheless often demonstrate a startling ignorance of the historical and political realities of the locale they are intended to help. In a close examination of the attempted implementation of the Thaba-Tseka project in Lesotho, Ferguson shows how such a misguided approach plays out, how, in fact, the "development" apparatus in Lesotho acts as an "anti-politics machine," everywhere whisking political realities out of sight and all the while performing, almost unnoticed, its own pre-eminently political operation of strengthening the state presence in the local region.James Ferguson is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of California at Irvine.

Book Details

  • Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
  • Publish Date: Feb 1st, 1994
  • Pages: 336
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 9.03in - 6.08in - 0.78in - 1.00lb
  • EAN: 9780816624379
  • Categories: • Industries - General• General

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Mentioner image for: Dr. Lisa Munro
Dr. Lisa Munro
@llmunro
2 years

PhD, historian, writer, Latin America, returned Peace Corps volunteer (Guatemala, 04-06), #adoptee, #studyabroad & intellectual dilettante. Nachos. She/her/Dr.

Remind me to write that article I've been meaning to write on adoption as the ultimate anti -politics machine (a la James Ferguson).

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Veena Dubal
@veenadubal
2 years

Professor of Law, University of CA, Irvine • Technology & Society • Work Law • Precarity • Race • Not Legal Advice • she/her • Sam's sister

@makispoke Ferguson, James - The Anti-Politics Machine Development, Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho https://t.co/4PcysaEkmC

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Mentioner image for: Alice Evans
Alice Evans
@_alice_evans
3 years

Visiting Professor @MunkSchool @UofT Writing ‘The Great Gender Divergence’ with @PrincetonUPress 🫰 https://t.co/uJM7ReLRqs

7) James Ferguson is famed for “The Anti-Politics Machine”, but he has another totally under-rated book about this same phenomena. At independence, men on Zambia’s Copperbelt anticipated progress. As living standards plummeted over the 1980s, so did their hope and esteem. https://t.co/tdwFa7kjpq

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