Global Shadows: complicating Africa, development, modernity, and globalization
With quals just behind me and research ramping up, I've been struggling to come to terms with my academic identity and to rekindle a passion for my research that I know is there, but has been dormant for the last little while. It struck me that one book in particular has influenced me more than any other in the last year -- and this has been a
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Well, that statement is really not about the IMF/World Bank, except in pointing out that there is considerable investment in some of the most socially unstable areas in Africa, which decouples the seemingly-natural connection between social stability and economic "progress." I don't think he even made a big deal of this contradiction, actually; it's just something that stuck with *me* and carried through to my summary, especially since another of the books we read in that class talked more explicitly about the World Bank and economic factors.
My summary also doesn't cover the difference between "socially thin" and "socially thick" investment. For instance, though mining of 20, 50, or 100 years ago in Africa was, by all accounts, exploitative in a number of ways, it did tend to (by necessity) interface more with the communities around the mines. More people were employed, and more social services were provided to maximize their productivity. He compares this with mining operations in Angola today, largely done by machines or by cheaper and more "docile" foreign workers (e.g. people shipped in from southeast Asia), and the communities nearby may see little or no benefits.
What's he suggesting be done?
He's addressing the changes largely to anthropologists who have abstained from getting involved in the political arena, sometimes explicitly and purposefully (as appears to be the case with, for instance, Charles Piot, another author referenced above). He thinks this is irresponsible.
He also advocates doing (and encouraging anthropology departments to support) a different kind of anthropology -- not the usual timeless, remote, locally-focused anthropology that had defined the field for decades, but one that acknowledges these complicated interactions on multiple organizational levels. (Sociology and other social sciences fall prey to this problem of focusing only on one level of organization, too.)
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