Autonomous Development: Carmen

Carmen, Raff. Autonomous Development. Zed Books Publishing: New Jersey, 1996.

Part 1: Maldevelopment
Chapter 3 "Demystifying Participation: of Beneficiaries and Benefactors"

Development, Carmen argues, is terminology that will never translate. He begins the chapter by asking the question of how the ideas of "development" can be communicated when the word itself does not exist in the language of the people we want to develop. Instead, it is simply a cover up for "acculturation" which is exemplified in the US' imperialistic spread and transfer in many of its seemingly humanitarian efforts. Aculturation is when "a culture of foreign origin profoundly influences or takes over an indigenous culture." He asks that the reader redefines development in other terms than the current mindframe of qualitative (bettering) and quantitative (goods, services, and skills). (P41-42).

Unlike many of the other literature that has been reviewed, Carmen traces participation back to the 60's with the WB's community development and green revolution and then into the 70's with the "Basic Needs Approach." These deceivingly top-down approaches of "participation" encourage development through "import substitution, technology transfer, and agricultural extension" which all, he concludes, will continue to fail as solutions. "To control a people's culture is to control their tools of self-defintion and relation to others." (P43)

Participatory development is not possible without the donor agency and thus paradoxical. Carmen points out that this methodology simply allows the third party (NGO, planner or otherwise) to avoid true development of the peasantry class by intervening and offering solutions while posing projects as 'participatory.' By leaving out the government, the organization can work directly with the people but also fails to address power structures from which poverty springs. Peasantry, which is the "obstacle to the march of modernity," could now be utilized and 'developed' in ways like technology transfer or skills aquisition while avoiding confrontation of true development like political activism and large structural projects (P45)

The technique of "Community Developmen"t was created not as a humanitarian effort but rather sprung from post-colonial relationships between the mother country and its territory and thus "suits the maintenance of colonial rule." It keeps the colony peaceful, transfers the economic burden from national to local governments, and helps in creating a stability during development. In a 1976 study that was conducted by The Cornell Development Research Group, four types of participation arose (1) Implementation (2) Benefits (3) Evaluation (4) Decision-Making. The implementation part of participation was the most common (P47).

Carmen also thinks that Rapid Rural Assessment is just terminology to cover up what is the "most cost-effective ways for outsiders to learn about rural conditions - ways that lead cloesr to optimal trade-off between the cost of collection and learning, the relevance, time and actual beneficial use of the information and understanding that is gained (P50).


Reflections:
The language is very formal, yet educated. This literature is incredibly theoretical. However, I totally disagree with what he is saying. What I dislike the most is the way that he tries to be so appealing. His definition of autonomous hinges on chance, pre-existing conditions being a certain way, and people having small amounts of power to increase their own power... somehow ... in places where the people who have power keep getting more power at everly increasing rates. The literature that he does draw on is well-pieced together and carefully selected. And although this chapter is formally backed with many documented sources, the feeling is much more like an opinion article that rants and raves without drawing from personal experience. However, his "about the author" section includes things such as 15 years as a preacher in Zambia as well as several other years in Burkina Fasa working at a manager of a UNDP research station. I expect and hope claims later will be supported with this.

Carmen's view point on participation, in my interpretation, is that participation is a result of TOTAL control, achieved at economic and social levels, by the institution in the brainwash to get culture to transfer.

If the implementation kind of participation is the most commonly found in development, then I would tend to assume that "implementation" is a euphemism for labor. This way projects employ local labor while the decisions are still made by the institutions. Drawing on my experiences from Peru, I would say that I don't necessarily know that finding labor within the community is such a bad thing. Looking at houses being built by NGOs where the labor force was the homeowner, more cost-efficient labor could have been hired from outside. So is it really about money? Or power? What do those four groups of "participation" really consist of.. ? I would like to find this research done by the Cornell students.

I doubt though that all of Carmen's criticisms in this chapter are well-deserved by many people in the field who may be accomplishing "autonomy," but mistakenly call it participation. Mix-ups in jargon may be the root of the issue at hand. Arguably, changes in linguistics of a subject are a true reflection of changes in the subject itself. His title of the chapter, "demystifying participation" is misleading as it merely provides a viewpoint on the subject.