Anthropology and the Politics of Development - 1197 Words

Anthropology and the Politics of Development Anthropology is at once a highly critical way of examining the history and progress of civilization and a potentially destructive force for its generally Western vantage point. In both regards, it is an extremely powerful force. As the study of human history and development, anthropology begins from the unspoken disposition that Western civilization has achieved a certain degree of academic and intellectual qualification to begin defining and characterizing what it perceived as lesser-developed civilizations. It is thus that a major contribution of anthropology to the study of development is the light it sheds both purposefully and inadvertently on the hierarchy of global development. Anthropology allows us to construct the world according to the developed and the developing sphere, essentially created the concept of the Third World and consequently subjecting it to particularly Western ideals of development. This argument is underscored in the text by Escobar (1995), which points to anthropology as a vehicle to the proposition that all nations are in pursuit of a specific set of developmental standards. According to Escobar, to see development as a historically produced discourse entails an examination of why so many countries started to see themselves as underdeveloped in the early post-World War II period, how to develop became a fundamental problem for them, and how, finally, they embarked upon the task ofShow MoreRelatedThe Anthropology Of Cultural Anthropology1370 Words   |  6 Pagescultural anthropology, which seeks to understand the purpose and place of the humans in this world. It will include anthropology as a social science, the concept of culture, and it would also introduction the human evolution and to archaeology, ethnographic field methods. 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Over the course of 16 weeks we covered topics ranging from understanding the importance and development of kinship, to the social structure of politics and it past and current impact, to the spread and interconnection of the people of our planet in globalization. As a design major, a few of the topics that were covered this semester jumped out in relevant significance more than others. In generalRead MoreThe Revival of Indigenous Movements1862 Words   |  7 PagesMarisol de la Cadena argued that Latin Americas turn to the Left away from neoliberalism in the past few years has been in part due to the revival of indigenous movements (indigenismo) in the Andean countries of Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia. Modern politics on the Left can accommodate these movements when they are concerned with capitalist exploitation, protection of the environment, cultural autonomy and land reform, although it shares the same modernist and rationalist assumptions as the liberalsRead MoreCollaborative Ethnography Essay1629 Words   |  7 PagesIntroduction Postmodern anthropology can be described as a method to write about cultures in a certain way, by scrutinizing and interpreting the information gathered. Postmodern ethnographers believe that it is the way we interpret information that must be studied and that the voice of societies should be advocated through an informant. They also believe that to do this the use of collaborative ethnography is of vital importance. 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The secular humanistic worldview requires the application of science in every facet of life (Robert 41). Teleology The modern secular teleology has eliminated the concept of God. To them teleology is evident in nature