Engaging with development: Confessions of an anthropologist in the Eastern Cape

Extracted from text ... Engaging with development:Confessions of an anthropologistin the Eastern CapeChris de Wet1 INTRODUCTION`Development' is one of those nice-warm-feeling, politically-correct, must-be-good items that every self-respecting social scientist should have in their con-ceptual armoury and in the list of projects accomplished on their CV. It is also aHumpty-Dumpty kind of word, as when Humpty says: ``when I use a word, itmeans exactly what I want it to mean''. A heavily ideologically and morallyloaded term, it can be used to sort out the goodies from the baddies: if you don'tagree with the way I see development, then you are anti-democratic, anti-growth, anti-sustainability, anti-whatever I am .. Extracted from text ... Engaging with development:Confessions of an anthropologistin the Eastern CapeChris de Wet1 INTRODUCTION`Development' is one of those nice-warm-feeling, politically-correct, must-be-good items that every self-respecting social scientist should have in their con-ceptual armoury and in the list of projects accomplished on their CV. It is also aHumpty-Dumpty kind of word, as when Humpty says: ``when I use a word, itmeans exactly what I want it to mean''. A heavily ideologically and morallyloaded term, it can be used to sort out the goodies from the baddies: if you don'tagree with the way I see development, then you are anti-democratic, anti-growth, anti-sustainability, anti-whatever I am ..