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ID:
075397
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2006.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The issue of security has recently gained acute relevance for theoreticians and policymakers, but the way in which culture relates to security has yet to be given the attention it deserves. This article argues that all discourses and practices of security - ours as well as those of others - are cultural in nature, are historically positioned, and therefore inescapably plural. The article uses a case study of today's revival of Buddhism in Cambodia to illustrate how an anthropological approach may be applied in order to begin challenging the inherent ethnocentricity of much security theory. It explores a particular indigenous scheme of security, and how that scheme relates to power and moral legitimacy. The way Cambodians understand and deal with danger should, it is contended, alert us to the need for social scientists and policymakers to seek culturally sensitive understandings of security. This may help us make sense of local behaviour that may seem unreasonable according to our values; it can provoke us to check and refine our theory rather than indiscriminately apply it; and it may help limit the hegemony of privileged systems of ideas and the violence these can sometimes do to disempowered systems.
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| 2 |
ID:
116855
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2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The World Bank's Consultations with the Poor made development history. One of the most widely discussed piece of development research ever, the Consultations made much of claims to be participatory and to represent the ''voices'' of more than 20,000 ''poor people'' in 23 countries. It findings were used to garland speeches and affirm the overwhelming approval of ''the poor'' for the bank's policy prescriptions, lending them narrative form and moral legitimacy. More than a decade later, references are still made to the ''voices of the poor''. As the MDG deadline draws closer, there is talk of repeating the exercise to inform the next round of goals. In this article, we look back at this exercise, and examine the methodology that was used to ''listen'' to ''the voices of the poor''. Taking one of the regions where the studies were done, Latin America, we trace quotes through from site reports to synthesis. Our findings offer no surprise to those familiar with what Broad describes as the Bank's exercise of the ''art of paradigm maintenance''. But it offers useful pause for reflection on the politics of knowledge production and the encounters between international development agencies and those whom they would call their ''clients''.
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