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ID:
126035
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2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The development industry has moved from concepts of aid and technical assistance to the idea that closing 'gaps' in people's knowledge is the most effective way of alleviating poverty and injustice. My data show the means through which this 'knowledge transfer' is actually supposed to happen. I examine the micro-politics of development: the role and agency of development workers, who are so frequently employed to conduct 'training' on a wide range of topics affecting citizens' well-being, such as conflict prevention or sustainable agricultural practices. This paper draws on ethnographic research between 2010 and 2012 with Kyrgyzstani NGO workers to analyse the 'side-effects' of development, such as the creation of a new social class and softening age hierarchies. I examine the widespread conviction among trainers that education can solve most social ills, and their concepts of how knowledge, sometimes in the guise of ideologiya, shapes people. I argue that this faith in knowledge reflects both the life course of NGO workers themselves and what they can offer from within the 'knowledge transfer' paradigm. An understanding of the friction between different expectations of knowledge content, teaching relationships and aims in creating well-being is not only essential to a critical reflection on these development efforts but also illuminates wider political and social processes and relationships, such as expectations of the state and international community.
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| 2 |
ID:
107546
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2011.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Based on anthropological fieldwork between 2006 and 2008, this article compares how people in the Toktogul region of Kyrgyzstan understand and interact with water in three highly significant places: mountain pastures (jailoos), the Toktogul hydroelectric dam that controls the flow of the Naryn and sacred sites (mazars). Sidelining the vast standing waters of Toktogul Reservoir, valley residents instead highlight the positive qualities of flowing water at mazars, pastures and the working dam. Contrasting how metaphors of running water are put to use conceptually by Toktogul residents and social scientists opens up a critique of current academic and policy-oriented descriptions of the world as 'flow'. Attention to a particular kind of movement (flowing water) highlights some of the silent assumptions in current depictions of a mobile world 'in flux'.
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