The Will to Improve
Governmentality, Development, and the Practice of Politics
Seiten
2007
Duke University Press (Verlag)
978-0-8223-4008-9 (ISBN)
Duke University Press (Verlag)
978-0-8223-4008-9 (ISBN)
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Offers an account of development in action. Focusing on experts' attempts to improve landscapes and livelihoods in Indonesia, this title exposes the practices that enable experts to diagnose problems and devise interventions, and the agency of people whose conduct is targeted for reform.
The Will to Improve is a remarkable account of development in action. Focusing on attempts to improve landscapes and livelihoods in Indonesia, Tania Murray Li carefully exposes the practices that enable experts to diagnose problems and devise interventions, and the agency of people whose conduct is targeted for reform. Deftly integrating theory, ethnography, and history, she illuminates the work of colonial officials and missionaries; specialists in agriculture, hygiene, and credit; and political activists with their own schemes for guiding villagers toward better ways of life. She examines donor-funded initiatives that seek to integrate conservation with development through the participation of communities, and a one-billion-dollar program designed by the World Bank to optimize the social capital of villagers, inculcate new habits of competition and choice, and remake society from the bottom up.Demonstrating that the “will to improve” has a long and troubled history, Li identifies enduring continuities from the colonial period to the present. She explores the tools experts have used to set the conditions for reform-tools that combine the reshaping of desires with applications of force. Attending in detail to the highlands of Sulawesi, she shows how a series of interventions entangled with one another and tracks their results, ranging from wealth to famine, from compliance to political mobilization, and from new solidarities to oppositional identities and violent attack. The Will to Improve is an engaging read-conceptually innovative, empirically rich, and alive with the actions and reflections of the targets of improvement, people with their own critical analyses of the problems that beset them.
The Will to Improve is a remarkable account of development in action. Focusing on attempts to improve landscapes and livelihoods in Indonesia, Tania Murray Li carefully exposes the practices that enable experts to diagnose problems and devise interventions, and the agency of people whose conduct is targeted for reform. Deftly integrating theory, ethnography, and history, she illuminates the work of colonial officials and missionaries; specialists in agriculture, hygiene, and credit; and political activists with their own schemes for guiding villagers toward better ways of life. She examines donor-funded initiatives that seek to integrate conservation with development through the participation of communities, and a one-billion-dollar program designed by the World Bank to optimize the social capital of villagers, inculcate new habits of competition and choice, and remake society from the bottom up.Demonstrating that the “will to improve” has a long and troubled history, Li identifies enduring continuities from the colonial period to the present. She explores the tools experts have used to set the conditions for reform-tools that combine the reshaping of desires with applications of force. Attending in detail to the highlands of Sulawesi, she shows how a series of interventions entangled with one another and tracks their results, ranging from wealth to famine, from compliance to political mobilization, and from new solidarities to oppositional identities and violent attack. The Will to Improve is an engaging read-conceptually innovative, empirically rich, and alive with the actions and reflections of the targets of improvement, people with their own critical analyses of the problems that beset them.
Tania Murray Li is Professor of Anthropology and Senior Canada Research Chair in Political Economy and Culture in Asia-Pacific at the University of Toronto. She is the author of Malays in Singapore: Culture, Economy, and Ideology and the editor of Transforming the Indonesian Uplands: Marginality, Power, and Production.
List of Acronyms vii
Glossary of Indonesian Terms ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction: The Will to Improve 1
1. Contradictory Positions 31
2. Projects, Practices, and Effects 61
3. Formations of Capital and Identity 96
4. Rendering Technical? 123
5. Politics in Contention 156
6. Provocation and Reversal 192
7. Development in the Age of Neoliberalism 230
Conclusion 270
Notes 285
Bibliography 337
Index 367
| Zusatzinfo | 13 illustrations, 3 figures |
|---|---|
| Verlagsort | North Carolina |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Gewicht | 662 g |
| Themenwelt | Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung |
| ISBN-10 | 0-8223-4008-9 / 0822340089 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0-8223-4008-9 / 9780822340089 |
| Zustand | Neuware |
| Informationen gemäß Produktsicherheitsverordnung (GPSR) | |
| Haben Sie eine Frage zum Produkt? |
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