ABSTRACT
The relationship between anthropology and development is complex and problematic, and has largely been dominated by a focus on international development and a critique of the model of the ‘developed West’ providing the aspirational ideal for the ‘poor Third World’. Gardner and Lewis (1996), for instance, offer an excellent review. However, relatively little attention has been paid to the ‘development’ efforts made by states within their own territories, and the varying forms of local governance of that development. Criticism of the use of ‘Western’ discourses of development to force dependency on poor countries has generally ignored the domestic use of these same discourses and the practices institutionalised within these ‘Western’ states (Cowen and Shenton 1995:41-2). While calls for anthropologies of development institutions have been common for much of the 1990s, anthropologies of local state institutions have generally focused on issues of access to public services (e.g. Edwards 1994; McCourt Perring 1994) and examinations of the organisation of local development are still few.
