ABSTRACT
Criticism of development projects intending to achieve sustamability and failing to take account of the complexity of local realities, especially power relations and governance, ends up with the same, almost clichéd, portrayals of development failure that have been repeatedly presented in previous studies (Ellen 2002). The studies suggest that development policies are discursively constructed (e.g. Crush 1995, Escobar 1995, Gasper and Apthorpe 1996), and they naturally have very little to do with "what actually happens" on the ground (Clay and Schaffer 1984: 11). On the face of it, the Sustainable and Participatory Development Project introduced to the Association in Novo Paraíso by ASDA, which had been funded internationally under PPG7, cannot escape these criticisms. However, as we saw in the last chapter, what actually happens in the heterotopias is that any development project has the generative power to let the beneficiaries reflect on the situation, change the course of action and shape new social arrangements. Therefore, in reality, the failure of such development projects is a failure to seriously recognise emerging spaces in which more engaging approaches can be sought after to advance the agenda.
