ABSTRACT
In The Will to Improve, Tania Li (2007) analyses how different development programmes overlap, producing unexpected and ultimately negative consequences for the communities they were designed to help. In particular, she describes the effects of relocation in the highlands of Sulawesi, Indonesia, starting from an early phase of development in the Dutch colonial period. Here, villagers were resettled from the highlands to lower areas in order to bring them closer to infrastructure such as roads, but also to take advantage of new farming techniques. While the resettlement programme was never particularly successful, it hit a notable barrier when bio-conservation became a national agenda item in the 1990s. Eventually, a park was established and access to land restricted. Farming techniques that were supposed to improve these communities’ livelihood were banned, with, as a consequence, ongoing poverty and landlessness for the villagers. To add insult to injury, villagers were criticised for these very farming practices and held responsible for the ecological decline of the area. In recounting this story, Li’s broader intention is to think about how power operates in relation to development. In order to do so, she conceptually builds on Foucault’s concept of governmentality, Marxian political economy and Gramsci’s conceptualisation of hegemony. By taking aim at neoliberal agendas of economic betterment through a Marxist framework, Li shows how growth and impoverishment are always intertwined.
