Following an earlier post on the construction of "development", the following are thought provoking quotes from Ferguson's (1990) The Anti-Politics Machine on the practice of "development":

Context:

• "The argument, in brief, is the following: "development" institutions generate their own form of discourse, and this discourse simultaneously constructs Lesotho as a particular kind of object of knowledge, and creates a structure of knowledge around that object. Interventions are then organized on the basis of this structure of knowledge, which, while "failing" on their own terms, nonetheless have regular effects, which include the expansion and entrenchment of bureaucratic state power, side by side with the projection of a representation of economic and social life which denies "politics" and, to the extent that it is successful, suspends its effects. The short answer to the question of what the "development" apparatus in Lesotho does, then, is found in the book's title: it is an "anti-politics machine," depoliticizing everything it touches, everywhere whisking political realities out of sight, all the while preforming, almost unnoticed, its own pre-eminently political operation of expanding bureaucratic state power." (p. xiv-xv)
  

On being (a)political:

• "… just as the "development" problematic had misunderstood the economic structure of the "target population," in the same way it failed to appreciate the larger political-economic situation of the project itself as an instrument of the Government of Lesotho." (p. 193)
  
• "… the project did end up hiring many local people for unskilled work, chiefly in road construction and similar activities. This labor, which at the project's peak amounted to many hundreds of jobs, was recruited through the Village Development Committees. It was seen in Chapter 4 that these Committees were political organs of the ruling National Party, and it should thus be no surprise to hear that project jobs were often alleged to be preferentially allocated to National Party supporters. When I asked the Project Coordinator about this in 1983, he expressed what appeared to be genuine ignorance of the political role played by the Village Development Committees, and said that he had never before heard that they were associated with the ruling party. The project hired through the Committees, he stated, because the Government had told them to. "We can't afford to get involved with politics," he said." (p. 244)
  

On being uninformed:

• "…stock owners were usually reluctant to oppose the idea of improved stock in principle, but cited particular reasons why such a move was inappropriate for them. Several reasons were commonly cited. First, improved stock were said to be less hardy than the local animals - they would easily die off up in the mountains or when grazing got scarce. Secondly, they would need to be fed fodder, which would be very expensive. To grow one's own fodder, one would have to give up badly needed food… officials almost invariably recorded this opposition as a lack of understanding. Time and time again I was told by officials (whose own claims to power and authority, of course, rested on their education and technical expertise) that villagers who opposed their schemes lacked education, that they did not understand the proposals, that matters needed to be explained better." (p. 185-6)
  
• "Project planners came eventually to realize the impossible position they occupied. The "technical measures" the project was competent to implement, a 1978 appraisal noted, were of "little significance" without far-reaching structural changes that were beyond the power of the project to effect." (p. 191)
  

On failure:

• "The main reason for this was simply that the project had no legal power to restrict movement of livestock, limit numbers or restrict access to grazing. The planners seemed to have assumed that the project could divide up and regulate rangeland in any way it pleased, but under the laws of Lesotho it had no such right… In this context, the project had absolutely no authority to implement any of the grazing-control measures the early documents proposed." (p. 171)
  
• "… the Principal Chief of Rothe gave the Thaba-Tseka Project permission to start a grazing association for owners of small stock on 1,500 hectares of rangeland near the new town of Thaba-Tseka. By 1979, the area had been fenced, and a CIDA evaluation was able to claim that "the introduction of the first Graziers' Association in August 1979 in the mountains of Lesotho is considered to be an outstanding achievement of the TTIRDP" (CIDA 1979: 57). By the end of the next year, the fence had been cut or knocked down in many places, the gates had been stolen, and the association area was being freely grazed by all. The office of the association manager had been burned down, and the Canadian officer in charge of the program was said to be fearing for his life. In 1982, when I arrived on the scene, the project was being described by project officials as "a complete disaster." (p. 171)
  

For anyone interested in international development, this is essential reading. The opening chapters of the book are academic, and I suspect this has contributed to it mostly being engaged with by academics. However, Li's book is highly recommended for practitioners, even if that means skimming some parts. What follows is not a summary of The Will to Improve, rather it pulls a selection of quotes aimed to inspire critical reflection.

On "rendering technical":

• "Two key practices are required to translate the will to improve into explicit programs. One is problematization, that is, identifying deficiencies that need to be rectified. The second is the practice I call "rendering technical," a short-hand for what is actually a whole set of practices concerned with representing "the domain to be governed as an intelligible field with specifiable limits and particular characteristics … defining boundaries, rendering that within them visible, assembling information about that which is included and devising techniques to mobilize the forces and entities thus revealed"." (p. 7)
  

On project failure (or the wrong success?):

• "CARE was more consistent than the ADB with its agricultural program and its free farm inputs, and extension services did benefit some farmers. This modest success revealed two further flaws in the program logic. First, the "target group" CARE deemed most likely to encroach on the park – poor villagers – were not able to take advantage of CARE's inputs because they had no farms. If they had some cacao, they wanted it to produce maximum incomes as soon as possible. They did not have the luxury to or incentive to prioritize long-term ecological stability. Thus CARE's agricultural interventions were captured by the village elite. Excluded villages saw CARE as yet another vehicle of patronage operating in their name but not for their benefit. Second, farmers who benefited from CARE's attentions acquired new resources and added incentive to expand their holdings outside the park, where they bought up the land of their impoverished neighbors. They also expanded their holdings inside the park. Thus agricultural improvement did not promote conservation, it undermined it." (p. 137)
  

On Complexities:

• "Scores of interviews I conducted with resettlers in Rahmat and other resettlement sites convinced me that they share this concept of improvement. In Rahmat, settlers expressed a desire to become modular farmers of the kind the resettlement program proposed. They had no nostalgia for life in the hills. Nor did they voice a desire for modernity simply for my consumption. Their desire was confirmed by the actions of hundreds of hill families who applied to join resettlement schemes or subsequently moved in around the edges, hoping to escape their isolation and improve their lot. Rahmat settlers characterized their former life in the hills very concretely in terms of the number of days and nights it took to carry their coffee to market, and the dismal returns for their labor. They had food, they said, but no money for clothes, batteries, sugar, kerosene, or other modest consumer requirements. There was no education for their children. Thus their critique of resettlement was not focused on what they had lost. It was focused, rather, on what the program promised but failed to deliver…" (p. 91)
  

On the practice of development and the practice of ethnography:

• "I find an ethnographic appreciation of the complexities of rural relations to be antithetical to the position of an expert. This might seem counterintuitive. Surely a person like me, after more than a decade of research, has ideas about how to translate that knowledge into effective programs that help people? Indeed, I am sometimes asked by anthropologically trained development administrations in Indonesia to provide suggestions about what they should do. More specifically, they ask me to provide them with a bridge between my research describing the dynamics of rural life, which some of them have read, and the world of projects, which they inhabit. Such a bridge eludes me. Why is it, I ask myself, that so many experts can examine Indonesia and devise programs to improve it, whereas I cannot? This is not a matter of coyness or modesty on my part. Still less am I indifferent to the problems of poverty, disease, and ecological disaster that experts seek to resolve. I believe my predicament is diagnostic. It enables me to ask what ways of thinking, what practices and assumptions are required to translate messy conjunctures, with all the processes that run through them, into linear narratives of problems, interventions, and beneficial results." (p. 3-4)