IDEA OF 'ANTI-POLITICS'

The Machine that Depoliticizes

In 1990, James Ferguson wrote a book called The Anti-Politics Machine: "Development", Depoliticisation and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. This book contained an anthropological analysis of the disproportionately large donor-driven development machinery in this small landlocked country in southern Africa. Its implications had profound resonances for the critical treatment of development far beyond Lesotho, in all of Africa and certainly most of the developing world. The reason for this prima facie appears to be a simple one, and indeed Ferguson offers it to us. No one before Ferguson or at the very least few as clearly and cogently, had turned their critical attentions to analysing the actual apparatus that drove development. While scholarly analyses and critiques galore had thrashed out the political, social and economic potential of development, there was a surprising gap in understanding about the development industry itself. The existing literature in the field was dominated by the ideas of 'insiders' or 'sympathetic outsiders' who believed in development planning and therefore scrutinized it with a fix-it attitude, or at the other extreme, by radical Marxist and dependency theorists for whom the entire development effort was a great capitalist sham. There was little insight into how the bureaucrats, experts, consultants and planners that populated development organizations and establishments actually operated and the effects their operations created beyond their own proclamations.

Interrogating the limits of such analyses, Ferguson posed a somewhat different question. What if the real issues lay not in deciding whether or not a development project was a 'success' or 'failure' in relation to its stated objectives, but instead in the unintended effects that result from the actions of development bureaucrats? Were we not in danger of missing out on understanding key aspects of social reality that resulted not from intentional actions alone, but from unintentional ones as well, and were intentional actions important in a way other than that imagined by their architects? Inspired by Michel Foucault, Ferguson thus problematized the complex relationship between the 'intentionality of planning' and the 'intelligibility of outcomes' (1990, 20). In doing so, he developed his central thesis – the anti-politics machine – which he characterized as the two-fold 'instrument effect' of a large rural development project funded by the World Bank and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). While the first effect was an 'institutional' one as it strengthened the hold of bureaucratic state power, the second effect was 'ideological' as it 'depoliticized' both poverty and the state. In other words, Ferguson explains, much like an anti-gravity machine popularized by science fiction stories, the anti-politics machine seemed to be able to suspend politics from even the most 'sensitive political operations' at the symbolic flick of a button, all the while reinforcing its own power. So even though the project was a 'failure' – which Ferguson unambiguously concluded it was – such failure was accompanied by the very significant effects of depoliticization and the entrenchment of state power.

Ferguson's study went on to spark much interest both in the form and content of the metaphor of the anti-politics machine. The idea of the development apparatus, and development discourse more generally, eschewing politics seemed to strike at the heart of the problem of development itself. The 'depoliticisation' of development acquired tremendous currency. A number of scholars have commented on how fundamentally political issues are articulated or framed in an apolitical idiom. They noted that such an idiom had little bearing with the reality of development thinking and practice and was misleading with seriously detrimental effects. In his well-known study Depoliticising Development: The World Bank and Social Capital, John Harriss attacked Robert Putnam's well-known conceptualization of social capital (1993, 2000) in a 'realm apart from politics and government' (2001, 60), which had resulted in the denial of issues of context and power, the attribution of a dubious causality to social capital, and the depoliticisation of poverty and social justice. Sangeeta Kamat's Development Hegemony: NGOs and the State in India also explicitly evoked the anti-politics machine idea, to show how the law is used by the Indian state to decree all development activities and agencies as non-political (Kamat 2002). In her interpretation, such deployment of the law was specifically aimed at excluding any 'radical' or 'militant' action, both ambiguously defined, from the fold of development with fascinating effects. A rich literature has since emerged on the myriad ways in the rational models and technical discourses of development 'naturalise poverty and objectify the poor and depoliticise development' (Mosse 2004, 643 citing Long 2001, Ludden 1992, Scott 1998, Skaria 1998 and Tsing 1993). Admittedly, many of these authors may not engage directly with Ferguson's anti-politics machine metaphor but the broad thrusts of their arguments endorse his depoliticization thesis. Ferguson's work symbolizes the central concerns of the many scholars who have commented on the depoliticising thrust of development.

There were many others that recognized Ferguson's ideas on depoliticization as influential, but were less convinced of particular aspects of his analysis. Mosse (2004) in particular is doubtful of the extent to which Ferguson pushes his case for the (unintended) effects of development which apparently occur 'behind the backs or against the wills of even the most powerful actors' (1990, 18). Tordella (2003) is milder in his appraisal, but equally uncertain about the merits of assuming the 'inevitability' of depoliticization. In his view, it would be more helpful if the analysis could be directed at understanding 'where development planning tends to "go wrong" and what specific assumptions must be discarded for more effective interventions' (2003, 5). Also, critics are less than convinced by Ferguson's verdict that the infuriating tedium of development, with its cycle of 'failed' projects, is no mystery but in fact is a clear outcome of the very concrete expansion in bureaucratic state power accompanying development. Even if Ferguson is not suggesting a conspiracy theory he does argue that development project work is simply too convenient for development planners for them to abandon their endeavours at lack of success. Kumar and Corbridge (2002) have argued that the Indian...