Technocracy Encounters Praxis in a World Bank Development Effort
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.22439/jba.v14i2.7624Abstract
This essay is based on an ethnography by Parker Shipton (2011) of a World Bank development effort in Africa which failed spectacularly. The reason for its failure – and all similarly conceived efforts – lies in its disregard of the ecology of social practices operating at different levels of the implementation. “Ecology of practices” is Isabelle Stengers’ (2010: 37) term for the complex of practices working symbiotically in a domain or locale. The program’s design instead embodied an a-social conception of participants as rational, self-interested economic actors. If there is a lesson to be learned beyond the need for a solid understanding of the interdependencies, it is to examine the motivation that prompts authorities to adopt an assumption that has been shown to be misleading (see, for instance, De Soto 2003). Reading between the lines of Shipton’s report, one gains the impression that there was a technocratic ideology at work behind the program’s explicit aspirations, which made it contra-indicated to consider local conditions and practices. The knowledge of local practices was available and might have made the program successful. However, it was ignored in order to promote globalization, a genuinely 1960s vision, which is today coming undone.
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