Implementing Inequality: The Invisible Labor of International Development

Rebecca Warne Peters

ISBN 10: 1978808968 / ISBN 13: 9781978808966

Published by Rutgers University Press, 2020

About this Item

ix, [3], 199 p. [otob: 41 (ck 43)].

Seller Inventory # 300070

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Implementing Inequality: The Invisible Labor of International Development
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Publication Date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1978808968
• ISBN 13: 9781978808966
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Near Fine

About this title

Synopsis

Implementing Inequality argues that the international development industry’s internal dynamics—between international and national staff, and among policy makers, administrators, and implementers—shape interventions and their outcomes as much as do the external dynamics of global political economy. Through an ethnographic study in postwar Angola, the book demonstrates how the industry’s internal social pressures guide development’s methods and goals, introducing the innovative concept of the development implementariat: those in-country workers, largely but not exclusively “local” staff members, charged with carrying out development’s policy prescriptions. The implementariat is central to the development endeavor but remains overlooked and under-supported as most of its work is deeply social, interactive, and relational, the kind of work that receives less recognition and support than it deserves at every echelon of the industry. If international development is to meet its larger purpose, it must first address its internal inequalities of work and professional class.
 

About the Author

Rebecca Warne Peters is an assistant professor of anthropology at the State University of New York, Oswego.