Reexamining Development Aid: A Journey from Economics to Anthropological Practice

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Other Title
  • 開発援助を眺める
  • 開発援助を眺める--経済学から人類学的実践への旅
  • カイハツ エンジョ オ ナガメル ケイザイガク カラ ジンルイガクテキ ジッセン エ ノ タビ
  • ―経済学から人類学的実践への旅―

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Abstract

<p>In this paper I have attempted to give the reader an alternative view of the relationship between economics and anthropology, reexamining development aid by using the term “practice” as the key concept. According to Junji Koizumi, an anthropologist, the essential meaning of “practice” lies in the act of doing something, which specifically involves the following four actions: 1) to collect the data and information through one's own fieldwork; 2) to try to make one's own research more actor-oriented; 3) to reflect on one's own act of fieldwork; and 4) to act for something that has been revealed by the actions mentioned above.</p><p>I have extended the use of such “anthropological practice” to apply to those who are not anthropologists by profession but who have been actually engaging in anthropological practice, in order to reinvestigate the relationship between economics and anthropology, beyond academic concerns. To usher the audience from other than those two disciplines, a narrative of my personal journey from economics to anthropology over the years of research on the poverty and socioeconomic lives of ethnic minorities in the Philippines is also employed.</p><p>This paper consists of five sections. Section 1 is the Introduction. Section 2 clarifies my position as an outsider of the so-called “development industry,” while describing it as an insider-outsider with one foot in Japan and the other in the Philippines with vague accountabilities to people in both countries. Section 3 provides a brief review on the literature on the distance between economics and anthropology in development studies. Section 4 is intended to find “anthropological practice” in the writings of W. Easterly, a prominent development economist who used to work with the World Bank. Section 5 illustrates the struggle of a Filipino surgeon-turned-cooperative-man to fight against poverty as a case-study of those who, outside the development industry, commit themselves to specific economic problems in their own localities and strive to create alternative institutions to improve the situations. Finally, Section 6 refers to the concept of the trans-national identity responsive to others in “glocal” public philosophy by Naoshi Yamawaki, which helps the author reconcile the conflicting sense of accountability of her actions beyond national boundaries.</p>

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