Opacity and “Development”

By George Stetson, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Political Science, Colorado State University

Leaving aside, for the moment, the questions of whether or not mainstream development actually works, what are the ethical implications of treating people as development-objects? Is it possible to get away from the inherent logic of “development,” which suggests that people are under-developed, and that they need us (the West) to develop them, to fix them, and in the end to save them.

I recently presented an academic paper in Montreal, Canada at the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) Conference to explain how Village Earth was doing something quite different than mainstream development. The key shift, I argued, was a move away from the logic of project-management to the logic of alliance-building, which opens up the possibility to work WITH people as partners and as co-subjects rather than as development-objects. More concretely, it then becomes possible for an NGO, like Village Earth, to strategically use its geopolitical position in the world to acquire resources, to advocate for, and to collaborate with our allies on their ongoing projects, ideas, and creations. To be clear, this does not imply that we at Village Earth cannot be involved in local projects like water, health, or micro-enterprise development, but that our involvement is based on the terms of our alliance, rather than on the terms (and logic) of development per ser.

One of the best examples is the Village Earth approach to participatory filmmaking. Children of the Anaconda, a documentary co-produced, co-filmed, and co-edited with the Shipibo in January of 2005, among other things, increased the bonds of trust and friendship between Village Earth and the Shipibo, leading to multiple projects, workshops, partnerships, and (this summer) to the First Indigenous Tribunal of Chiefs in the Ucayali Region. The act of making a film WITH the Shipibo, of literally giving the cameras to the Shipibo, so that they could present themselves to the world through their own eyes, was built upon a logic of trust and solidarity, as opposed to a logic project-management where outsiders assume the role of “expert” and “manager.” It is this same logic that guides the Village Earth relation with the Lakota on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. The coordinator’s approach is much less about managing projects than it is about collaborating WITH the Lakota on multiple projects, ideas, and Lakota creations. The Adopt-A-Buffalo program, the videos about land issues, and working WITH Lakota tiyospayes (roughly translated as extended families) to recover land, I would argue, has been successful because of a move to dignify people as partners (and friends) rather than objects of development.

In my own work as a scholar, I relate this very logic to the ideas of Edouard Glissant, a Caribbean poet and novelist. For Glissant, all peoples of the world have a right to opacity. Glissant’s message almost counter-intuitive hinges on a critique of the West’s obsessive desire for truth and transparency. Glissant argues that reducing things to the “Transparent” is a potentially violent act of appropriation. Even the simple, seemingly benign process of understanding, by rendering all things transparent, by making the Other (other peoples, cultures, etc.) perfectly knowable, introduces the potential to control and dominate the Other. Glissant’s advice is simple, but radical: “For the time being, perhaps, give up this old obsession with discovering what lies at the bottom of natures.” Glissant invites us to stop reducing the Other to something that we (in the West) are fully able to understand, something that we render transparent and visible. Opacity is to respect diversity (even to celebrate it) without creating a hierarchy that inevitably is based on something Western or “modern.” It prevents us (as an outside NGO) from digging too deep into the inner-workings of local communities, reminding us that there are certain places that might be “off limits,” and certain questions that might be offensive.

I bring in Glissant to highlight that the logic of project management, based on transparency and reduction, might not only be inefficient but unethical. Anyone who is involved in development should consider the ethical implications of rendering people transparent and manageable. Is there inherent violence built into questionnaires, excessive planning, analysis, diagnostics and, in general, the process of acquiring information so that it is possible to manage projects? This is not to deny the seriousness of poverty, but only to consider the human dimensions of development planning and project-management. The shift from project management to alliance building in these Village Earth projects is promising precisely because it gets away from treating people as (transparent) objects to be developed. Rather, it dignifies people as empowered subjects, recognizes and celebrates diversity, and inspires relations of alliance, friendship, and solidarity.