'Breaking Other People's Toys': Reflections on Teaching Critical Anthropology in Development Studies

Abstract

This paper explores the personal transformations of students learning critical anthropology on a Development Studies course. Students� personal projects intertwine with their disciplinary and professional choices. I show how learning that radically challenges the development paradigm may lead to internal personal conflicts and life-project crises. How should teachers of anthropology design and teach such courses and what is the impact on students and on the disciplines?

Navigating interdisciplinarity: negotiating discipline, embodiment, and materiality on a field methods training course

“…In Djohari's discussion on the challenges of teaching the anthropological critique of development, she shows how development studies students were less interested in questioning the broader development agenda, and more intent on looking for "answers, tools, and strategies that can help them do a better job" (2011: 25). She carefully illustrates how this ultimately resulted in despondency generally and a rejection of anthropology specifically (Djohari 2011). These cases highlight differences between the disciplines, the influence of the scientific approach on the students, and the need to expose students unfamiliar with anthropology to ideas about interactions between researchers and research participants as the process through which social knowledge is co-produced (see Ingold, 2014).…”

Learning the anthropology of development: the university as a site of knowledge construction and identity formation

“…Personal biographies, often including time in the Peace Corps, have sparked students' passion for global service, but it is a passion largely oblivious to the power relations inherent in development projects. Djohari (2011) has encountered the obverse (and for me more familiar) problem at the University of Sussex. She found that students of development studies were disheartened after confronting anthropological critiques of development.…”

“…The experience caused them to question their life projects and self-identifications, as their backgrounds and aspirations in the development sector were tainted by anthropological revelations. While presenting contrasting problems, Handler (2013) and Djohari (2011) both speak to the issue of what kind of graduates emerge from our courses and programs. Neither the naïve idealist nor the disheartened cynic graduate seems appropriate for development practice or research.…”

“…This paper is a starting point to reflect on anthropology's contribution to the teaching of development studies, with relevance for other sub-fields within anthropology. I draw on the literature in anthropology and higher education to consider not what we should teach within the anthropology of development (the implicit question of Handler 2013 andDjohari 2011), but rather the types of learning that we make possible in our courses. By this I mean to shift the focus from questions of content towards considering how the experiences of the classroom produce graduates able to act upon the world in constructive ways.…”

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Recent work exploring student reactions to the anthropology of development highlights the importance of going beyond simply imparting practical skills, or alternatively delivering content that offers an unrelenting critique (Djohari 2011;Handler 2013). In this paper, I argue that by casting an anthropological eye on the classroom, teachers can provide a learning environment in which students transform into reflective 'novice' practitioners equipped for lifelong learning.

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