The Many Ways to Conceptualize a Person and Global Development

• In Event: 434 - Section on Sociology of Development Paper Session. Neglected Issues in the Sociology of Development

Abstract

Beyond vested interests, perverse incentives, and grandiose claims, this research examines the problems in global aid that stem from presuppositions about what a person is. How persons are conceptualized is not universally agreed upon, nor is it self-evident. Yet, among the many ways humans define themselves, one particular concept of personhood stubbornly dominates development expertise emanating from the field of economics: the person as a single, discrete, rational and bounded unit. While this monadic concept is the basis for deeply held moral intuitions—it can feel as natural as the air we breathe—it does not describe how most people in the world see themselves. Relying on ethnographic fieldwork in rural China, home to the second largest number of the world’s poor (after India), this research examines how interventions actually unfold among real people—rather than how they are imagined in the economic models or third sector research. Most research on development and global poverty, as well as most technical solutions proposed for global aid, revolve around a single concept of personhood: a discrete and fixed single unit. This “person” is really only one among many, and he is therefore limited in his ability to represent many (if not most) people around the world. Yet amid this rich range of possibilities, it is the monad concept of personhood that dominates efforts to help the global poor, in part because of the institutions that structure the daily routines of academics and policy makers.

Author

• Becky Yang Hsu, Georgetown University