The Will to Improve, The Vision of Future-Making, and Innovations for Development - II

Abstract

“Development projects” are still prevalent in the global South, not only carried out by international development agencies but also by different levels of local governments, different types of NGOs, and local academia. These projects are normally seen as the pilot test for further scaling-up, designed as one important channel to generate new evidence and knowledge, and promoted as technically- or socially-“innovative.” Through the analytical lens of “the will to improve” (Li 2007) and different versions of scientific imaginaries of future (Brown and Michael 2003; Jasanoff and Kim 2005; (Stilgoe, Owen, and Macnaghten 2013; Haraway 2016; Ghimire 2018), this panel aims to explore the role of development projects as the constellation of the situated power relations in the local context, the confidence on the efficacy of various kinds of science and technology, and the imaginaries and impulse of a better future. We welcome papers focused on projects both in the global South and North, investigating different aspects of the “project world” (Li 2007), and engaging with the rationale of “the will to improve” and “the vision of future-making.” Potential topics may include the designing process of the project, the socio-technical imaginaries underlying the project, problematization of issues at stake, the implementation procedure, the role of expertise in these projects, politics around monitoring and evaluation, innovations driven by the idea of solutionism, the knowledge production and mobilization of development agencies, and different conceptualizations of "development project." We are especially interested in papers that work on projects that are facilitated by regional and local governments, NGOs, or academia.

Individual Presentations

• Making Agency in Development Projects: A Case Study in Cameroon - Anthony Poon, Cornell University

• The Diversity of Impacts Brought by Sound Implementation of Public-Private Partnerships in the Veterinary Domain - Mariline Poupaud, CIRAD, UMR ASTRE, Université de Montpellier, Montpellier, France; Isabelle Dieuzy-Labaye, World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE); Marisa Peyre, CIRAD, UMR ASTRE, Montpellier, France

• The Production of Indicators: Enumeration Labor, Information Technology, and the Project-Based Practice of HIV Data Governance in Malawi - Chia-Shuo Tang, Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research, University of Amsterdam

Session Organizer

• Shun-Nan Chiang, University of California, Santa Cruz