Fields of Desire
Book description
High's argument is based on long-term fieldwork in a village in Laos. The village was identified as poor and was the subject of multiple poverty reduction and development interventions. This book looks at how these policies were implemented on the ground, particularly at why such apparently beneficent interventions were received…
Why read it?
1 author picked Fields of Desire as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Holly High addresses a question that puzzles students of development studies: why do people engage in development programs when they have such a poor record of success?
It is not due to a lack of cynicism or suspicion. Rather High shows that rural Laos residents continue to hold both unconscious and social desires for development, producing a “shared delirium” that contains its own rationalities.
Notably, Fields of Desire brings Lacanian and Deleuzian theories to the anthropology of development: a welcome respite from Foucault.
It is also an evocative ethnographic account of the experience of poverty, and poverty reduction programs in…
From Tanya's list on anthropology of development.
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