Dear Benedict,

This is a very brought question as there are obviously very different conceptions of “agency” in social theory as well as very different conceptions of development (for instance, do we talk about big D or small d development, as Gillian Hart puts it?; please also note that two major books on the topic juxtapose “social change” or “global capitalism” and development, e.g. McMichael’s “development and social change” or Peet’s Global Capitalism: Theories of Societal Development, probably precisely because they want to more beyond the narrow confines of “Development”).

So there are very different entry points into this question. I shall map out a few:

1) For instance, livelihood research, especially in German development geography, has often adopted Giddens’ structure-agency theory; obviously, these scholars were rather interested in micro-level changes (e.g. at household/village level) rather than in broader macro-economic changes. Nothing speaks against extending Giddens to other D/development contexts.

2) Closely linked to this more-actor centred focus, but distinct for its own theoretical ambition, is Norman Long’s actor-centred approach in development sociology; this has been applied to a wide variety of contexts, ranging from concrete development interventions to larger development arenas; his book (Long, N. 2001. Development Sociology. Actor Perspectives, London and New York : Routledge9 is widely cited in “development” circles

3) Some scholars have adopted Bourdieu’s theory of practice. Like Giddens, he also wants to transcend macro-micro/objectivism-subjectivism dualism that has shaped debates in social theory for decades, but he operates in the tradition of a more structuralist framework, see for instance the special issue in Geographica Helvetica: https://www.geogr-helv.net/special_issue281.html. Bourdieu himself developed his theories in part by studying social change in Algeria, NOT “DEVELOPMENT”

4) There are even more structuralist approaches in a Marxist or institutional tradition, who still offer a broader space of agency to state, capital and civil society than the more rigid versions of world-systems theory or dependency theory. This includes works adopting a Neo-Poulanzian framework or the recent works on political settlements and technological capabilities. These works want to study political/economic changes at the macro-level, explaining why certain countries have managed to break away from more exploitative/extravert development paths and others have not, and what kind of forces and politics have shaped this process. Of course, such frameworks can also be used to study the transition from more equity-oriented forms of state-capitalism to more neoliberal versions. For the Neo-Poulanzian framework, see for instance:

· Chang, Dae-oup. 2009. Capitalist development in Korea: Labour, capital and the myth of the developmental state. Routledge advances in Korean studies. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.

For the political settlements/technological capabilities stuff, see

· Whitfield, Lindsay. 2012. “How Countries Become Rich and Reduce Poverty: A Review of Heterodox Explanations of Economic Development.” Development Policy Review 30 (3): 239–60. doi:10.1111/j.1467-7679.2012.00575.x.

· Whitfield, Lindsay, Ole Therkildsen, Lars Buur, and Anne Mette Kjaer. 2015. The Politics of African Industrial Policy: A Comparative Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

· Gray, Hazel. 2018. Turbulence and Order in Economic Development Economic Transformation in Tanzania and Vietnam. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

This does not mean though that there aren’t any more thoroughly Marxist works that take seriously agency and ethnography and study social/economic change at the micro-level. For recent, outstanding examples see:

· Rizzo, Matteo. 2017. Taken for a ride: Grounding neoliberalism, precarious labour, and public transport in an African metropolis. Critical frontiers of theory, research, and policy in international development studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

· Gidwani, Vinay K. 2008. Capital, interrupted: Agrarian development and the politics of work in India. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

5) Then there are theories which have doubts about the existence of a sovereign, bounded individual that acts intentionally (as e.g. in Giddens’ work). These theories come from various corners, such as Foucault’s work on governmentality, one of the most famous ones applied to “Development” being:

· Li, Tania Murray. 2007. “Governmentality.” Anthropologica 49 (2): 275–81. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25605363.

· ———. 2007. The will to improve: Governmentality development and the practice of politics. Durham: Duke Univ. Press [u.a.].

…or works that adopt a Latourian framework. Rottenburg’s study is one of the most famous ones in this regard, focusing on the internal logics of a single development programme:

· Rottenburg, Richard, Allison Brown, and Tom Lampert. 2009. Far-Fetched Facts: The MIT Press.

But such a perspective might also be extended to studying commodity chains, firms or other organizational forms and their entanglement with D/development:

· Ouma, Stefan. 2015. Assembling export markets: The making and unmaking of global food connections in West Africa. RGS-IBG book series. Chichester, U.K: Wiley-Blackwell.

With a more specific focus on “development studies”, this perspective is also outlined in this paper:

· Kevin P. Donovan. 2014. “‘Development’ as if We Have Never Been Modern: Fragments of a Latourian Development Studies.” Development and Change 45 (5): 869–94. doi:10.1111/dech.12117.

Then there is work that has no substantiated notion of agency, but which has been important to highlight the agency of local actors in processes of social and economic change, often in contrast to existing hegemonic theories of their time. For a famous contribution to development economics, see

· Hill, Polly. 1970. Studies in Rural Capitalism in West Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

This is my very selective reading. There are many other works by Western- and non-Western scholars that engage with the question of agency in the context of d/Development and I guess many others on this list can share something in this regard or would arrive at very different assessments of what they consider “famous” or “important”. Obviously, the authors I outlined largely adopt theories rooted in a Euro-Atlantic context, and are largely indicative of what the Nigerian political scientist Claude Ake called “Social Sciences as Imperialism”. So applying Giddens or Bourdieu, to, say, studying agricultural change in Northern Ghana comes along with various ontological/epistemological problems that need to be acknowledged.

Hope this helps.

Best,

Stefan

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Von: A forum for critical and radical geographers [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Im Auftrag von Paolo Novak
Gesendet: Sonntag, 10. Dezember 2017 18:00
An: [log in to unmask]
Betreff: Re: EXPLAINING DEVELOPMENT TRAJECTORIES

Hi Benedict. Not sure what you mean by actors, but if you refer to post-colonial countries' development, Mahmood mamdani and sudipta kaviraj offer good insights on civil society

On 10 Dec 2017 2:03 pm, "Benedict Arko" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Dear Critters,
I would be grateful if anyone can suggest a theory that can be used to
explain how the agency of actors shape the trajectory of a development
intervention.
Best regards
Benedict

Benedict Arko
PhD Student
Chair of Development Geography
University of Bayreuth
+4915217996108