Lost at Inception: A Sociological Analysis of Development Effectiveness.

[摘要] Why are development forecasts for Pakistan increasingly negative, at a time when the amount of United States development assistance to the country is at a historic high?During the last decade, United States development assistance to Pakistan has been on a steadily rising trend, reaching its highest point in 2010.However, during this same time period, development forecasts for Pakistan, in contrast, have been set on a downward trend.My dissertation examines the puzzle posed by these contradictory trends between increased US development assistance and decreased Pakistani development forecasts.Focusing on the contribution of micro-level mechanisms of the development enterprise itself, I demonstrate how these mechanisms produce two contradictory consequences: they produce the enterprise’s failure to achieve its normative goals on the one side, yet also generate the enterprise’s expansion despite its failure on the other. Specifically, I demonstrate how the particular ways that development professionals think about the problems they want to solve, and how the manner in which they go about solving them, preclude any viable solutions while also creating the conditions for the expansion of the development enterprise.

[发布机构] University of Michigan

[效力级别] Social Sciences (General)

[关键词] Sociology of Development;Social Sciences (General);Social Sciences;Sociology