outcomes

 As an “anthropologist with a deep historical and ethnographic understanding of the politics of colonialism and development in Indonesia, (Tania) Li shows how successive incarnations of a liberal ‘will to improve’ failed to account for the messy realities of landlessness, disease, exploitation and other structures of law and force, and were subsequently confounded when populations failed to improve. Li argues that such accommodations to hegemonic orderings of the world, as revealed in Johannesburg’s City Development Strategies, emerge whenever the concepts of improvement, even ones that profess to be critical, are 'rendered technical' through programs that seek to ‘translate messy conjunctures into linear narratives of problems, interventions and beneficial results’” In this portion of the text out of Rankin’s article on reflexive relationality and accountability she delivers a strong message for the outcomes-oriented approaches of the liberal technician who seeks to alleviate poverty through efforts that are evidence-based in the Global West and North.  The “messy realities of landlessness, disease, exploitation and other structures of law and force” all contribute to the lack of Western-type progress largely, which expects serial growth from the people and development of industry among populations that experience these stark realities.    The expectation-oriented approach of the West does not account for the differences in the so-called “industry” of the people.  Westerners can blame people for so-called failure, missing the things which contextualize the attributes of people.  These are the messy realities that Rankin and Li speak of, including landlessness.  Landlessness can disenfranchise people who hope to work and gain belongingness for their families.  One can hardly belong when there is no land to belong on.  The disease can wipe out the “progress” gained by stifling the work that could otherwise get done. Exploitation happens when greed is a driving “force” for the industrial promoters of production.  Apart from the forces that exist in an economy that people are not used to, there are “laws” that dictate the people's behavior, and these can be slanted in favor of the owners and not the landless. Unpacking Rankin and Li’s statement enlightens the level of analysis available to those who would only look and listen.  That colonialism set in motion these “forces” is without question. The growth of the peoples’ development hinges on how colonialism destroyed people and their growth within their cultures and expectations.  This left behind poverty and promoted disease. This is not to say though that the peoples’ ownership of land and production, won away by some Marxist revolution, would be a solution. Once the revolution was won the peoples would not be skilled in managing the industrial machine. This leaves behind no solution(s), but is a sticking point for those who would want to develop “foreign lands.”