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Sustainable Semi-Arid Development |
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Kinship and Agriculture
Mr. Stephen Lyon and Mr. Alan Bicker
This is the abstract of a paper to be presented at Frankfurt, Germany at the
European Association of Social Anthropologists conference, 4-6 September 1998.
One of our goals is to demonstrate the ways in which anthropological
knowledge may be of use in a development project.
We want to analyse the relationship between kinship and agriculture in the barani
area of Punjab. To this end we are endeavouring to establish comparative studies
between farmers.
Anthropology has certain strengths which, in an academic context, render it ideally
suited to unravelling social constructions and relationships. Development projects,
large and small, may predict success or failure on the depth of their understanding
of these things. The problem is that much of what anthropologists say is either
targeted at each other, or is addressing problems which are not immediately useful
for particular projects. The emphasis on empowerment and redressing social wrongs
evident in some anthropological discourse may tend to fall on deaf ears-- not only
in the development community but also in indigenous local communities. Communities
targeted for development projects, while they may be aware of social injustices,
are quite bluntly in dire need of access to technological and economic data and infrastructure.
A. Bicker began a small scale project in northwestern Punjab in Pakistan with the
idea of dealing with the material problems of people in one village. Social justice
was intentionally not in the purview of this project (however in the future the scope
of the project may expand to include some social engineering). The Sustainable Development
project of Pakistan had as a primary goal to improve agricultural techniques in a
way that is sustainable. At the same time we recognize and must deal with the fact
that Punjabi farmers are unwilling to simply remove themselves from the capitalist
economy around them and become small scale subsistence farmers. Furthermore it is
unrealistic and unjustifiable for us to expect or demand this of them. This paper
examines the role of anthropology in this project. Given that this project was begun
as a joint collaboration between a British anthropologist and a Pakistani soil scientist,
we will examine some of the organizational issues involved in a small multinational
project. Although this project is small scale, by choice, the principles of what
anthropology can contribute may be transferrable to larger scale projects. We hope
that this mini anthropology of one development project may lend weight to our contention
that development can make use of anthropology from the beginning, not simply for
after the fact damage assessment.