7 - Development Encounters

Summary

Chapter 7 digs deeper into the gap between policy and practice by examining the culture of development. I include a wide range of actors in this description, focusing in particular on the role of the community organisers translating between development discourses and local understandings. The organisational culture of the Millennium Challenge Corporation was based on economic and technical rationalities and the high-level goals of spending money quickly, meeting infrastructure installation targets, and satisfying political constituencies. This chapter illustrates several examples of development encounters between community groups and project implementers to illuminate the misunderstandings, multiple frames of reference, and layers of interpretation that occur during these interactions. The development encounter is explained as a complex network of alliances and hierarchies among actors who pursue different, and sometimes competing, goals in separate value-laden, social, and historical organisational cultures.