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Agriculture and the development process: Tentative guidelines for teaching
310
BOOKREVIEWS
ditions may be expected to produce highly interesting information as to man’s nature. This type of information, however, is of little immediate use for pastoral development. Here we are mainly concerned with the somewhat better pastoral areas and with people more or less influenced by changing societies. If these social disciplines are to be useful for rural development, then the research has to be geared to questions of economic relevance and the results have to be presented in a way which makes them useful for planners and decision-makers. This is not yet so. Some contributors repeat the well-known, others bring very specific bits of information. Much is related about the failures of the past and almost nothing is said about what could be done with some reasonable hope for success. Only a few contributors (e.g. Gallais, Jacobs and Swift) aim at relevancy in terms of development. Planners and decision-makers in pastoral Africa would like to learn from the anthropologists and ethnologists what could be done to improve the lot of the pastoral people. Perhaps nothing reasonable can be done *without a land tenure reform, which imposes livestock quotas or which introduces private cattle on private land or common cattle on common land. If this is so, then it should be. said by those who are so knowledgeable about pastoral people. H.
RUTHENBERG
Agriculture and the Development Process: Tentative Guidelines fbr Teaching, by L. Malassis. The UNESCO Press, Paris, 1975. Price: f3.40. This book, the first in a proposed series on ‘education and rural development’, is intended as ‘a reference document for teaching purposes, a sort of guidebook for people who, at different educational levels, are called upon to devise teaching programmes designed to train officials, responsible for planning and its implementation, to tackle the problems of agriculture and agricultural development and of the role of agriculture in over-all economic development’ (p. 5). It will, the UNESCO hopes, afford ‘an invaluable tool to agricultural experts, community leaders and teachers in the agricultural world and, in a broader context, to all those whose task it is to lead their country along the path to development’ (p. 11). In the opinion of this reader, however, despite the very obvious work and expertise that has been invested by the author in this compendium, the book is as likely to create confusion and to deepen mystification regarding the determinants and processes of development and underdevelopment as to illuminate or provide the ‘invaluable tool’ for teaching hoped for; this particularly given the disparate audience for which it seems to be intended. Any work which attempts, in a sense, to be all things to all men, is likely to over-extend itself and this is one of the fundamental weaknesses of the book, for
BOOK
REVIEWS
311
the subject is not one which lends itself to an encyclopaedic treatment. Within its 270 pages, the book presents an extraordinarily wide range of approaches to development and underdevelopment, many of which are theoretically and politically incompatible, in a highly abbreviated form and often merely juxtaposed in the text without adequate critical evaluation of their differences and, more importantly in this context, of the policy-and the political-implications of those differences. For example, within a bare four pages, Rostow and ‘the stages of growth’ are followed by Marx and ‘the mode of production’, with little analysis of the totally contradictory nature of these two approaches to the dynamics of society and their opposed concepts of how the processes of ‘development’ and ‘underdevelopment’ are determined and take place. (After all, Rostow’s work was explicitly designed as a ‘non-communist manifesto’). This must be, in part, a consequence of the attempt to cram into a ‘reference document’ as many different summaries of data, methodology and theory as is possible and there can be no doubt that, in this respect, the book is a tour de force. But it also suggests a fundamental assumption, itself highly questionable, that an author-or teacher-can operate successfully as a neutral conductor, merely presenting a range of alternatives, or even just of different approaches, with minimal editorial intervention. Such a method would tend to be, at best, confusing in the absence of either a relatively full knowledge on the part of reader or student (in which case, it could be argued, the method is inappropriate), or a detailed and critical commentary on the part of author or teacher. Of course, the text of this book is not simply a presentation of material; there is a linking discussion. But the full implications of the materials used are not made sufficiently clear. Given this, the short list of further references provided at the back of the book is wholly inadequate. But the existence of a linking text is significant. Malassis asserts that ‘the purpose of this book is not to present a new development doctrine with a claim to universal applicability but merely, on a much more modest level, to juxtapose facts and ideas and to define how the problem should be tackled’ (p. 18). But it is not necessary, and certainly not useful, to choose between these extreme alternatives; in any case, the eclectic facade is misleading for there can be no such thing as a wholly neutral presentation of facts and ideas, and underlying any definition of ‘how the problem should be tackled’ is a set of values and beliefs. The assertion smacks, therefore, of a false modesty and this is borne out by the structure and content of the text viewed together. Malassis is too well informed and intelligent to fail to present the case, albeit implicitly within the very structure of the text rather than wholly explicitly in the evident content, for a distinctive view of the process of development, the nature of underdevelopment and the policy measures implied. The author, together with the UNESCO as a whole, is committed, as may be seen from the passage on page 11 (quoted above), and others, to the notion of development through education, essentially from above, by ‘those whose task it is to lead their country along the path to development’. Scattered throughout the
312
BOOK
REVIEWS
text are indications of a particular interpretation of such central notions as “progressive’, ‘traditional’, ‘underdevelopment’ and ‘development’ which do not, however, receive the careful and critical discussion they require. The combination of an overt presentation of a wide range of often contradictory approaches, insufficiently critically discussed, and a partly covert argument relating to ‘how the problem should be tackled’ makes this ‘reference document’ one to be handled with great care. D.
SEDDON
BOOKREVIEWS
ditions may be expected to produce highly interesting information as to man’s nature. This type of information, however, is of little immediate use for pastoral development. Here we are mainly concerned with the somewhat better pastoral areas and with people more or less influenced by changing societies. If these social disciplines are to be useful for rural development, then the research has to be geared to questions of economic relevance and the results have to be presented in a way which makes them useful for planners and decision-makers. This is not yet so. Some contributors repeat the well-known, others bring very specific bits of information. Much is related about the failures of the past and almost nothing is said about what could be done with some reasonable hope for success. Only a few contributors (e.g. Gallais, Jacobs and Swift) aim at relevancy in terms of development. Planners and decision-makers in pastoral Africa would like to learn from the anthropologists and ethnologists what could be done to improve the lot of the pastoral people. Perhaps nothing reasonable can be done *without a land tenure reform, which imposes livestock quotas or which introduces private cattle on private land or common cattle on common land. If this is so, then it should be. said by those who are so knowledgeable about pastoral people. H.
RUTHENBERG
Agriculture and the Development Process: Tentative Guidelines fbr Teaching, by L. Malassis. The UNESCO Press, Paris, 1975. Price: f3.40. This book, the first in a proposed series on ‘education and rural development’, is intended as ‘a reference document for teaching purposes, a sort of guidebook for people who, at different educational levels, are called upon to devise teaching programmes designed to train officials, responsible for planning and its implementation, to tackle the problems of agriculture and agricultural development and of the role of agriculture in over-all economic development’ (p. 5). It will, the UNESCO hopes, afford ‘an invaluable tool to agricultural experts, community leaders and teachers in the agricultural world and, in a broader context, to all those whose task it is to lead their country along the path to development’ (p. 11). In the opinion of this reader, however, despite the very obvious work and expertise that has been invested by the author in this compendium, the book is as likely to create confusion and to deepen mystification regarding the determinants and processes of development and underdevelopment as to illuminate or provide the ‘invaluable tool’ for teaching hoped for; this particularly given the disparate audience for which it seems to be intended. Any work which attempts, in a sense, to be all things to all men, is likely to over-extend itself and this is one of the fundamental weaknesses of the book, for
BOOK
REVIEWS
311
the subject is not one which lends itself to an encyclopaedic treatment. Within its 270 pages, the book presents an extraordinarily wide range of approaches to development and underdevelopment, many of which are theoretically and politically incompatible, in a highly abbreviated form and often merely juxtaposed in the text without adequate critical evaluation of their differences and, more importantly in this context, of the policy-and the political-implications of those differences. For example, within a bare four pages, Rostow and ‘the stages of growth’ are followed by Marx and ‘the mode of production’, with little analysis of the totally contradictory nature of these two approaches to the dynamics of society and their opposed concepts of how the processes of ‘development’ and ‘underdevelopment’ are determined and take place. (After all, Rostow’s work was explicitly designed as a ‘non-communist manifesto’). This must be, in part, a consequence of the attempt to cram into a ‘reference document’ as many different summaries of data, methodology and theory as is possible and there can be no doubt that, in this respect, the book is a tour de force. But it also suggests a fundamental assumption, itself highly questionable, that an author-or teacher-can operate successfully as a neutral conductor, merely presenting a range of alternatives, or even just of different approaches, with minimal editorial intervention. Such a method would tend to be, at best, confusing in the absence of either a relatively full knowledge on the part of reader or student (in which case, it could be argued, the method is inappropriate), or a detailed and critical commentary on the part of author or teacher. Of course, the text of this book is not simply a presentation of material; there is a linking discussion. But the full implications of the materials used are not made sufficiently clear. Given this, the short list of further references provided at the back of the book is wholly inadequate. But the existence of a linking text is significant. Malassis asserts that ‘the purpose of this book is not to present a new development doctrine with a claim to universal applicability but merely, on a much more modest level, to juxtapose facts and ideas and to define how the problem should be tackled’ (p. 18). But it is not necessary, and certainly not useful, to choose between these extreme alternatives; in any case, the eclectic facade is misleading for there can be no such thing as a wholly neutral presentation of facts and ideas, and underlying any definition of ‘how the problem should be tackled’ is a set of values and beliefs. The assertion smacks, therefore, of a false modesty and this is borne out by the structure and content of the text viewed together. Malassis is too well informed and intelligent to fail to present the case, albeit implicitly within the very structure of the text rather than wholly explicitly in the evident content, for a distinctive view of the process of development, the nature of underdevelopment and the policy measures implied. The author, together with the UNESCO as a whole, is committed, as may be seen from the passage on page 11 (quoted above), and others, to the notion of development through education, essentially from above, by ‘those whose task it is to lead their country along the path to development’. Scattered throughout the
312
BOOK
REVIEWS
text are indications of a particular interpretation of such central notions as “progressive’, ‘traditional’, ‘underdevelopment’ and ‘development’ which do not, however, receive the careful and critical discussion they require. The combination of an overt presentation of a wide range of often contradictory approaches, insufficiently critically discussed, and a partly covert argument relating to ‘how the problem should be tackled’ makes this ‘reference document’ one to be handled with great care. D.
SEDDON