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Zusatztext “Hertzog has produced a valuable anthropological work, and it is a good contribution to the ongoing anthropological discourse on aid politics.” • JRAI Informationen zum Autor Esther Hertzog is a Social Anthropologist at Beit Berl Academic College in Israel. Her research focuses on bureaucracy and gender relations. She has published Immigrants and Bureaucrats (Berghahn, 1999); Op-Ed, Feminist Social Justice in Israel (Hebrew, 2004); Life, Death and Sacrifice, Women and Family in the Holocaust (ed.) (Gefen, 2008); Perspectives on Israeli Anthropology (co-ed.) (Wayne State University Press, 2010); At Teachers’ Expense: Gender and Power in Israeli Education (co-ed.) (Hebrew, 2010); and many articles and chapters, as well as hundreds of articles in Israeli dailies. She has been involved in feminist activities for more than twenty years and founded a women’s NGO, two women’s parties, and the Women’s Parliament. Klappentext Assuming that women's empowerment would accelerate the pace of social change in rural Nepal, the World Bank urged the Nepali government to undertake a "Gender Activities Project" within an ongoing long-term water-engineering scheme. The author, an anthropologist specializing in bureaucratic organizations and gender studies, was hired to monitor the project. Analyzing her own experience as a practicing "development expert," she demonstrates that the professed goal of "women's empowerment" is a pretext for promoting economic organizational goals and the interests of local elites. She shows how a project intended to benefit women, through teaching them literary and agricultural skills, fails to provide them with any of the promised resources. Going beyond the conventional analysis that positions aid givers vis-à-vis powerless victimized recipients, she draws attention to the complexity of the process and the active role played by the Nepalese rural women who pursue their own interests and aspirations within this unequal world. The book makes an important contribution to the growing critique of "development" projects and of women's development projects in particular. Zusammenfassung The author, an anthropologist specializing in bureaucratic organizations and gender studies, was hired to monitor the project. Analyzing her own experience as a practicing development expert, she demonstrates that the professed goal of women's empowerment is a pretext for promoting economic organizational goals and the interests of local elites. Inhaltsverzeichnis List of illustrations Foreword Preface Map of Nepal Acknowledgments Introduction Development Projects - Persistence Despite Evident Failure "Development" and "Development Projects" - Neocolonialism behind Social Change Discourse Economic and Gendered Critique of Development and the World Bank Do Micro-finance Schemes Help the Poor and Women in Developing Countries? The Comeback of "Development" Theories - Maiava's Study as an Example Development and Women's Empowerment Projects The Construction of Third World Women's Underdevelopment and Subordinated Femininity Postmodern Feminist Theory Trapped in Development Discourse Ambivalence in Discussing the Futility of Gender Development Projects Gender, Development and Literacy in Nepal The "Third World" Image of Nepali Women Nepali Women's Participation in the Maoist Insurgency Power, Poverty and Women's Illiteracy in Nepal Methodology Chapter 1. The Vulnerable Patron: Playing the Role of a Foreign Gender Consultant Patronage and Power-dependence Relations Deceitful Hierarchy - Privileged Experts and Low-ranked Paraprofessionals The Compelling Power and Appealing Advantages of the Consultant's Position Manufacturing the Image ...
