“[This book] offers many significant insights regarding the World Bank, its institutional outlook, and [its] practices. The author, given his early involvement at the Bank, as well as his subsequent experience with NGOs, the private sector, and other organizations, is an ideal candidate to provide such an account.” • A. Peter Castro, Syracuse University
50 years ago, World Bank President Robert McNamara promised to end poverty. Alleviation was to rely on economic growth, resulting in higher incomes stimulated by Bank loans processed by deskbound Washington staff, trickling down to the poorest. Instead, child poverty and homelessness are on the increase everywhere. In this book, anthropologist and former World Bank Advisor Glynn Cochrane argues that instead of Washington’s “management by seclusion,” poverty alleviation requires personal engagement with the poorest by helpers with hands-on local and cultural skills. Here, the author argues, the insights provided by anthropological fieldwork have a crucial role to play.
Glynn Cochrane was World Bank Advisor on Public Administration in Papua New Guinea, and Chief World Bank/UNDP Advisor for Civil Service Reform in Tanzania. In 1971 he proposed the establishment of an interdisciplinary Development Anthropology for practitioners. Based on the recommendations in his 1973 report the World Bank hired its first anthropologists, and in 1974 he wrote Social Soundness Analysis, an appraisal system that has been used in USAID projects for over 40 years.
Area:
LC: HG3881.5.W57 C64 2019
BISAC: SOC002010 SOCIAL SCIENCE/Anthropology/Cultural & Social; SOC042000 SOCIAL SCIENCE/Developing Countries; BUS068000 BUSINESS & ECONOMICS/Development/Economic Development
BIC: JHMC Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography; GTF Development studies
