4 - Foreign Aid: Policies, Institutions and the Dependency Culture

Abstract

The book under review is a significant contribution to the study of political economy and culture in contemporary Africa. The book seeks to understand the impact of international development interventions on culture, politics and society in Tanzania. Drawing on scholarly traditions of critical discourse and ethnographical analysis, the book draws heavily on the author’s anthropological research of well over a decade and his work as a development consultant in Tanzania to interrogate contemporary development idioms, imageries, institutions and practices. It focuses on explaining how inordinate dependence on foreign aid impacts the ideology, policy and institutional choices of recipient states as well
as the cultural orientations of the broad masses. Within a tightly packed 182 pages.