Development Discourse and Rural Development : Cases of Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Thailand

我们的研究小组对斯里兰卡、印度尼西亚、泰国（1996-1998）和台湾（1997-1998）的农村发展进行了比较研究。在本财政年度（1998-1999），我们继续进行同样的研究，特别是斯里兰卡的“Janasaviya计划”（扶贫项目）、泰国的“发展僧侣”、印度尼西亚的沼泽泥炭床开发项目以及印度尼西亚发展独裁统治下的农村历史。有了这些研究经验，我们逐渐认识到研究“发展现象”的一些理论和方法意义。例如，我们不仅需要关注发展话语，还需要关注与之相伴的整个制度环境。换句话说，我们必须关注“地方发展事件”，在这个事件中，行动者、制度、物质和话语在权力网络上相互关联，也需要分析发展工作者、农民和规划者等行动者如何构建他们的发展/反发展主体（甚至对发展漠不关心的主体）。理解了地方发展事件中的这些微观权力网络和主体建构，我们就能够看到和描述一个微观的发展过程现象。然而，这仍然是我们研究的初级阶段。为了进一步研究发展现象，我们需要阐述我们的理论概念（如主体、代理、政治经济学等）和分析框架，同时需要积累关于发展事件的民族志经验。

Our research team carried out a comparative study on rural development in Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Thailand (1996-1998) and also on Taiwan (1997-1998). In this fiscal year (1998-1999), we continued to conduct the same research, especially on "Janasaviya Program" (a poverty alleviation project) in Sri Lanka, "development monks" in Thailand, a development project of marshy peat bed in Indonesia, and a rural history under the development dictatorship in Indonesia.Having these research experiences, we have come to realize some theoretical and methodological implications for the study of "development phenomena". For instance, we need to look at not only development discourse but its concomitant institutional settings as a whole. In other words, we have to focus on "local development event", in which actors, institutions, material things and discourses are related each other on the network of power, and also need to analyze how actors such as development workers, farmers and planners construct their subjects for development/anti-development (or even ones indifferent to development). Having understood these micro networks of power and the construction of subjects in local development events, we then will be able to see and describe a micro-process of development phenomena.This is, however, still a preliminal stage of our research. For further study on development phenomena, We have to elaborate our theoretical concepts (such as subject, agency, political economy and so on) and analytical framework, and at the same time need to accumulate ethnographic experiences on development events.