Why is development work so straight ?

This paper shows that the development paradigm used to frame social and economic public interventions delivers a modernist conception of the family, the economy, and the private – public divide that is at odds both with fundamental social dynamics, and with the ethic of liberation it claims. Policies and interventions conceive of society as a structure of interlocked institutions and rules, thus cornering individuals within policed essences, meaning and functions.

The paper develops the point that despite these normative assumptions, development practice opens spaces of identities, such as sexualities, where individuals articulate difference, dissidence, rights, and reshape dominant moralities and conception of society with regards to diversity and integration. The experience of the author as an agriculture and environment specialist for the Zimbabwean Government is then used to illustrate this analysis.