Making the Case: An Actor-Network Approach to Rhetoric in Agricultural Development

Abstract

Development policies are based on claims about how development takes place.  Underlying any prescriptive policy is a theory – implicit or explicit – about how societies “progress” towards greater food security, higher incomes and standards of living, and about how best to organize the productive resources of society in order to achieve that progress.  While the policies being promoted by the major actors (in this case, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank) at a given point in time can be seen as the dominant development model, these models do come in and out of favor.  This raises the question:  If the major actors possess the definitive knowledge about how development takes place, and about how to craft the most effective policies to promote it, then what explains the change in the dominant development models over time?