i Patrick W. Staib Anthropology This dissertation is approved, and it ...

dominated much of Third World export agriculture, spurring land disputes and dangerous
labor conditions as large-scale agribusinesses exploit the workforces of impoverished
debtor nations. Angus Wright (1996) depicts how the use of synthetic fertilizers and
pesticides resulted in severe contamination of water and food sources. Use of these
chemicals also brought disease and death to exploited farmworkers in Mexico.
In her critical account of the Green Revolution in India, Shiva (1991) cites the
threat to local biodiversity and crop resilience that resulted from the introduction of
“super-seed technology” and “high-yielding varieties” in Punjab. Shiva claims,
Far from bringing prosperity, two decades of the Green Revolution have left
Punjab riddled with discontent and violence. Instead of abundance, Punjab is
beset with diseased soils, pest-infested crops, waterlogged deserts and indebted
and discontented farmers. Instead of peace, Punjab has inherited conflict and
violence (Shiva 1991:67).
In Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World,
Arturo Escobar provides a compelling critique of the involvement of anthropologists in
Third World development. Escobar claims that entities such as the World Bank, the IMF,
and USAID have all defined nations as “Third World” or “developing” in contrast to the
supposed “modern” world. In Escobar’s view, the First World industrialized nations
“constructed” the notion of a “Third World.”
The new poverty oriented programs reproduced the world of postwar
development: a world organized around production and markets, divided between
developed and underdeveloped, “traditional” and “modern,” ruled by the politic of
aid and multinational corporations, riddled by fears of overpopulation and
communism, anchored in a faith in material progress through technology and the
exploitation of nature (Escobar 1991:665).
External institutions determine how local realities necessitate the transition from
“traditional” to “modern” societies in Escobar’s deconstruction of the imbalance of
power/knowledge in the development encounter. Much like the current situation in
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