The Silent Traditions of Developing Cooks

Abstract

Cultural traditions within European development organizations have been a neglected field, to the frustration of development personnel elsewhere. Tandon argues that it is difficult for Africans to fathom the workings of 'Western' Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) 'not only because of their secrecy but also because their ideological and philosophical orientations are products of complex historical forces within their own countries which outsiders cannot fully understand' (1991: 74).1 Perhaps it is even harder for European 'insiders' to make sense of these complex historical forces. Rather than seeing their own ideology as a product of history, their thinking is oriented by it. Ideology is automatically imbued with a character of objectivity for insiders (Bourdieu 1977: 167), while outsiders are constantly reminded that historical forces behind the foreign ideology are very different from their own. What appears as secrecy amongst 'Western' development agencies is probably more likely to be the silence of tradition being taken for granted. It is aspects of the assumptions made by 'developers', part of the development 'industry'S' silent traditions, that I will try to uncloak in this paper. I will illustrate how