The Anti-Politics Machine

The Anti-Politics Machine: Development, Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho is a book by James Ferguson, originally published in 1990 by Cambridge University Press.

[5] Ferguson utilized the governmentality framework in The Anti-Politics Machine: "Development," Depoliticization and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho (1990),[1] the first in many similar explorations.

We must ask: "why statements are acceptable in 'development' discourse that would be considered absurd in academic settings, but also why many acceptable statements from the realm of academic discourse - or even from that of common observation - fail to find their way into the discursive regime of 'development'"[6]Ferguson points out that a critical part of the development process is the way the object of development is defined.

In the case of Lesotho, its history as a grain exporting region was ignored, as was its current role as a labor reserve for the South African mines.

Not wanting to deal with the apartheid South African regime, development agencies isolated the "independent" Lesotho from the regional economy in which it was entrapped in their project rationales and reports.

Artificially taken out of this larger capitalist context, Lesotho's economy was described as "isolated", "non-market", and "traditional", and thus a proper target for aid intervention.

Any analysis which suggests the roots of poverty lie in areas outside the scope of government are quickly dismissed and discarded since they cannot provide a rationale for state action.

The project managers rationalized this in terms of what Ferguson calls the "Bovine Mystique"; that local farmers were bound by traditional values that prevented them from entering the market.

They refused to sell the cattle because they were retirement savings; if they were sold earlier, the money would quickly disappear to meet a variety of always urgent needs of their own or their neighbors.

[8] The development workers sought to resolve the problem of poverty and overgrazing in Lesotho by introducing development by introducing markets (although Lesotho had always marketed its crops, and its economy was commodified), "improved cattle" (Western breeds that were incapable of resisting drought and which required superior feed), and privatizing land (so that a small portion of the local population would have the pasture needed to keep the "improved cattle" alive).