putterings 488 < 489 > 490 index
Bricolage must give way to technique; flailing around for anything at all
France did make one decisive break with the past: in 1946, with little debate in the legislature, it passed the Fonds d’Investissment et de Développement Economique et Social (FIDES), ending the tradition of colonial self-sufficiency and making available metropolitan funds for development projects. FIDES was accompanied by a contradictory rhetoric: claims that a modern infrastructure would integrate African communities into commerce without changing their nature and that modern sectors would be built with simple European-style houses and up-to-date urban amenities. Within that sector, Africans would be “working in European style, that is, with output analogous in quality and rapidity to that of workers from the Metropole. Bricolage must give way to technique.” ⁶
the footnote points to source of the FIDES legislation, and explains : [bricolage (Fr.) means puttering, doing small inconsequential things — Ed.]
from Frederick Cooper, “The Development Concept of British and French Bureaucrats,” being chapter 22 in Helen Lauer and Kofi Anyidoho, eds., Reclaiming the Human Sciences and Humanities through African Perspectives vol 1. (Accra, Ghana, 2012) : 371
google books preview : link
and in the same volume —
...admittedly, some amount of ambiguity is inherent in policy. As Stephen Ball (1998: 127) observes,
“policy making is inevitably a process of bricolage: a matter of borrowing and copying bits and pieces of ideas from elsewhere, drawing upon and amending locally tried and tested approaches, cannibalising theories, research, trends and fashions and not infrequently flailing around for anything at all that looks as though it might work.
Ghana’s development policies are such a bricolage...”
from Nana Akua Anyidoho, “Negotiating Participatory Development in a Fluid Policy Landscape” (chapter 25 of above) : 407 : link
Frederick Cooper (1947-), historian specializing in colonialization, decolonialization, and African history
wikipedia : link
Nana Akua Anyidoho, scholar of social policy and social development
own website : link