Moral Spaces of Development

In the previous chapter, I considered the possibilities for the state to contribute to processes of self. The narratives of people’s engagement with the state within their own life biographies was suggestive of certain opportunities and foreclosures of ‘self’ for the recipients of state-led development. The differences across the two field-sites in the delivery of government aid have consequences for people’s perceived relationships with an imaginary state, concrete practices and encounters with (representatives of) the state, and the provision of discursive resources, all of which have the potential to influence the ‘self-in-process’. I also mentioned a fourth way that the state influences the self: the potential for people to identify with the state, either through direct association (being a formal worker for example), or by taking on the roles of ‘development’ that are seen as a responsibility of the state. In this chapter, I examine this possibility alongside other opportunities for self that arise within the ‘moral space’ of development, shifting my focus from the targets of development (the so-called ‘developees’) to the ‘developers’ (Pigg 1992).