Question

Advice for Developers: Peace Corps Problems in Botswana
HOYT S. ALVERSON
Summary This classic article by Hoyt Alverson provides an excellent example of how anthropology can be applied to the solution of practical problems. Although written years ago, its message is equally relevant today as Peace Corps volunteers, USAID workers, military personnel, and NGO (non-governmental organization) employees engage in nation building around the world. Alverson's conclusion is clear: development work in foreign (and even in some domestic) settings requires cross-cultural understanding.
Alverson was asked by a program director to investigate problems with the Peace Corps' development efforts in Botswana. Volunteers, he was told, were to introduce development projects to Tswana farmers but found it difficult to so. The Tswana often resisted the volunteers' efforts. They would seem to cooperate but eventually nothing happened. Frustrated, volunteers tended to isolate themselves, failed to learn the local language, and hung out with other Americans or Europeans. Some gave up. Others failed to complete their two-year contracts. Many felt spiteful toward the Tswana and some even experienced nervous breakdowns.
Alverson approached his task by looking at both the culture and perspective of the Peace Corps volunteers, and the culture and responses of the Tswana. (Alverson had already spent 15 months doing ethnographic research in a Tswana community.) He discovered that volunteers had many unstated assumptions, based on culture. Often, for example, volunteers wished to be respected for their superior knowledge and their ways of doing things, which they believed were better. Volunteers also believed that the Tswana had asked them to help impart their Western cultural knowledge and that they, the volunteers, were different from colonial authorities because they did not force people to change. The conclusion to draw from this information is simple: the volunteers' self-perception made it harder for them to learn about the people they were there to engage.
The remainder of Alverson's paper deals with areas of cross-cultural misunderstandings between volunteers and the Tswana. One example is the concept of time. The American volunteer's concept of time is lineal: the Tswana concept sees time as bounded by events. Volunteers became frustrated when the Tswana did not show up on time. Another example is that volunteers appreciate candor as they talk. The Tswana like smooth, non-confrontational discourse. As a result, a Tswana may lie about something to avoid conflict.
In sum, Alverson sees the discomfort displayed by American Peace Corps volunteers in Botswana as a consequence of life in a very different, culturally defined Tswana world. The implied solution is to inform volunteers about their own cultural and self-perceptions, and teach volunteers as much as possible about the culture of those with whom they intend to work.
In "Advice for Developers," Alverson reports that Peace Corps volunteers maintained an aloof distance when they talked with Tswana farmers.

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