Conclusion

A more ethical and just development practice requires a full account of the various forms of power operational in development terrains. This chapter revisits the ways the capacity/susceptibility to affect and be affected operates at the three levels explored in the book: the self, collective conditions, and encounters. It proposes ‘vulnerability’, an intentional practice of being open and responsive to the other, as a means to transform unequal and top-down power relations within development. It further argues for attention to the unevenness of the burden of susceptibility within development.

The ‘Feel Good’ Event

Collective forms of affect shape the possibilities for selfhood and the affects engendered in encounters with others. This chapter examines two different types of collective affect shaping community development in Medan, Indonesia. A moral atmosphere of ‘each giving a share’ hangs over and infects programme activities, making volunteers sticky with suspicion and susceptible to arousing cynicism in others. In contrast, the affective practices of volunteers generate a different tone, engendering feelings that reaffirm their actions as making a positive difference in the lives of others. The collision between these forms of collective affect have two implications for power configurations in development. First, collective conditions determine the differential capacity/susceptibility to affect and be affected. Second, the ability to shape collective forms of affect often (but not always) map on to existing social hierarchies.

Expansion

This chapter takes the 2018 municipal election in Dehradun, India, as a setting through which to explore the processes of personhood for women politicos. It introduces the ‘topography for self’ as an analytical framework to examine the socio-historical possibilities and foreclosures for self. Gendered emotional repertoires and opportunities for affective experiences shape these possibilities and foreclosures, with three consequences. First, women political workers identify as ‘social workers’, pointing to the importance of the topography for self in shaping the characteristics of female and male politicians. Second, reservations for women and concomitant opportunities for new self-imaginaries and self-enactments are empowering, in the sense that they increase the possibilities for self. Third, consequent affective investments in a sense of self as ‘social workers’ facilitate the exploitation of women’s political labour.

Local Development Agents

Local development agents are critical to the practices and outcomes of development interventions and influential actors in local political economies, yet their experiences are relatively under-explored. This chapter argues for the distinctiveness of local development agents as an object of study in development studies, a term used to describe people engaged in delivering ‘development’ who share a close socio-economic and geographical location with the recipients. It maps out six characteristics of the diverse group of actors that fall into this category, of which greater susceptibility to be affected is one. The chapter introduces the local development agents that are the focus of this book and provides an overview of the conditions in which they operate. It makes a case for the importance of comparative ethnographies of such actors, and proposes a ‘research approach of affection’ to capture the emotional and affective dimensions of their experiences.

The Politics of Susceptibility

In encounters with so-called beneficiaries or other members of the public, ‘development agents’ are susceptible to being affected in ways that may derail, modify, or threaten their ‘sense of self’. This susceptibility is in direct relation to the capacity of others to engender affects, feelings, and emotions in development agents: an overlooked form of power. Drawing upon theories of affect and emotion, this chapter introduces the critical concept of susceptibility to rethink power configurations in development. It proposes a new analytical framework—the capacity/susceptibility to affect/be affected—to enable new readings of power relations and their consequences for development. The chapter also serves as an introduction to outline the central arguments of the book.

Injury

Encounters between ‘beneficiaries’/residents and volunteers reveal overlooked ways that power shapes community development in Medan, Indonesia. Volunteers are susceptible to ‘affective injuries’: moments when one is impressed upon in ways that challenge one’s sense of self. Identifying volunteers’ susceptibility to be affected also reveals the capacity of beneficiaries and residents to affect local development agents. This chapter examines the potential of such susceptibilities and capacities to reverse conventional hierarchies in development, leading to a more bottom-up, responsive, and reflexive development practice. It finds that while there is potential, particularly when volunteers emphasize ‘care’ in their relations with others, volunteers are resilient to being affected by people occupying a marginal social position. The affective injuries sustained in their encounters with powerful others have more lasting effects.

Compulsion

This chapter examines how the differential capacity to affect and susceptibility to be affected shapes citizens’ access to resources in Dehradun, India. In encounters between municipal councillors and their constituents, affects are engendered that animate, mobilize or compel the former to accede to the demands of the latter, or alternatively, to ignore them. Voters’ capacity to affect in these encounters is not even, with some voters able to demand and receive more than their legal entitlements, while others are unable to secure their basic rights. The capacity to affect is therefore an important, yet overlooked factor in citizens’ ability to gain access to resources and services from the government, or their ‘entitlements’. The uneven force of citizens’ capacity to affect municipal councillors has the potential to reinforce, as well as disrupt existing forms of privilege and disadvantage.

Servitude

Women municipal councillors in Dehradun, India, represent themselves as social workers, in affectionate relationships with their constituents. Yet often they are positioned as servants, required to undertake petty work on behalf of an ungrateful citizenry. This chapter argues that collective forms of affect make possible, if not probable this positioning. Affective practices of supplication during election campaigns resonate in the relationships between constituents and elected representatives, making durable what is most often considered only a temporary inversion of social hierarchies on election day. A moral atmosphere of clientelism makes political actors susceptible to engendering suspicion and disdain in others, further emboldening an assertive citizenry to make demands that far exceed their entitlements. These collective conditions shape the possibilities for self of women municipal councillors; becoming a ‘servant’ reveals the limits of their self-authorship.

Touched by the Heart

This chapter examines the recruitment of volunteers into a community development programme in Indonesia. Volunteers are ‘susceptible’ to being animated by the promises of the programme, including the opportunities for self-realization. Reading these processes of becoming through the lens of governmentality and the volunteers’ own theories of personhood reveals both disciplining and creative possibilities. It finds that heightened susceptibility to be affected (that is, to be moved in ways that encourage a person to volunteer) is a factor in the force of programme rationalities. At the same time, the capacity to be affected (an opportunity provided by becoming a volunteer) empowers local volunteers by expanding the possibilities for self through affective affirmation. The chapter highlights the huge stakes of volunteers’ involvement in community development: no less than a sense of who one is, and is becoming.