Patterns of Belief: Examining the Epistemologies of International Development Workers in Timor-Leste
Creators: name: Carroll-Bell, Samuel
Publisher: name: RMIT University
Year: 2024
Subjects: classificationCode: 440499
subject: Development studies not elsewhere classified
classificationCode: 440101
subject: Anthropology of development
classificationCode: 440405
subject: Poverty, inclusivity and wellbeing

description: Patterns of Belief: Examining the Epistemologies of International Development Workers in Timor-Leste

This thesis contributes to our understanding of the processes of development and the socio-political relationships that are established through its practice. Based on research engagement via interviews and other supporting methods, this thesis examines the epistemological assumptions of international development workers operating in Timor-Leste. It argues that the modern rationality that dominates their epistemological assumptions is evident in what they believe knowledge to be, including its origins and the ways in which it can be acquired and assessed during the process of development work.

In addition to the central claim, three subsidiary arguments are integrated across the work of this thesis. The first subsidiary argument is that development work is understood as a ‘knowledge act’ dominated by a form of modern rationality – that is, a pattern of belief that gives authority to analytic derivation and the projection of verifiable, constructive, linear, and universalised claims. The second subsidiary argument is that the patterns of belief associated with modern rationality tend to produce knowledge hierarchies in which analytically derived claims are perceived as being more reliable and thus more universally applicable than other forms. This argument takes the idea of a ‘knowledge act’ and begins to demonstrate the social significance of the dominance that is given to certain epistemological forms over others. The third subsidiary argument draws on the first and second subsidiary claims to demonstrate how the beliefs associated with modern rationality tend to support the mobility of the worker because these understandings enable them to move across a wide variety of settings while abstractly generating knowledge about, as well as applying knowledge to, them.

While concentrating on the epistemologies of international development workers, this thesis is situated within a broader set of debates that continue to play out in Timor-Leste with respect to the epistemic framing of interventionist activities such as development and their capacity to generate the traction needed to meet many of its pre-set targets. It also reflects upon the broader shifts that have occurred within Critical Development Studies since the 1980s together with the Anthropology of Development literature and the so-called Actor-Oriented or Interactionist Frameworks. In so doing, the thesis draws attention to the ways in which international workers tend to construct a mode of practice that replicates much of their own epistemological assumptions in terms of both their day-to-day practices and their approach to scenarios where customary patterns of belief remain important to how people ‘know’ and understand the world. Critically, this thesis does not focus on the entanglement between various ways of knowing; instead, it focuses on those spaces that have been significantly bereft of analysis to date, namely the epistemological beliefs held by ‘malae’ (foreigners) in Timor-Leste, and how they shape and inform their attempts at social change.