Projects as communities: Consultants, knowledge and power

Abstract

Outsider intervention in the lives of others is a key dimension of purposive human behaviour, involving the central concepts of power and politics in the mobilisation of resources to structure the distribution of resources and opportunities in other arenas. This paper explores some of the ethnography of consultant behaviour in projects, and in particular emphasises the contingency of knowledge. It focuses on how power over outcomes can be exercised in a project community with consultant actors, especially in teams of academic and commercial consultants. One way to understand the development process is as a system of outsiders and insiders in shifting communities. The consultancy role offers an opportunity for academic research into these interventionist dimensions of the development process, but only if consultancy is consciously used and justified as a research tool. © 1998 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.