09 39(1) Book Reviews (ad/d) 9/12/03 10:20 am Page 94

94 Reviews

Development practitioners and social process:

artists of the invisible
Allan Kaplan, Pluto, London, 2002, 214 pp. ISBN 0 7453 1018 4, (pb)

There is much to admire in this visionary statement by Allan Kaplan – a

renowned, Cape Town based, organizational and community development
consultant. There is also much to unsettle, and even to alarm. It is an extra-

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ordinary book. It examines the potentials that lie beneath the surfaces of
development and social change and of the social organizations that try to
manage the aid industry. The title and subtitle taken together announce
something of the contradictions to follow. The main title implies an analysis
of the role of development practitioners in social change. The subtitle adver-
tises invisible mysteries to be accessed by artistic means. Spiritual, psycho-
analytic and biological/organic metaphors, models and training will help to
grow the artistic imagination needed. The vision is applied equally, often
simultaneously, to growth and reversals in civil society and in the aid
industry agencies that tackle the organizational challenges of international
development. It has been synthesized from a wide range of sources, but has
drawn especially from Goethe, Jung, Rudolph Steiner and anthroposophy.
The formal structure of the book takes the reader through ‘observation’ to
‘understanding’ and then on to ‘change’ and ‘practice’. A synopsis of three
pages is provided at the beginning in addition to an introduction. Nonethe-
less, the account is not easy to follow, in part because individual sections
overlap and many of the passages are not especially well matched to the
signposts of the formal structure. For example, the final section on ‘practice’
concentrates on the means for achieving heightened sensitivity; while
managing to avoid altogether the flow of individual allocations, projects and
operational challenges (usually set within socio-technical and humanitarian
welfare discourses) that are normally experienced by employees of aid and
other civil society agencies. It is this flow of work that we normally call
‘practice’; so why make ‘practice’ the heading for a discussion of ‘discern-
ment’, unless the aim is to deliberately unsettle conventional understand-
ings? But ‘practice’ in the conventional sense is indeed addressed, usually
very well, in compressed case-study accounts that appear in the text and
through the many exercises.
The book opens with a rejection of ‘technical’ in favour of ‘social’ expla-
nations of development, including community development. This initial
contrast is too sharply drawn and bedevils the subsequent account. In order
to generate a highly distinctive ‘social’ approach, the author then makes
much of the ‘invisible’ dynamics within ‘social organisms’. It is to these pro-
cesses that we are asked to apply artistic, spiritual and imaginative skills.
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Reviews 95

Many of the connections, however, would be better described as ‘deep-

seated’ or ‘complex and contingent’ rather than ‘invisible’. Does its analysis
really require completely new concepts and techniques based on heightened
intuition and personal growth theorizing? Many (or most) of the dynamics
discussed are amenable to analysis through existing well-known socio-
logical concepts such as ‘the unanticipated consequences of action’, ‘latent
and manifest effects’, ‘open-ended organizational politics’ ‘learning process
planning’, etc. Indeed, when treated by the book in this way – for example,

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in the case of institutional learning – the analysis is very insightful. Dis-
cussion of the factors preventing ‘unlearning’ is excellent, even if brief. Sur-
prisingly, neither organizational survival in the voluntary and aid sectors
nor the political mobilization potential of civil society action is discussed as
such. Where processes are truly ‘invisible’ they can only be imagined – for
example, through reference to the principles of homeopathic medicine and
its increasing dilutions of preparations in order to make the ‘essence’ most
effective – or developed through analogies from plant growth and ecology.
Frequently the result is animism rather than social analysis – we find the
outlines of ghosts and spirits inhabiting imagined organisms rather than real
development teams. The opportunity to enrich the existing literature on
organizational dynamics through the insertion of carefully judged and inte-
grated concepts from new sources is missed.
Some of the difficulties in reading the book will come from differences in
intellectual taste; I fear that those coming to it from social and community
development backgrounds whether in Europe or elsewhere may find the
book startling rather than enabling. It moves too rapidly from the refine-
ment of practitioner/consultants’ personal attitudes and intuitive skills to
case studies of, and practice recommendations for, the varied organizations
within international development. Indeed, these two strands may have been
conflated on purpose. The personal becomes the organizational/organic
and the organism the way for personal growth; they are refracted aspects of
the same dynamic holism, the ‘holy grail’ of organizational development.
The appeal of the book will probably lie in its great range rather than its
formal argument. It provides a unique rattle-bag which combines practice
case-studies; organizational and personal training exercises; combined
spiritual insights from Taoism, Anthroposophy, Buddhism, St. Benedictine
and other sources; organizational development applications from inter-
national business; and many (somewhat clipped) biological, artistic and
psychological illustrations. It probably helps greatly to have already experi-
enced the distinctive ecological settings and professional friendships of the
author’s well-known organizational child, the Community Development
Resource Association (CDRA) in Cape Town since these provide the
backdrop to some key models. The book is attractively produced. Headline
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96 Reviews

extracts and aphorisms introduce the chapters; interesting exercises are set
out at the end of each. I doubt it can be used widely as a core textbook in
the training of conventional aid industry and community development or
civil society practitioners. It could become an attractive resource for quiet
social development moments and extra reading, or as a talking piece to be
found on agency coffee tables.
Alan Rew
Professor of Development Policy and Planning, Centre for Development Studies,

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University of Swansea, UK