Short-term development consultants are employed in the development industry ostensibly because of the pragmatic impacts their work on development is thought to have. Yet in practice, their work is judged more by aesthetic than pragmatic criteria. This article argues that these aesthetic criteria are based on a particular vision of modernity and that this also informs the ‘culture of consultancy’, a culture which sees itself as the epitome of rationality. It is also suggested that this is nothing new, today’s development workers being heirs to the missionaries and colonial civil servants of the past.
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