Abstract Susceptibility in Development offers a novel approach to understanding power in development through theories of affect and emotion. Development agents—people tasked with designing or delivering development—are susceptible to being affected in ways that may derail or threaten their ‘sense of self’. This susceptibility is in direct relation to the capacity of others to affect development agents: an overlooked form of power. This book proposes a new analytical framework—the capacity/susceptibility to affect/be affected—to enable new readings of power relations and their consequences for development. These barely perceptible forms of power become visible through ethnographic attention to local level development. Susceptibility in Development offers a comparative ethnography of two types of local development agents: volunteers in a community development programme in Medan, Indonesia, and women municipal councillors in Dehradun, India. Ethnographic accounts that are attentive to the emotions and affects engendered in encounters between volunteers and ‘beneficiaries’, or municipal councillors and voters (for example) provide a fresh reading of the relations shaping local development. Local development agents may be more ‘susceptible’ than workers and volunteers from the global North, yet the capacity/susceptibility to affect/be affected orders relations and shapes outcomes of development from the local to the global. In theorizing from the local, Susceptibility in Development offers fresh insights into power dynamics in development.
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