Shilpa Alimchandani

Communicating Development Across Cultures: Monologues and Dialogues in Development Project Implementation Shilpa Alimchandani

Development project implementation involves interaction among many actors with different values, assumptions, and ideas about the other groups and about how the project should be implemented. Through the process of communication, their cultural differences surface, sometimes causing cross-cultural conflict, and other times creating opportunities for learning across cultures. This book explores cross-cultural interactions in an effort to answer the question: How do cultural communication processes act both as obstacles and learning opportunities in the implementation of an international development project? It is argued here that the cross-cultural successes and failures in development project implementation depend on the communication processes in which the participants engage. This argument is discussed in the context of a case study: the Cottage Industry-Global Market (CIGM) project in India. Faculty and students in Georgetown University's Communication, Culture and Technology (CCT) graduate program implemented this project in partnership with the World Bank and local NGOs in the North Indian state of Himachal Pradesh.