The Will to Improve is a remarkable account of development in action.

Focusing on attempts to
improve landscapes and livelihoods in Indonesia, Tania Murray Li carefully exposes the
practices that enable experts to diagnose problems and devise interventions, and the agency of
people whose conduct is targeted for reform. Deftly integrating theory, ethnography, and history,
she illuminates the work of colonial officials and missionaries; specialists in agriculture, hygiene,
and credit; and political activists with their own schemes for guiding villagers toward better ways
of life. She examines donor-funded initiatives that seek to integrate conservation with
development through the participation of communities, and a one-billion-dollar program
designed by the World Bank to optimize the social capital of villagers, inculcate new habits of
competition and choice, and remake society from the bottom up.

Demonstrating that the will to improve has a long and troubled history, Li identifies enduring
continuities from the colonial period to the present. She explores the tools experts have used to
set the conditions for reformtools that combine the reshaping of desires with applications of
force. Attending in detail to the highlands of Sulawesi, she shows how a series of interventions
entangled with one another and tracks their results, ranging from wealth to famine, from
compliance to political mobilization, and from new solidarities to oppositional identities and
violent attack. The Will to Improve is an engaging readconceptually innovative, empirically
rich, and alive with the actions and reflections of the targets of improvement, people with their
own critical analyses of the problems that beset them.
Reviews

The Will to Improve will be taught and read alongside the works of James Scott, James
Ferguson, Aiwha Ong, and Timothy Mitchell, and others who weave ethnography, theory, and
history together, for it is similarly crafted in many respects, clearly and well written. Barbara
Cruikshank, American Ethnologist

The Will to Improve is a perceptive ethnography of improvement, a receding horizon,

continually strived for and redefined by colonial and postcolonial experts. . . . Li is nimble in her
theoretical poaching and blending, but she is also blessed with a rich set of materials with which
to make her case. Danilyn Rutherford, Pacific Affairs

A work of exceptional scholarship, this book should be required reading for scholars and
practitioners of development alike. Manish K. Thakur, Development and Change

Insightful and engaging, this is a fascinating book. Drawing on an impressive array of historical
and ethnographic sources, including her own fieldwork, Tania Murray Li offers a brilliant
account of expert interventions that, since the end of the nineteenth century, have endeavoured
to improve the welfare of a number of communities in Sulawesi (Indonesia). Dimitri
Tsintjilonis, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

"There is no question that Li has raised the bar as regards providing a serious anthropological
critique of development. . . . her desire to demonstrate that practices of government limit the
possibilities for engaging with targets of improving schemes as political actors (p. 281) and to
show the critical potential of an ethnography of government (p. 282) are both achieved with
extraordinary clarity, brilliance, and lan. A very fine book, indeed. Michael
Watts, American Anthropologist

Review by Dimitri Tsintjilonis in Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.

Review by Richard F. Doner in Perspectives on Politics.

Review by Katleen Gillogly in Environment and Society.

Review by Shubhra Gururani in Anthropologica.

Review by Barbara Cruikshank in American Ethnologist.

Review by Danilyn Rutherford in Pacific Affairs.

Review by Sarah de Leeuw in Journal of Historical Geography

Endorsements

The Will to Improve is an exceptionally valuable and well-conceived book. It speaks to some of
the most significant theoretical discussions of recent years, effectively linking studies of
governmentality, debates about neoliberalism, and the increasingly rich literature on the social
history of colonialism. James Ferguson, author of Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal
World Order

Magisterially linking the contradictions of peripheral capitalism with the limits of

governmentality, Tania Murray Li offers a view of developmental rule that draws productively
on Gramsci and Foucault. She provides perhaps the most brilliant account to date of neoliberal
development in action. A tour de force. Michael Watts, Director, Center for African Studies,
and Class of 1963 Professor of Geography, University of California, Berkeley

Tania Murray Li brilliantly combines the analytic rubrics of Foucault, Marx, and Gramsci to
explain the will to improve as an essential though poorly understood component of rule in
Indonesia. This is not your grandmothers ethnography: the well-written chapters are packed
with the conflicts, contestations, and uncertainties that characterize power relations. Deeply
engaged with the processes and practices that shape peoples lives, Lis book should be required
reading for scholars interested in how power works and for development practitioners
everywhere. Nancy Lee Peluso, author of Rich Forests, Poor People: Resource Control and
Resistance in Java