Service providers commonly understand development projects in Indigenous Australia to play out at the intersection of a pre-existing binary between Indigenous and non-Indigenous groups. It follows that effective development practice is seen to depend on building partnerships across the ‘intercultural’ divide. Instead of taking this assumption as a baseline from which analysis proceeds, I draw on Karen Barad's theory of ‘intra-action’ to show how an Indigenous/non-Indigenous binary is continually produced in the context of a development NGO working in Central Australia. Based on fieldwork as a volunteer within this NGO, I demonstrate how the ‘intra-action’ of community development process produces forms of difference and relatedness for non-Indigenous NGO staff, and for the Aboriginal community. I argue that in spite of calls for deeper engagements, the community development apparatus continually performs separateness as the ethical framework on which the project proceeds. The paper contributes to debates around ‘intercultural’ anthropology and presents a non-normative account of development practice in Australia.

中文翻译：

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澳大利亚中部社区发展项目的内部行动

服务提供商通常理解澳大利亚原住民的发展项目是在原住民和非原住民群体之间预先存在的二元交叉点上发挥作用。因此，有效的发展实践被视为有赖于建立跨越“跨文化”鸿沟的伙伴关系。我没有将这个假设作为分析的基线，而是借鉴了凯伦·巴拉德的“内部行动”理论来展示如何在澳大利亚中部的一个发展非政府组织的背景下不断产生土著/非土著二元论。基于作为该 NGO 志愿者的实地考察，我展示了社区发展过程的“内部行动”如何为非土著 NGO 工作人员和土著社区产生不同形式的差异和相关性。我认为，尽管呼吁进行更深入的参与，但社区发展机构作为项目进行的伦理框架不断地表现出独立性。该论文有助于围绕“跨文化”人类学的辩论，并对澳大利亚的发展实践进行非规范性描述。