Anthropology and development: understanding contemporary social change

Abstract

* 1. Introduction: The three approaches in the anthropology of development * The discourse of development * Populism, anthropology and development * Entangled social logic approaches * Conclusion: the future of the entangled social logics approach and its work in progress (research in Africa and beyond) * 2. Socio-anthropology of Development: some preliminary statements * Development * Socio-anthropology of development * Comparativism * Action * Populism * A collective problematic * Social change and development: in Africa or in general? * 3. Anthropology, Sociology, Africa and Development: a brief historical overview * French colonial ethnology * Reactions: dynamic and/or Marxist anthropology * From a sociological viewpoint: sociology of modernization and sociology of development * Systems analysis * The current situation: multi-rationalities * 4. A renewal of anthropology ? * To the rescue of social science? * The 'properties' of 'development facts' * Two 'heuristic points of view' * Anthropology of social change and development and the fields of anthropology * 5. Stereotypes, ideologies and conceptions * A meta-ideology of development * Infra-ideologies: conceptions * Five stereotypes * The relative truth of stereotypes: the example of culture * The propensity for stereotypes: the example of needs * 6. Is an anthropology of innovation possible ? * A panorama in four points of view * Is an innovation's problematic possible in anthropology ? * 7. Developmentist populism and social science populism : ideology, action, knowledge * Intellectuals and their ambiguous populism * The poor according to Chambers * The developmentist populist complex * Moral populism * Cognitive populism and methodological populism * Ideological populism * Populism and miserabilism * Where action becomes compromise ... and where knowledge can become opposition... * ... yet methodology should combine! * 8. Relations of production and modes of economic action * Songhay-zarma societies under colonization: peasant mode of production and relations of production * Subsistence logic during the colonial period * Relations of production and contemporary transformations * Conclusion * 9. Development projects and social logic * The context of interaction * Levels of project coherence * Peasant reactions * Two principles * Three logics, among many others * Strategic logics and notional logics * 10. Popular knowledge and scientific and technical knowledge * Popular technical knowledge * A few properties of popular technical knowledge * Popular technical knowledge and technical-scientific knowledge * Fields of popular knowledge and infrastructure * 11. Mediations and brokerage * Development agents * A parenthesis on corruption * Development agents as mediators between types of knowledge * Brokers * The development language * 12. Arenas and strategic games * Local development as a political arena * Conflict, arena, strategic groups * The ECRIS canvass * 13. Conclusion : The dialogue between social scientists and developers * Logic of knowledge and logic of action * Action Research? * Training development agents * Adapting to side-tracking * On enquiry * Bibliography * Index