Anthropology and development: Understanding contemporary social change

257 Pages·2016·2.4 MB·English

by  De Sardan

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About this book
The central purpose of this book is to re-establish the relevance of anthropological
(and indeed sociological) approaches to development processes and, pari passu,
persuading anthropology to recognise that the study of contemporary development
ought to be one of its principal concerns. Professor Olivier de Sardan argues for a
socio-anthropology of change and development that is a deeply empirical, multi-
dimensional, diachronic study of social groups and their interactions, combining
analysis of social practices and consciousness.It has,in his view,simultaneously to be a
political anthropology, a sociology of organizations, an economic anthropology, a
sociology of networks,and an anthropology of conceptions and belief systems.
The author also intends to make English- and French-speaking anthropologists and
students much more aware of each other’s contribution to understanding develop-
ment and social change.
The Introduction provides a thought-provoking examination of the principal new
approaches that have emerged in the discipline during the 1990s. Part I then makes
clear the complexity of social change and development,and the ways in which socio-
anthropology can measure up to the challenge of this complexity.Part II looks more
closely at some of the leading variables involved in the development process,including
relations of production;the logics of social action;the nature of knowledge,including
popular knowledge;forms of mediation;and ‘political’strategies.
Following its successful publication in French (where it has run through several
printings), this important book will provoke much thoughtful debate about
appropriate theory and practice within Anthropology, Sociology and Development
Studies. It is also particularly appropriate as an advanced text for students in these
fields.
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About the author
Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan is Professor of Anthropology at the École des Hautes
Études en Sciences Sociales in Marseilles and Director of Research at the Centre
National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris.Holding dual nationality in France and
Niger,he was educated at the Sorbonne,and currently lives and works in Niamey.His
long and distinguished research career has involved a huge number of different
projects and activities, as well as long spells teaching at the University of Paris and
other French universities, as well as in Africa. Between 1991 and 1996 he served as
President of the Association Euro-Africaine pour l’Anthropologie du Changement
Social et du Developpement. Since 1965 he has authored seven books in French, as
well as contributing to numerous scholarly volumes and authoring many scholarly
journal articles in French.He has also published articles in English language journals
including Africa, Current Anthropology, Critique of Anthropology, Visual Anthropology, and
the Journal of Modern African Studies, as well as chapters in several English language
scholarly works.
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Anthropology and Development
UNDERSTANDING CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL CHANGE
Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan
Translated by
Antoinette Tidjani Alou
ZED BOOKS
LONDON & NEW YORK
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Anthropology and Development:
Understanding Contemporary Social Change
was first published in 2005 by
Zed Books Ltd,7 Cynthia Street,London N1 9JF,UK and
Room 400,175 Fifth Avenue,New York,NY 10010,USA.
www.zedbooks.co.uk
Copyright © Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan,2005
Translation copyright © Antoinette Tidjani Alou 2005
The right of Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan to be identified as the author
of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with
the Copyright,Designs and Patents Act,1988
Cover designed by Andrew Corbett
Set in 11/13 pt Garamond by Long House,Cumbria,UK
Printed and bound in Malaysia by Forum
Distributed in the USA exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan,a division of
St Martin’s Press,LLC,175 Fifth Avenue,New York,NY 10010.
All rights reserved
A catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library
US Cataloging-in-Publication Data
is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN Hb 1 84277 416 6
Pb 1 84277 417 4
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Contents
1 Introduction
The three approaches in the anthropology
of development 1
The discourse of development 3
Populism,anthropology and development 8
The entangled social logic approach 11
Conclusion:the future of the entangled social logic approach
and its work in progress (research in Africa and beyond) 15
2 Socio-anthropology of development
Some preliminary statements 23
Development 24
Socio-anthropology of development 27
Comparativism 31
Action 35
Populism 35
A collective problematic 37
Social change and development:in Africa or in general? 37
3 Anthropology, sociology, Africa and development
A brief historical overview 42
French colonial ethnology 42
Reactions:dynamic and/or Marxist anthropology 45
From a sociological viewpoint:sociology of modernization and
sociology of development 46
Systems analysis 48
The current situation:multi-rationalities 51
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4 A renewal of anthropology? 58
To the rescue of social science? 59
The ‘properties’of ‘development facts’ 60
Two heuristic points of view 61
Anthropology of social change and development and
the fields of anthropology 64
5 Stereotypes, ideologies and conceptions 68
A meta-ideology of development 70
Infra-ideologies:conceptions 71
Five stereotypes 73
The relative truth of stereotypes:the example of ‘culture’ 81
The propensity for stereotypes:the example of ‘needs’ 85
6 Is an anthropology of innovation possible? 89
A panorama in four points of view 91
Is an innovations problematic possible in anthropology ? 103
Innovation as a way in 107
7 Developmentalist populism and social science populism
Ideology, action, knowledge 110
Intellectuals and their ambiguous populism 111
The poor according to Chambers 112
The developmentalist populist complex 113
Moral populism 115
Cognitive populism and methodological populism 116
Ideological populism 117
Populism and miserabilism 118
Where action becomes compromise 120
… and where knowledge can become opposition … 122
… yet methodology should combine! 124
8 Relations of production and modes of economic action 126
Songhay-Zarma societies under colonization:peasant mode of
production and relations of production 126
Subsistence logic during the colonial period 128
Relations of production and contemporary transformations 131
Conclusion 134
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9 Development projects and social logic 137
The context of interaction 139
Levels of project coherence 140
Peasant reactions 142
Two principles 144
Three logics,among many others 145
Strategic logics and notional logics 149
10 Popular knowledge and scientific and technical knowledge 153
Popular technical knowledge 154
A few properties of popular technical knowledge 156
Popular technical knowledge and technical–scientific knowledge 159
Fields of popular knowledge and infrastructure 161
11 Mediations and brokerage 166
Development agents 166
A parenthesis on corruption 168
Development agents as mediators between types of knowledge 168
Brokers 173
The development language 178
12 Arenas and strategic groups 185
Local development as a political arena 185
Conflict,arena,strategic groups 188
The ECRIS framework 192
13 Conclusion
The dialogue between social scientists and developers 198
Logic of knowledge and logic of action 198
Two models to be rejected 201
Third model:action research? 201
Fourth model:the contractual solution 203
Training development agents 204
Adapting to sidetracking 205
On enquiry 208
Socio-anthropology of development and anthropology applied
to development:one instance and its limit 212
Bibliography 217
Index 236
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1
Introduction
The Three Approaches in the
Anthropology of Development1
This work was originally published in France in 1995 and had several objec-
tives. Its primary aim was to develop a specific perspective, in the form of a
non-normative approach to the complex social phenomena linked to develop-
ment actions,grounded in a resolutely empirical (nonspeculative and based on
enquiry) and ‘fundamental’ (situated upstream of ‘applied’ anthropology)
practice of anthropology. A secondary objective was to take simultaneous
account of works in English and in French dealing with the anthropology of
development.
It is remarkable, on one hand, that the works published in English that
approach the anthropology of development from one angle or another are,as a
rule,completely oblivious of the works that exist in French,despite the fact that
French-speaking Africa is as much a region where development policies and
operations prevail as Anglophone Africa.2Conversely,most of the works pub-
lished in French bear witness to a very unequal and impressionistic knowledge
of the literature in English.3 Thus, in France, the present work provided a
linkage between two frequently disconnected scholarly universes. Its transla-
tion into English now offers the same opportunity to readers from English-
speaking countries.
However, the main aim of this book is more general. I wish to propose a
point of view on development that reintegrates development into mainstream
anthropology as an object worthy of attention,a perspective that engages in a
minute exploration of the various types of interactions which take place in the
world of development,bringing into play conceptions and practices,strategies
and structures, actors and contexts. This is therefore a project that intends to
steer clear of both apology and denunciation, to avoid both prophecies
and caricatures. However, another characteristic of the literature on develop-
ment,in English and French alike,is that it is permeated with normative judge-
ments arising from a variety of ideologies and meta-ideologies (see Chapter 5).
1