This book re-establishes the relevance of mainstream anthropological (and sociological) approaches to development processes and simultaneously recognizes that contemporary development ought to be anthropology s principal area of study. Professor de Sardan argues for a socio-anthropology of change and development that is a deeply empirical, multidimensional, diachronic study of social groups and their interactions.
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...

Although international development discourse considers the state as a crucial development actor, there remains a significant discrepancy between the official norms of the state and public services and the actual practices of political elites and civil servants.

This text interrogates the variety of ways in which state policies and legal norms have been translated into the set of practical norms which make up real governance in sub-Saharan Africa. It argues that the concept of practical norms is an appropriate tool for an ethnographic investigation of public bureaucracies,...

Epistemology, Fieldwork, and Anthropology provides a systematic examination of the empirical foundations of interpretations and grounded theories in anthropology. Olivier de Sardan explores the nature of the links between observed reality and the data produced during fieldwork, and between the data gathered and final interpretative statements. Olivier de Sardan's research asks how anthropologists develop a 'policy of fieldwork', what the advantages and limits of observation are, and if the dangers of over-interpretation and scientific ideologies be minimized. Exploring the space between...