Anthropology and West African Development: A Political Economic Critique and Auto-Critique

Anthropologists are exploring ways to increase the impact of the discipline on public policy, notably development policy. Sponsors of the panel, Conflict and Compromise: Perspectives on the Practice of Anthropology at the 1987 AAA meetings suggest that despite 25 years of practice development anthropology has had minimal impact on policy. Here, cases in which anthropologists have had a significant impact on development policy in West Africa are documented. Some situational and historical constraints to greater impact are then identified; other serious structural problems are explored. A fundamental problem is that development policy is carried out under a paradigm which assumes that Third World populations should adapt to the conditions of production and reproduction imposed by capitalism. Anthropologists who merely accept this paradigm compromise scientific standards and their professional ethics. Improved scientific credibility, greater professional impact, and more ethical practice may be obtained by...