Publisher's Synopsis
"An Anthropological Critique of Development" challenges the utopian view of Western knowledge as uniquely successful in its application to economic and social development. The contributors, all well-known European professional anthropologists with experience of development, provide an ethnographic and theoretical critique of Western knowledge in action. Making use of detailed ethnographic case studies from Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America, they show how Western "experts", by disregarding indigenous knowledges in favour of an exclusive scientific knowledge, contribute to the growth of ignorance rather than the growth of knowledge.
