View article

Arturo Escobar's Anthropology and the Development Encounter: The Making and Marketing of Development Anthropology (1991) is a welcome contribution to the anthropology of development. In applying the analytical tools of critical anthropology to the study of development discourse, it reintroduces development as a topic for serious discussion in anthropological quarters that have accorded de-velopment issues little thought in recent years. Esco-bar focuses on the language that development anthropologists employ to articulate their field, the" institutionalization" of development anthropology within development agencies and other organiza-tions, and the practices of development intervention in" specific projects"(1991: 660). He advocates an approach to development that draws heavily on recent thinking in critical anthropology. We agree with many of Escobar's remarks about the implications of placing …