http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/55963093

Social organization and development anthropology the 1995 Malinowski award lecture

The way we legitimize to others or to ourselves the need for social analysis in development interventions creates a structure of expectations that becomes compelling. In other words, if we argue just the pragmatic, short-term operational benefits ' side of using anthropology, we will end up playing a very mundane fix-it-here-and-fix-it-there role. If, however, we convincingly construct the argument for a theoretical applied anthropology, we lay claim to having voice over the substance of development paradigms and policies. The rigid dichotomy between applied and theoretical anthropology is a simplistic representation that must be rejected. The practice of anthropology can generate value-added for society only if it is practiced as theoretical applied anthropology. What has to be applied through applied anthropology is our theoretically generalized knowledge about societies and cultures. What else would anthropologists have to apply? They use the research methods. What they apply is the storehouse of knowledge.

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