ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates the anthropologist's intermediary role in the dialogue between ideal and real, with a case study of an agricultural development project in Morocco financed by the Agency for International Development (AID). AID's views of the proper use of United States-financed agricultural credit, as expressed in generally stated AID policies, is discrepant from the onthe-ground operations of such credit in the specific Moroccan context. Anthropology has throughout much of its history been concerned with the correspondence between the ideal and the real as reflected at the individual and group levels, and as expressed in the discrepancy between how people view themselves, and their institutions, and how they actually behave. For an anthropologist working in project design, the choice is either to work within the constraints of the reality or abstain from meaningful participation. The conception of Moroccan farm operations and size portrayed by numerous documents and used by the initial project developers was shown to be seriously flawed.
