ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some of the many ways that development, as planned social and economic change, is understood, practised and experienced around the world. It presents a set of ideas distilled from anthropologists’ up-close observation of and engagement with development. Development initiatives are often based on a straightforward theory of change. Anthropology of development theory thus starts from a key insight: Development cannot be created in isolation from its social context. Anthropologists have often taken a critical view of development because their work has enabled them to observe, up-close, the effects of development for real people in real places. Using ethnography, anthropologists are often in a position to witness development processes and outcomes up-close. Development work tends to focus on problems or issues, defined in policy silos. Development actors may be individuals, groups, communities or organisations. Anthropologists’ interest in marginalised groups dates to their early tradition of work with communities in distant parts of the world.
