ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some issues and dilemmas involved in undertaking ethnographic research within rural development organizations. These reflections derive from experience working as an anthropologist within rural development in different organizations in India. The chapter focuses on the way in which social research is undertaken by actors in and for development organizations – both 'aid workers' and those the aid organizations are attempting to help – and in the way that research is used by the actors themselves in support of their own ends. After explaining something of the context of my own interest in social research in development projects, the chapter examines some recently popularized participatory research methods. It also revisits some of the problems and dilemmas of attempting social research within organizations, and in particular the difficulty of balancing the demands of engagement in development agencies with critical analysis of their institutional processes.
