ABSTRACT
Contemporary social anthropology engages with agendas it re gards as ‘other people’s’, whether from within the academy or from among their subjects of study, at the same time as it also responds to demands from national and international agencies. This chapter, f rst delivered as a keynote lecture at the conference from which this book sprang, tak es up some recent de velopments in anthropological thinking to raise some questions about what is implied in the accompanying idea that good knowledge is ‘useful’ knowledge.
