ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the different orientations toward international development found in private, humanitarian aid agencies in the United States. It highlights the new insights, but also point out weaknesses, and considers what insights anthropologists can bring to these agencies. Anthropologists working with or for a Private Voluntary Organizations (PVO) should be aware of this extreme diversity, but also of the common history PVOs, as a group, share. If anthropologists are to have any understanding of what anthropology can bring to PVOs, they must know both that common history and the peculiar history of the particular agencies with which they work. PVO social history can be broken down into two stages of evolution and a third stage, so far primarily a theoretical ideal. PVOs often pride themselves on their flexibility, meaning that when new opportunities of service arise, the agency has the ability to engage itself. Anthropologists should bring to PVOs a systemic, political awareness of the aid and development environment.
