ABSTRACT
Dichotomies, or polarized constructs, are basic to the simplest structuring of human perception into comprehensible order. Inevitably they grow into stereotypes: things that are. Even though they may be further subdivided, argument often returns to the simpler method — ‘as if’ there were only two classes. When we reject one dichotomy, we often do so only to fall into another. They seem real, and are real at a certain level of analysis; if we adopt a phenomenological approach they become fundamental. Orwell's famous reduction of the revolutionary creed of Animal Farm into the slogan ‘four legs good; two legs bad’ sums up something that is widespread not only in human perception and human politics, but human science as well. The world looks simpler in binary, and social science and the development field are no exceptions.
