Anthropology at Work

This is a personal record. I describe my work at the World Bank for over 20 years, telling you how we began a new and continuously evolving professional practice four decades ago, and to what effect. I hope to transmit to students of a next generation the causes that development anthropology stands for, and to pass on my passionate conviction that it must remain a mainstream discipline in the twenty-first century.

The 1995 Malinowski Award Lecture: Social Organization and Development Anthropology

It is a great honor to receive the Bronislaw Malinowski Award from this scholarly community of development social scientists, and I am deeply grateful for this recognition. Being associated through this Award with the name and legacy of Malinowski, and with the line of distinguished scholars who have preceded me as its recipients, is a moving and stimulating experience.

Speaking Back, Striking Back

This article explores local agency in development anthropology, a prominent form of applied anthropology that has encouraged reflection on the practice of anthropology itself (Mosse 2013). Drawing on specific fieldwork experiences from time the author spent working for the United Nations and international NGOs in East Africa, it discusses several complexities and moral questions that arose. In particular, it focuses on the challenges for local perspectives to be represented, given the subjective interests in which development encounters are embedded. It also looks at instances where ‘speaking back’ does occur, and where it arguably becomes ‘striking back’. In light of this, the article discusses what can be mutually exchanged between development and anthropology, with a particular focus on the accommodation of local agency and participation, and the need for fieldwork approaches based on sufficient time, trust and positionality.