The socialization of the anthropologist-consultant: from practice to the normative frameworks of policy
Abstract
Whether they reject or advocate so-called applied anthropology, many anthropologists share logics similar to those of the members of policy’s professional communities. This overlap is reflected in assumptions about the separation of theory and “its” practice, as well as in different attempts to resolve the tension between the general and the particular. Both these similarities and the epistemological differences between anthropology and policy are outlined here through an account of a development programme’s impact assessment. Even before beginning fieldwork and returning with their ethnographic descriptions to the institutional arenas of policy, anthropologist-consultants are disciplined and socialized into the art of reinterpreting their research results in terms of the programme’s model. Practice produces and orders policy, yet such practice resides precisely in the interpretive efforts by diverse development practitioners to sustain coherent representations of reality against the contingency of events.
Downloads
Article download
License
In order to support the global exchange of knowledge, the journal Revista de Antropología Social is allowing unrestricted access to its content as from its publication in this electronic edition, and as such it is an open-access journal. The originals published in this journal are the property of the Complutense University of Madrid and any reproduction thereof in full or in part must cite the source. All content is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 use and distribution licence (CC BY 4.0). This circumstance must be expressly stated in these terms where necessary. You can view the summary and the complete legal text of the licence.