Soumhya Venkatesan lectures in Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester. She is the author of Craft Matters: Artisans, Development and the Indian Nation (Orient Blackswan 2009).

Introduction. Anthropology and Development: critical framings
Thomas Yarrow and Soumhya Venkatesan

Part I: Anthropology and Development reconsidered

Chapter 1. On Text and Con-text: toward an anthropology in development
John Friedman

Chapter 2. Framing and Escaping: Contrasting Aspects of Knowledge Work in International Development an Anthropology
Maia Green

Intersection 1: Economies of Knowledge
Veena Das

Part II: Enacting Development

Chapter 3. The Progress of the Project: Scientific Traction in the Gambia
Ann Kelly

Chapter 4. Recursive partnerships in global development aid
Casper Bruun Jansen and Brit Ross Winthereik

Intersection 2: A Gift Back: the village and research
Annmarie Mol

Part III: Doing and Knowing

Chapter 5. Beyond an Anthropology of 'the Urban Poor': rethinking peripheral urban social situations in Brazil
John Gledhill and Maria Gabriela Hita

Chapter 6. Extraordinary Violence and Everyday Welfare: The State and Development in Rural and Urban India
Amita Baviskar

Intersection 3: the anthropology of development and the development of anthropology
Harri Englund

Part IV: the Promise of Progress

Chapter 7. Development, Participation, and Political Ideology in a Lebanese Town
Michelle Obeid

Chapter 8. Kastom Ekonomi and the Subject of Self-Reliance: differentiating development in Vanuatu
John P. Taylor and Benedicta Rousseau

Intersection 4: Modes of modernity
Norman Long

Part V: Forms and Effects

Chapter 9. Effecting Development and the Effects of Development: Bureaucratic Knowledges of Development in an Indian District
Nayanika Mathur

Chapter 10. The transformation of compassion and the ethics of interaction within charity practices
Catherine Trundle

Intersection 5: The art of balance, or else...
Alberto Corsín Jiménez

Over the last two decades, anthropological studies have highlighted the problems of 'development' as a discursive regime, arguing that such initiatives are paradoxically used to consolidate inequality and perpetuate poverty. This volume constitutes a timely intervention in anthropological debates about development, moving beyond the critical stance to focus on development as a mode of engagement that, like anthropology, attempts to understand, represent and work within a complex world. By setting out to elucidate both the similarities and differences between these epistemological endeavors, the book demonstrates how the ethnographic study of development challenges anthropology to rethink its own assumptions and methods. In particular, contributors focus on the important but often overlooked relationship between acting and understanding, in ways that speak to debates about the role of anthropologists and academics in the wider world. The case studies presented are from a diverse range of geographical and ethnographic contexts, from Melanesia to Africa and Latin America, and ethnographic research is combined with commentary and reflection from the foremost scholars in the field.