Condenses several decades of research into an accessible and well-referenced textbook that provides provoking insights into the anthropology of development.

Highly reflexive and full of wit.

This is a lucid, thoroughly researched and brilliantly argued book.

Achille Mbembe, author of On the Postcolony

A subtle, wide-ranging argument for a productive tension between the development industry and its critics on behalf of its ultimate subjects.

James C. Scott, Yale University

Olivier de Sardan throws a long-needed intellectual bridge over the big canyon separating European and American development anthropologies.

Michael M. Cernea, World Bank and George Washington University

Olivier de Sardan tackles two sets of vested interests head-on but, more than that, he offers a resolution both might find appealing and neither can afford to ignore.

Richard Fardon, University of London