The field of development is subject to shifts in paradigms, and it is important to examine systematically how these are realized in actual practice. Two currently favored approaches are participation and indigenous knowledge. In this volume's collected papers, development researchers and practitioners share their ideas and experience on the different forms taken by participation and knowledge, not limited to "indigenous" knowledge, in the practice of development. The "development encounters" they describe took place in sites ranging from villages in the Amazon, India, and southern Africa to research laboratories and corporate boardrooms in central Africa, Latin America, and the United States. This timely and grounded account of participation and knowledge in the front lines will be of interest to a range of practitioners, analysts, and students of development.

Pauline E. Peters is a fellow at the Harvard Institute for International Development and a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at Harvard.

Theodore Macdonald is Fellow with the University Committee on Human Rights Studies and a Lecturer in Anthropology and Social Studies, Harvard University.

Read More by Theodore Macdonald:

• The Politics of Ethnicity: Indigenous Peoples in Latin American States
• Manifest Destinies and Indigenous Peoples