As a "development" strategy, ethnography does not have the conspicuous quality of larger kinds of structural intervention in poor countries being essentially local and low key in emphasis and targeted at the impoverished and marginalized.
Development is one of the liveliest and most topical issues of our day. The theme was motivated by a concern that an important public debate, perhaps the most important of our time, was proceeding without a significant input from anthropology. And yet it seemed indisputable that anthropology should have something important to contribute to the search for a viable future. In recent decades ethnography has become a popular approach to social research, along with others kinds of qualitative work.
This stems in part from disillusionment with the quantitative methods that for long held in most areas of applied social research. Indeed the popularity of qualitative research is now in some areas it has itself become the dominant approach in many behavioral disciplines. In order to be successful, development projects must require a flexible system which engages in a learning process by working with and coming to understand local groups, their interrelationships and their points of view.
This flexible approach to project management is intimately linked in with an anthropological or. Perhaps more accurately, an ethnographic approach .As a "development" strategy, ethnography does not have the conspicuous quality of larger kinds of structural intervention in poor countries being essentially local and low key in emphasis and targeted at the impoverished and marginalized. However, with its specific emphasis on the interrelationship between people and development, ethnography is more appropriate to the social realities of such countries. Because the basic philosophy behind the concept of ethnography is that people and development approach should be capable of contributing directly to the improvement of quality of life.
Therefore, anthropological research suggests a new perspective on the relationship between policy, implementation and outcomes, a model which portrays development as a negotiated, socially constructed, never-ending interaction between many social actors. These actors include beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries, the development institutions themselves, a range of civil interest group and the state.