Paper short abstract:

Refusing the externalist view, linear and deterministic social change, development anthropology moves away from the paradigm of "modernization," taking the peasant communities as complex systems that manage its own transformation by successive creative adaptations that characterize its historical dynamic

Paper long abstract:

Rural development aid, which has its own cognitive structures and their own channels of communication( Bierschenk et all 1993; Bierschenk 1998; Le Naelou 1995) develops a homogenizing practice ( Amselle 1988).This practice makes the creative adaptations and self-processing of the target communities as "contingencies" not preview in the linear models, "repaired" with purely technological solutions, and yet ineffective. The economic restructuring based on the logic of globalization tends to systematically sterilize local modes of subsistence based on principles of autonomy and self-production. This dialectic between "globalization" and "localization" in the economies of self-production (not based exclusively on peasant agriculture) covers the needs of the community in essential commodities (material and symbolic) through livelihood very little dependent on the organization of the market. These survival strategies or "modes of existence" are poorly understood and valued in the capitalist point of view but are nevertheless of crucial importance to peasant societies development. What is "development" and "progress" in the co-evolution process?