The contributions of applied anthropology to peasant development

The present surge of interest in participative rural development projects based on peasant communities differs from similar past experiences in that it forms part of a broader tendency to decentralize social management, to enhance the role of the beneficiaries of social policies, and to give them a bigger say in their implementation. In order to avoid repeating the failures of past decades in programmes designed to reduce rural poverty, it is necessary to incorporate elements of modem applied anthropology in programmes for the training of extension workers and in the explanatory models of specialists formulating rural development projects.