Development rhymes with enchantment

Abstract

When focusing on development and interculturality, anthropology, with its century-old experience with trying to understand non-Western worlds, would do well to 1) question the universal validity of such notions, especially when they become export products, and 2) bring up non-Western cases that refute, reduce, enlarge or dialogue with them. It examines various indigenous situations a) to show the inadequacy of the canonical definition of development when applied to indigenous experiences involving resources and wealth; b) to argue that the concept of interculturality is worthy of its name when it promotes an ecumenism of ideas and practices about the common good. It avoids fads and ideological premises that are often unfair to ethnic diversity. It examines several cases in Amazonia regarding territorial planning, actions that attempt to combine the logic of the gift and that of the market, as well as other, let us say, heterogeneous activities from the strictly Western point of view.