Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Real Resource Curse And The Imperialism Of Development, Timothy Dimuzio

Timothy DiMuzio

The idea that the scope of anthropology in the face of the new development economics be widened is a welcome one. In explaining what has been called ‘the resource curse’, Gisa Weszkalnys (in this issue) suggests that anthropologists must go beyond merely looking for the social details that might help economists account for why their theories often go awry in real social settings. In other words, the role of the anthropologist is not to provide social justifications for economic models gone wrong. Rather, Weszkalnys asks anthropologists concerned with studying communities with coveted and valuable world resources to approach their study …