Stories of "others" and Development Projects: notes for an ethnographic humanism

The essay takes us on a journey where the researcher is more and more aware of being surrounded by the "stories of others", whether or not their events and protagonists are found within Western society. If they are, the other is to a large extent a known "foreigner", who shares some of the content of our value system. The "other" who belongs instead to a non-European community, with its socio-cultural, magical-religious, political and economic choices and ethics that arouse our suspicion, makes us curious and shakes us in our habits, imagination and portrayals. The foreigner is by no means harmless since he threatens to alienate us from ourselves. We are aware that the journeys which take us the furthest are interior journeys. From the deserts of Sahel to the virgin expanses of the Arctic, the anthropologist is continuously turned back by the looks of the others. The fact is, anthropology deals with more than just societies different from ours. It is also, like the ebb of a wave, a self-analysis of the observer and his society.