“Studies in development and subsistence in particular, and in African Studies in general, benefit from their detailed descriptions of peoples’ lives and their multidisciplinary character, but their tendency for analysis in dichotomous terms has limited the clarity and value of the literature. Recently, our understanding of various aspects of development and subsistence in sub-Saharan Africa and the relation between the two has been shifting substantially, away from the concept of mutual exclusiveness and towards the idea of complexity and interactiveness. The empirical evidence accumulated in this ‘African Potentials’ research adds additional nuances to such inherited dualism.”
