Anthropological debates about development are often framed by a moral contrast between pure and instrumental knowledge. But the good of anthropology is situationally produced, as we can demonstrate by reflecting on the discipline's institutional conditions. Institutional contexts sustain our professional identities and research practices, including the claimed differences between them. These contexts are in turn produced by political economies of development expertise and academic knowledge production. Indeed, social anthropology's core research practices were shaped by its configuration within political economies of colonial governance, and they were perpetuated through the expansion of university systems. We should, then, stop sustaining the fictions that our work is situated outside political economies of interest or that we write purely in pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. Rather, we need to be more transparent about the economies that determine the kinds of knowledge we produce and the political implications of what we authorize as knowledge.

中文翻译：

---

特权观察员和殖民连续性

关于发展的人类学辩论常常以纯粹知识和工具知识之间的道德对比为框架。但人类学的优点是因地制宜而产生的，正如我们可以通过反思该学科的制度条件来证明的那样。机构背景维持着我们的专业身份和研究实践，包括它们之间声称的差异。这些背景又是由发展专业知识和学术知识生产的政治经济产生的。事实上，社会人类学的核心研究实践是由其在殖民治理的政治经济中的配置所塑造的，并且通过大学系统的扩张而得以延续。那么，我们应该停止维持这样的谎言：我们的工作处于利益政治经济之外，或者我们纯粹为了追求知识而写作。相反，我们需要对决定我们生产的知识种类以及我们授权为知识的政治影响的经济更加透明。