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\"Epistemology, Fieldwork, and Anthropology explores the space between epistemology and methodology, offering a systematic examination of the empirical foundations of interpretations in anthropology. Olivier de Sardan investigates the complex links between the observed reality, data production, and grounded theories, addressing the issues of bias management and the rigor of qualitative methods\"-- Provided by publisher.

Marginal in status a decade ago, cash transfer programs have become the preferred channel for delivering emergency aid or tackling poverty in low- and middle-income countries. While these programs have had positive effects, they are typical of top-down development interventions in that they impose on local contexts standardized norms and procedures regarding conditionality, targeting, and delivery. This book sheds light on the crucial importance of these contexts and the many unpredicted consequences of cash transfer programs worldwide - detailing how the latter are used by actors to pursue their own strategies, and how external norms are reinterpreted, circumvented, and contested by local populations.

Aujourd’hui, au Niger, la politique des partis et de la démocratie, caractérisée par des affontements incessants entre politiciens, avec de fréquents changements de camp, est rejetée par la population. Ces conflits de proximité sont nommés par un terme emprunté aux conflits familiaux, qui s’applique aux relations de jalousie entre demi-frères, à savoir les baab-izey . La famille est un espace autant de rivalités que de solidarité, contrairement aux stéréotypes sur la famille africaine. Ces rivalités alimentées par la polygamie deviennent publiques dans les querelles d’héritage ou de chefferie. Le microcosme politique nigérien est confronté à des rivalités internes semblables où les camarades d’aujourd’hui deviennent demain des ennemis. Autre similarité, les conflits de proximité familiaux comme les conflits de proximité politiques sont avivés par les spécialistes de l’occulte qui rendent toujours les proches responsables des problèmes.

Among several forms of herding in Niger, mobile herding remains the most important. Water access has undergone deep transformations in this field: increasing conflict with farmers, uses of wells as land tenure markers, multiplication of drilled wells with maintenance and management problems, commoditisation of water points. Various modes of governance are thus more and more intermingled in pastoralists' access to water infrastructures, including the state (often repressive, racketeer, absent, involved in patronage relations); municipalities (taking resources from herding without investing in it); development projects (perceived as an income to benefit from); and herder associations (fostered by senior officers).

In Niger, there is an increasing rejection of politik (a term with highly pejorative connotations): that is, party politics and the politics of democracy, characterized by personal rivalries and power struggles between clans and factions. But there is a direct link (albeit not a causal one) between the social perceptions of intra-familial rivalries and the social perceptions of political rivalries. The archetypical relationship among the baab-izey (children of one father but different mothers) is characterized by competition and jealousy. This is a product of the latent rivalry that pits co-wives against each other. Polygamy is clearly at odds with a number of received ideas and clichés about ‘the African family’ as primarily a locus of support and solidarity. Such formal social norms may reign in public situations, but in private de facto practical norms give rise to subtle discriminations and the omnipresence of more or less hidden conflicts within the family. The same is true for the political microcosm of Niger. While the public norm of the concern for the public good is supposed to regulate political behaviours, rivalry and jealousy are structural components of the political world. The baab-izey pattern is frequently used in reference to politicians. Political conflicts are above all personal/factional conflicts in which friends and supporters are implicated, and are rivalries of proximity. In the familial space as in the political space, ‘magico-religious entrepreneurs’ (i.e. experts in the occult) are merely an ‘accelerator’ of these conflicts: they reinforce suspicions about the familial or political entourage, which, in turn, intensify rivalries. Au Niger, “politik” est devenu dans les langues locales un terme très péjoratif, associé à la démocratie, qui connote les conflits de personnes et de factions associés aux partis politiques. Mais il y a un lien (qui n'est pas causal) entre la perception des conflits au sein de la famille et la perception des conflits au sein de la classe politique. La relation archétypale entre « baab-izey », enfants d'un même père et de mère différentes, est caractérisée par la jalousie et la compétition. C'est une conséquence de la rivalité entre co-épouses. La polygamie contredit les clichés sur la famille africaine comme étant essentiellement un espace de solidarité. Ces clichés peuvent correspondre aux normes officielles en situation publique, mais, dans les comportements privés, les normes pratiques introduisent des discriminations subtiles et une omniprésence de conflits plus ou moins cachés au sein de la famille. Il en est de même au sein du microcosme politique nigérien. Alors que les normes officielles du souci du bien public sont censées régner, l'ambition personnelle, la rivalité et la jalousie sont des composantes structurelles de la vie politique. Le modèle du baab-izey est très souvent utilisé pour décrire les comportements des politiciens. Les conflits politiques sont surtout des conflits de personnes et de factions, impliquant amis et clients. Ce sont des rivalités de proximité. Dans l'espace familial comme dans l'espace politique, des « entrepreneurs magico-religieux » (spécialistes de l'occulte) jouent un rôle d'accélérateur de ces conflits. Ils renforcent les soupçons à l’égard de l'entourage, ce qui, en retour, intensifie les rivalités de proximité.

En Afrique, la « rente du développement » est au cœur d'innombrables stratégies locales, et la rente humanitaire apparaît comme une de ses variantes. Ni l'une ni l'autre ne sont hélas en mesure de résoudre durablement les problèmes chroniques du pays. Cette étude de cas, menée au Niger à la suite de la « famine » de 2005, qui avait suscité une forte mobilisation internationale, a montré une réalité très éloignée des clichés des médias. Les stratégies locales de « débrouille » et de survie ont été décisives. Les aides extérieures ont entraîné de nombreux malentendus et diverses frictions. In Africa, \"getting a share of development aid\" is at the heart of a large number of strategies, and humanitarian aid is included in that. However, none are able to offer a durable solution to the chronic problems facing the country. This case study, conducted in Niger following 2005 \"famine\", which resulted in a large international response, shows a very different reality from the one usually presented by the media. Local coping strategies have been most important. External assistance has provoked misunderstanding and friction. In Afrika stehen Entwicklungshilfezahlungen im Zentrum vieler lokaler Strategien ; die Zahlung humanitärer Hilfe ist dabei eine mögliche Variante. Allerdings ist leider weder die eine noch die andere Art der Hilfeleistung dauerhaft in der Lage die chronischen Probleme des Landes zu lösen. Die vorliegende Studie thematisiert die Hungernot im Niger 2005, die seinerzeit starkes internationales Engagement nach sich zog und sie zeigt, dass die Wirklichkeit sich in keinster Weise mit dem von den Medien verbreiteten Klischees deckt. Denn die lokalen Strategien des sich „Durchschlagens\" und des Überlebens waren entscheidend. Die externe Hilfe hingegen hat zu vielen Missverständnissen geführt und Spannung verursacht.

This research on user fee removal in three African countries is located at the interface of public policy analysis and health systems research. Public policy analysis has gradually become a vast and multifaceted area of research consisting of a number of perspectives. But the context of public policies in Sahelian Africa has some specific characteristics. They are largely shaped by international institutions and development agencies, on the basis of very common 'one-size-fits-all' models; the practical norms that govern the actual behaviour of employees are far removed from official norms; public goods and services are co-delivered by a string of different actors and institutions, with little coordination between them; the State is widely regarded by the majority of citizens as untrustworthy. In such a context, setting up and implementing health user fee exemptions in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger was beset by major problems, lack of coherence and bottlenecks that affect public policy-making and implementation in these countries.

Our research programme on fee exemption policies in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger involved sensitive topics with strong ideological and political connotations for the decision-makers, for health-workers, and for users. Thus we were confronted with reluctance, criticism, pressures and accusations. Our frank description of the shortcomings of these policies, based on rigorous research, and never polemical or accusatory, surprises political leaders and health managers, who are accustomed to official data, censored evaluations and discourse of justification.

Free healthcare obviously works when a partner from abroad supplies a health centre or a health district with medicines and funding on a regular basis, provides medical, administrative and managerial training, and gives incentive bonuses and daily subsistence allowances to staff. The experiments by three international NGO in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger have all been success stories. But withdrawing NGO support means that health centres that have enjoyed a time of plenty under NGO management will return to the fold of health centres run by the state in its present condition and the health system in its present condition, with the everyday consequences of late reimbursements and stock shortages. The local support given by international NGOs has more often than not an effect of triggering an addiction to aid instead of inducing local sustainability without infusion. In the same way, scaling up to the entire country a local pilot experiment conducted under an NGO involves its insertion into a national bureaucratic machine with its multiple levels, all of which are potential bottlenecks. Only experiments carried out under the \"ordinary\" management of the state are capable of laying bare the problems associated with this process. Without reformers 'on the inside' (within the health system itself and among health workers), no real reform of the health system induced by reformers 'from the outside' can succeed.