Introduction : the growth of ignorance? / Mark Hobart -- Segmentary knowledge : a Whalsay sketch / Anthony P. Cohen -- Processes and limitations of Dogon agricultural knowledge / Walter E.A. van Beek -- Cultivation : knowledge or performance? / Paul Richards -- His lordship at the Cobblers' well / Richard Burghart -- Is death the same everywhere? : contexts of knowing and doubting / Piers Vitebsky -- Scapegoat and magic charm : law in development theory and practice / Franz von Benda-Beckmann -- Knowledge and ignorance in the practices of development policy / Philip Quarles van Ufford -- The negotiation of knowledge and ignorance in China's development strategy / Elisabeth Croll -- Bridging two worlds : an ethnography of bureaucrat-peasant relations in western Mexico / Alberto Arce and Norman Long -- Potatoes and knowledge / Jan Douwe van der Ploeg