ursuing the work of the Association euro-africaine pour l'Anthropologie du Changement social et du Développement (APAD), this book is a plea for ‘subaltern studies' conducted with the necessary methodological precision, taking a bottom-up approach to link all intervening levels up to the top. It promotes the rigorous empirical analysis of responses to the implementation of locally reinterpreted neo-liberal injunctions, with similar issues emerging at the local interfaces despite the diversity of situations. The chapters bring out the contrast between the ‘need for State' that underlies a people's submission and the disengagement of the State as recommended by the Bretton Woods institutions.