Imposing aid: The ethnography of displacement and its aftermath

Books are generally reviewed soon after they first appear, long before it is possible to evaluate their impact upon a discipline or any larger audience. Imposing Aid by Barbara Harrell-Bond was published about 25 years ago in 1986. It is a good time to look again and consider why it was important in its time, what was new about it, and how, if at all, it affected subsequent work in the discipline of anthropology and among those employed by agencies created to give aid to refugees and other people dispossessed of home and community.