Book excerpt: The Vicos Project was a major effort to apply anthropology to community development in a rural community of Andean Peru in the 1950s. Deconstructing Development Discourse in Peru is a retrospective examination of the Vicos research and development project through a poststructuralist lens. William Stein details the work of North American researchers, with emphasis on factors which limited their capacity to engage in development. Stein endeavors to apply the work of the French philosopher, Jacques Derrida, as an aid in the interpretation of events and reactions of both North American and Peruvian researchers.