Delivering Development: Globalization's Shoreline and the Road to a Sustainable Future

In Delivering Development, author Edward Carr calls into question the very universal, unquestioned assumptions about globalization, development, and environmental change that undergird much of development and economic policy. Here he demonstrates how commonly held beliefs about globalization and development have failed the global poor. Over his 13 years of working along what he calls "globalization's shoreline," a world region buffeted by the economic, political, and environmental decisions of those living in wealthier places, Carr has concluded that most experts misunderstand what they are trying to fix, and cannot tell if they are fixing it. Delivering Development is an eye opening, you-are-there book that compels the reader to question conventional wisdom, redefines what assistance to the developing world really means, and explores alternative ways of achieving meaningful, enduring improvements to human well-being.

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1: Taking it all Apart * Chapter 2: Getting to the "Beach" * Chapter 3: A Day at the Beach * Chapter 4: Living with Uncertainty * Chapter 5: Nothing Has Always Been Like This * Chapter 6: The Tide Goes Out * Chapter 7: The Tide Comes Back In * Chapter 8: Scaling Up: Why the Lessons of Dominase and Ponkrum Matter to the World * Chapter 9: Losing the Signal in the Noise * Chapter 10: The Long Emergency on the Shoreline of Globalization: It's Not Their Problem * Chapter 11: Understanding the World Anew * Chapter 12: Truly Participatory Development * Chapter 13: Two Futures (Out of Many) * Chapter 14: Uncertainty Is Hope * Bibliography

About the Author :
EDWARD R. CARR is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of South Carolina. He is also an American Association for the Advancement of Science and Technology Policy Fellow, serving as the climate change adaptation coordinator for the Bureau for Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance at the United States Agency for International Development.

Review :
"Carr's concern is that development and globalization, as currently pursued, are creating more poverty than they solve, needlessly producing economic and environmental challenges that put everyone on Earth at risk. Confronting this paradoxical outcome head-on, Carr questions the "wisdom" of the traditional development-via-globalization strategy, a sort of connect-the-development-dots, by arguing that in order to connect the dots one must first see the dots. By failing to do so, agencies do not understand what they are connecting and why. This fundamental questioning of Post WWII development strategies, grounded in life along "Globalization's Shoreline," sets his approach to development in the age of globalization apart from much of the contemporary development literature." - Michael H. Glantz, Director, CCB (Consortium for Capacity Building), INSTAAR, University of Colorado "Over the fifty years since the end of the colonial era, rich nations have granted Africa billions of dollars in development aid - the equivalent of six Marshall Plans - and yet, today, much of the continent is as desperate as ever for help. In Delivering Development, Edward Carr delves into the question of why the aid system has failed to deliver on its promises, and offers a provocative thesis: that economic development, at least as international donors define it, is not necessarily equal to advancement. Unlike many combatants in the debate over the causes of global poverty, who jet in and out of these countries and offer the view from 10,000 feet, Carr takes a novel approach to the problem. He examines the aid system as it is actually experienced by poor Africans. Delivering Development focuses on a pair of Ghanaian villages, which despite their poverty by statistical measures have nonetheless managed to construct sophisticated systems of agricultural cultivation and risk management. Carr doesn't argue that these places hold the secret to ending poverty. On the contrary, his point is that there are no overarching solutions, that each community holds a unique set of keys to its own future. By delving into development at the grassroots, Carr reveals the rich and bedeviling complexity of a problem that, all too often, is reduced to simplistic ideological platitudes." - Andrew Rice, author of The Teeth May Smile but the Heart Does Not Forget: Murder and Memory in Uganda