About the Book
In recent years, much mainstream development discourse has sought to co-opt and neutralize key concepts relating to empowerment, participation, gender, sustainability and inclusivity in order to serve a market-driven, neoliberal agenda. Critical development studies now play a crucial role in combatting this by analyzing the systemic changes needed to transform the current world to one where economic and social justice and environmental integrity prevail.
The Essential Guide to Critical Development Studies takes as its starting point the multiple crises – economic, political, social and environmental – of the dominant current global capitalist system. The chapters collectively document and analyze these crises and the need to find alternatives to the system(s) that generate them. To do so, analyses of class, gender and empire are placed at the centre of discussion, in contrast to markets, liberalization and convergence, which characterize mainstream development discourse. Each contributor supplements their overview with a guide to the critical development studies literature on the topic, thereby providing scholars and students not only with a precis of the key issues, but also a signpost to further readings.
This is an important resource for academics, researchers, policymakers and professionals in the areas of development studies, political science, sociology, economics, gender studies, history, anthropology, agrarian studies, international relations and international political economy.
Table of Contents:
Critical Development Studies: An Introduction
I. Reflections on History
Chapter 1. History from a critical development perspective
II. Thinking Critically about Development
Chapter 2. Critical development theory: Results and prospects
Chapter 3. Thinking capitalist development beyond Eurocentrism
Chapter 4. Development theory: the Latin American pivot
Chapter 5. Postdevelopment and other critiques of the roots of development
Chapter 6. Development in question: the feminist perspective
III. Capitalism, Imperialism and Globalization: Implications for Development
Chapter 7. The world systems perspective
Chapter 8. The Central Contradictions of Capitalism and Capitalist Crises
Chapter 9. Imperialism, Capitalism and Development
Chapter 10. Critical globalization studies and development
Chapter 11. The end of globalization
IV. Poverty, Inequalities and Development Dynamics
Chapter 12. The poverty and development problematic
Chapter 13. Poverty analysis through a gender lens: a brief history of feminist contributions in international development
Chapter 14. Gender inequalities at work: explanations with examples from Cambodia, the Philippines and China
V. Policy Configurations for Development: International, National and Local
Chapter 15. The Post-Washington consensus
Chapter 16. International cooperation for development
Chapter 17. The developmental state and late industrialization: still feasible—and desirable?
Chapter 18. Local economic development and microcredit
V. Class and Development
Chapter 19. Class analysis and development
Chapter 20. Class dynamics of the global capitalist system
Chapter 21. The making of the migrant working class in China
Chapter 22. Class struggle and resistance in Latin America
VI. Agrarian Change and Spatial Reconfigurations
Chapter 23. Contemporary dynamics of agrarian change
Chapter 24. The global food regime
Chapter 25. The migration-development nexus
Chapter 26. Urban development in the global south
VII. Resources, Energy and the Environment
Chapter 27. Capitalism versus the environment
Chapter 28. Climate change and development
Chapter 29. Extractive capitalism and subterranean resistances
Chapter 30. Popular sustainable development, or ecological economics from below
IX. The BRICS as the new ‘development giants’
Chapter 31. Brazil: from the margins to the centre?
Chapter 32. India: Critical issues of a ‘tortuous transition’
Chapter 33. Interrogating the China model of development
X. The Search for a New Model: Rethinking development in Latin America
Chapter 34. Rethinking Latin America: Towards new development paradigms
Chapter 35. Peasant alternatives to neoliberalism
Chapter 36. Socialism and development: A Latin American perspective
Chapter 37. Confronting the capitalist hydra: the Zapatistas reflect on the storm that is upon us
About the Author :
Henry Veltmeyer is Senior Research Professor in Development Studies at Universidad de Autónoma de Zacatecas, Mexico, and Professor Emeritus in International development Studies at Saint Mary's University, Canada.
Paul Bowles is Professor of Economics and International Studies at the University of Northern British Columbia, Canada.
Review :
"This Guide invaluably fills a vacuum in the literature. Across its nearly forty chapters, it provides the highest level of scholarship and knowledge around the history, content and scope of critical development studies, covering both material and intellectual developments in a reader-friendly fashion for researchers, students and policymakers alike." – Ben Fine, Professor of Economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UK
"We have not reached the end of history but the story of Progress, its errors and criticisms is the most important one in social science. Here 37 experts have both charted and navigated an extensive archipelago of ideas to produce this guidebook. Not only will teachers and students find it indispensable but so also will everyone currently critical of means to the ends of the world's Sustainable Development Goals." – Barbara Harriss-White, Emeritus Professor of Development Studies, Oxford University and Visiting Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India.
"The Essential Guide presents clear, historically contextualised genealogies of major trends in development theory, and problematises them with critical alternatives. Feminist theory, counter narratives such as buen vivir (‘living well’) and discursive analyses of Development help to show the limitations of mainstream development theory and neoliberal approaches." – Andrea Nightingale, Chair of Rural Development in the Global South, Swedish University for Agricultural Sciences, Sweden
"The Essential Guide to Critical Development Studies, edited by Henry Veltmeyer and Paul Bowles, is the comprehensive product and theoretical culmination of some six decades of critical research on development and underdevelopment, from Paul Baran’s The Political Economy of Growth (1957) to the present. Bringing together the analyses of many of the world’s leading analysts in this area, it explains how successive waves of liberal and neoliberal developmentalism have largely failed to address the complex problems of the global South and the persistent realities of imperialism and unequal exchange. In the twenty-first century these issues have proven more important than ever, making this volume an invaluable contribution to the understanding of the epochal crises and global transformations taking place in our time." – John Bellamy Foster, editor, Monthly Review, USA
"the book is highly recommended for activists, researchers, students and teachers of international development at all levels, especially those who seek a comprehensive and authoritative guide to central themes, theories and research in critical development studies. The book’s theoretical diversity and high-profile contributors, alongside its wide-ranging scope, emancipatory goals and use of accessible language, make it an excellent candidate as a textbook and an essential addition to any collection of work on critical development studies." – Efe Can Gurcan, Canadian Journal of Development Studies / Revue canadienne d'études du développement, 2018
