Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective

The author is a proud sponsor of the 2020 SAGE Keith Roberts Teaching Innovations Award--enabling graduate students and early career faculty to attend the annual ASA pre-conference teaching and learning workshop. In this new Sixth Edition of Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective, author Philip McMichael describes a world undergoing profound social, political, and economic transformations, from the post-World War II era through the present. He tells a story of development in four parts--colonialism, developmentalism, globalization, and sustainability--that shows how the global development project has taken different forms from one historical period to the next. Throughout the text, the underlying conceptual framework is that development is a political construct, created by dominant actors (states, multilateral institutions, corporations and economic coalitions) and based on unequal power arrangements. While rooted in ideas about progress and prosperity, development also produces crises that threaten the health and well-being of millions of people, and sparks organized resistance to its goals and policies. Frequent case studies make the intricacies of globalization concrete, meaningful, and clear. Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective challenges us to see ourselves as global citizens even as we are global consumers. Contributor to the SAGE Teaching Innovations and Professional Development Award Find out more at www.sagepub.com/sociologyaward

About the Author :
Philip McMichael grew up in Adelaide, South Australia, completing undergraduate degrees in economics and in political science at the University of Adelaide. After traveling in India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan and community work in Papua New Guinea, he pursued his doctorate in sociology at the State University of New York at Binghamton. He has taught at the University of New England (New South Wales), Swarthmore College, and the University of Georgia, and he is presently International Professor of Global Development at Cornell University. Other appointments include Visiting Senior Research Scholar in International Development at the University of Oxford (Wolfson College) and Visiting Scholar, School of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Queensland. Trained as a historical sociologist, his research examines capitalist modernity through the lens of agrarian questions, food regimes, agrarian and food sovereignty movements, and most recently the implications for food systems of agrofuels and land grabbing. In his work, he has studied and consulted with the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty, the international peasant coalition, La Vía Campesina, and FoodFirst Information and Action Network (FIAN). He teaches courses on Political Sociology of Development; World-Historical Methods; Food, Ecology, and Agrarian Change; and International Development.

Review :
I wanted one book that contained everything that I want my students to know. This book contains it all. The historical continuity woven across chapters allows me to teach development exactly like I want to...I like the emphasis on the environment and climate change, and land grabs / land-based investment.--Cynthia Caron The book does a fantastic job of laying out the history of development, and does so by dividing up different development eras into projects. It is packed with excellent and important information. The case studies in the book bring occasionally dry issues to life. And I value the book′s overarching attention to inequality at all levels as a way to understand the world.--Leif Jensen The book is very well structured. Difficult concepts are well explained. McMichael makes it very clear what the stages of development are, and brings examples that help students recognize those stages in their own social environment. While reading, students easily find connections between the theory and their observations.--Olena Leipnik