The Development Reader

The Development Reader brings together fifty-four key readings on development history, theory and policy: Adam Smith and Karl Marx meet, among others, Robert Wade, Amartya Sen and Jeffrey Sachs. It shows how debates around development have been structured by different readings of the roles played by markets, empire, nature and difference in the organization of world affairs. For example, present-day concerns about economic liberalization echo long-standing debates around free-trade, extended divisions of labour and national economic policy. Likewise, old debates about empire are re-appearing in critical perspectives on US policy in the Middle East. While there is little room today for old-fashioned environmental or cultural determinism, the attention now being given to climate change and a clash of civilisations shows that questions of nature and difference remain at the centre of development politics. Section and individual extract introductions guide students through the material and bind the readings into a coherent whole. Organized chronologically as well as thematically, it offers an intellectual history of the debates and political struggles that swirl around development.

By bringing together intellectual history and contemporary development issues in this way, The Development Reader breaks fresh ground. It will have broad appeal across the humanities and social sciences, and is essential reading for students of contemporary development issues, practitioners and campaigners.

Sharad Chari is Lecturer in Human Geography at the London School of Economics. He works on the historical ethnography of labour, work, activism, gender, state-sanctioned racism, and development in India and South Africa. He is the author of Fraternal Capital: Peasant-workers, self-made men, and globalization in provincial India (Stanford University Press, 2004), and is working on a monograph on space, race and activism in twentieth-century South Africa.

Stuart Corbridge is Professor of Development Studies at the London School of Economics. He has written widely on economic and political change in India and the history of development thought. His most recent book (with Williams, Srivastava and Veron) is Seeing the State: Governance and Governmentality in India (CUP, 2005).

Part 1: The Object of Development. 'The Geography of Poverty and Wealth' J. Sachs, A. Mellinger and J. Gallup. Late Victorian Holocausts M. Davis. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest A. McClintock Part 2: Markets, Empire, Nature, Difference. 'Economic Development: A Semantic History' H.Arndt. The Wealth of Nations, Book IV A. Smith. 'British Rule in India' K. Marx. On Social Evolution: Selected Writings H. Spencer. Hind Swaraj M.K. Gandhi Part 3: Reform, Revolution, Resistance. 'Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren' J.M. Keynes. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time K. Polanyi. Colonial Policy and Practice: A Comparative Study of Burma and Netherlands India J.S. Furnivall. Bread and Democracy in Germany A. Gerschenkron. 'This is the Voice of Algeria' F.Fanon Part 4: Promethean Visions. Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World A. Escobar. The Stages of Economic Growth W.W. Rostow. The Population of India and Pakistan K. Davis. 'Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labour W.A. Lewis. 'The Distribution of Gains between Investing and Borrowing Countries' H. Singer. The Economics of Feasible Socialism Revisited A. Nove. 'Man and Nature in China' R. Murphey Part 5: Challenges to the Mainstream the Political Economy of Growth P. Baran. 'Capitalism and Cheap Labour Power in South Africa: From Segregation to Apartheid' H. Wolpe. Women’s Role in Economic Development E. Boserup. Silent Spring R. Carson. Why Poor People Stay Poor: A Study of Urban Bias in World Development M. Lipton. 'Latin American Squatter Settlements: A Problem and a Solution' W. Mangin Part 6: The Hubris of Development. 'Foreign Aid Forever?' P. Bauer. The Poverty of ‘Development Economics’ D. Lal. 'Democracy and the "Washington Consensus" J. Williamson. Seeing Like a State J. Scott. 'The Irrelevance of Development Studies' M. Edwards. 'Male Bias in the Development Process: An Overview' D. Elson. 'The Anti-Politics Machine: 'Development' and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho' J. Ferguson with L.Lohmann Part 7: Institutions, Governance and Participation. 'Goodbye Washington Consensus, Hello Washington Confusion?' D. Rodrik. 'Was Latin America too Rich to Prosper?: Structural and Political Obstacles to Export-Led Economic Growth' J. Mahon. 'Fiscal Reform and the Economic Foundations of Local State Corporatism in China' J. Oi. 'Moving the State: The Politics of Democratic Decentralization in Kerala, South Africa and Porto Allegre' P. Heller. Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism M. Mamdani. 'People’s Knowledge’, Participation and Patronage' D. Mosse Part 8: Globalization, Security and Well-Being. Why Globalization Works M. Wolf . 'Is Globalization Reducing Poverty and Inequality?' R. Wade. Human Well-Being and the Natural Environment P. Dasgupta. 'More than 100 Million Women are Missing' A.K. Sen. 'Conceptualising Environmental Collective Action: Why Gender Matters' B. Agarwal. 'AIDS, Gender and Sexuality During Africa’s Economic Crisis' B. Schoepf. 'Feminism, the Taliban and the Politics of Counter-Insurgency' C. Hirschkind and S. Mahmood Part 9: Development in the Twenty-First Century. 'Asia’s Re-Emergence' S. Radelet and J. Sachs. 'On Missing the Boat: The Marginalization of the Bottom Billion in the World Economy P. Collier. The New Imperialism D. Harvey. 'From the Spectre of Marx to the Spirit of the Law: Labor Insurgency in China' C.K. Lee. 'The Recurrent Crises of the Gatekeeper State' F. Cooper. 'Beyond Occidentalism: Toward Non-imperial Geohistorical Categories' F. Coronil. 'Globalization and Violence' A. Appadurai. 'On Development, Demography and Climate Change: The End of the Third World as we Know it?' T. Dyson