Introduction *

The essays published in this volume, taken together, constitute little less than an indictment of twenty or thirty years of theory and practice in the economics, sociology and politics of development. Or so it would appear. Further reflection would remind us that the indictment is almost exclusively directed at Anglo-Saxon theories, that those theories do have their defenders, but above all that the study of development is potentially one of the most creative areas in social science today, although, at the level of theory, that potential has still largely to be realized. The reasons for this can be sought in the relationship between ‘development studies’ and the development (or lack thereof) of social, economic and political theory in the period since the Second World War.