ABSTRACT

A comparison of the analyses of the three developing world regions so far covered in this series of the Developing Areas Research Group of the Institute of British Geographers, including this volume on eastern and southern Africa, indicates both commonalities and differences in their experiences of ‘development’. Different physical environments and different social and economic histories help to explain these differences and the concomitant variance in capacity to respond or adapt to changing external circumstances. The theme of globalising economic forces and ideologies is an important one in this volume, and is echoed in McIlwaine and Willis’s (2002) Challenges and Change in Middle America: Perspectives on development in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, and Bradnock and Williams’s (2002a) South Asia in a Globalising World: A reconstructed regional geography. It is also of central significance to the analysis of changing development policy and practice presented in the introductory volume to the series, Simon and Närman’s (1999) Development as Theory and Practice: Current perspectives on development and development co-operation. Issues relating to social inequality and social change, the politics of development and environmental challenges are also examined in each volume. In each case this provides not only detailed analysis of the current realities in each region, but also helps to elucidate theoretical debates by providing ‘ground-truthing’, bringing together conceptualisations of development and development policy and empirical research (Bradnock and Williams 2002b).