ABSTRACT
This bold and ambitious handbook is the first systematic overview of the history of development ideas, themes, and actors in the twentieth century. Taking stock of the field, the book reflects on blind spots, points out avenues for future research, and brings together a greater plurality of regions, actors, and approaches than other publications on the subject.
The book offers a critical reassessment of how historical experiences have shaped contemporary understandings of development, demonstrating that the seemingly self-evident concept of development has been contingent on a combination of material conditions, power structures, and policy choices at different times and in different places. Using a world history approach, the handbook highlights similarities in development challenges across time and space, and it pays attention to the meanings of ideological, cultural, and economic divides in shaping different understandings and practices of development. Taking a thematic approach, the book shows how different actors – governments, non-governmental organizations, individuals, corporations, and international organizations – have responded to concerns regarding the conditions in their own or other societies, such as the provision of education, health, or food; approaches to infrastructure development and industrialization; the adjustment of social conditions; population policies and migration; and the maintenance of stability and security.
Bringing together a range of voices from across the globe, this book will be perfect for advanced students and researchers of international development history.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part 1|15 pages
Introduction
part 2|50 pages
Concepts and ideas of development
part 3|152 pages
Themes
part 3A|34 pages
Developing people
part 3B|72 pages
Developing societies
chapter 9|14 pages
Demographic concerns and interventions
chapter 10|13 pages
Multiple faces of migration and development
part 3C|44 pages
Developing the material world
part 4|78 pages
Actors of development
part 5|66 pages
Transversal perspectives