ABSTRACT
In recent years, much mainstream development discourse has sought to co-opt and neutralize key concepts relating to empowerment, participation, gender, sustainability and inclusivity in order to serve a market-driven, neoliberal agenda. Critical development studies now play a crucial role in combatting this by analyzing the systemic changes needed to transform the current world to one where economic and social justice and environmental integrity prevail.
The Essential Guide to Critical Development Studies takes as its starting point the multiple crises – economic, political, social and environmental – of the dominant current global capitalist system. The chapters collectively document and analyze these crises and the need to find alternatives to the system(s) that generate them. To do so, analyses of class, gender and empire are placed at the centre of discussion, in contrast to markets, liberalization and convergence, which characterize mainstream development discourse. Each contributor supplements their overview with a guide to the critical development studies literature on the topic, thereby providing scholars and students not only with a precis of the key issues, but also a signpost to further readings.
This is an important resource for academics, researchers, policymakers and professionals in the areas of development studies, political science, sociology, economics, gender studies, history, anthropology, agrarian studies, international relations and international political economy.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|19 pages
Reflections on history
part II|106 pages
Thinking critically about development
part III|57 pages
Capitalism, imperialism and globalization
part IV|38 pages
Poverty, inequalities and development dynamics
chapter 13|10 pages
Poverty analysis through a gender lens
chapter 14|14 pages
Gender inequalities at work
part V|46 pages
Policy configurations for development
chapter 17|10 pages
The developmental state and late industrialization
part VI|39 pages
Class and development
part VII|49 pages
Agrarian change and spatial reconfigurationsxs
part VIII|43 pages
Resources, energy and the environment
part IX|31 pages
The BRICS as the new ‘development giants’
part X|45 pages
The search for a new model