ABSTRACT
It is a reflection of just how much ruling paradigms have changed in geography as a whole, and in the geographical study of developing areas in particular, that it hardly seems necessary to begin a chapter such as this with a spirited justification of the need to study the roles played by power, politics and social organisation in the development process. Even in a matter of ten or fifteen years ago, this would not have been the case. In the early 1970s, whilst few would have been surprised to see included chapters on agriculture, population and demography, economics, housing and regional development in a book on Third World geography, eyebrows would undoubtedly have been raised in some quarters at one dealing specifically with the general topic of power, politics and society. Quite simply, at that juncture, many would have taken the view that such matters are the province of the political scientist, sociologist or the social and economic historian, and most certainly not that of the geographer.
