ABSTRACT
We live in a world disfigured by poverty, inequality, multiple injustices, and planetary threats. Critical development studies (CDS) seeks to explain why and how and where alternatives might be found. CDS is a broad, heterogeneous, multi/interdisciplinary and continually evolving field with no clear boundaries. Four key understandings or characteristics that help shape the field and distinguish it from mainstream development studies are identified here. These characteristics are: analysis of development in the context of capitalism; examination of alternative pathways; recognition that these alternatives may spring from the periphery of the world capitalist system; and exploration of the different forms that resistance takes across time and space as a result of the unevenness of capitalist development. These characteristics are illustrated by looking at examples of contributions to critical development thought from seven ‘development decades’.
