ABSTRACT
Conventional approaches in the mainstream of development studies operate at several levels, from a superficial description of development actions or programmes (for example, a microcredit scheme) to ideas that underpin development strategies at the level of policy or institutional development (for example, economic growth with equity). Critical development studies must dig deeper into the development process towards an analysis of the concepts and assumptions, the ‘roots’, that are shared by all varieties of development. A toolbox of instruments that might be used or serve to address these foundational issues includes postdevelopment in its original sense as a poststructuralist critique (although it is not appropriate as an alternative), along with others such as deconstruction, performativity, ethnographies of development, ecological economics, and/or environmental ethics.
