The sociology of development is in crisis. The reasons are controversial and a matter of academic debate, but many writers agree that the discipline has reached something of an impasse (see, for example, Booth 1985, Mouzelis 1988, Sklair 1988, van der Geest & Buttel 1988, Corbridge 1986, 1989, 1990, Spybey 1992). Since its establishment as a separate discipline within the social sciences in the postwar world, development sociology has undergone a number of theoretical transformations, each of which attempted to overcome the inadequacies of the previous "paradigm". However, the discipline has now reached a point where theoretical and conceptual innovation has largely "dried up" (but see Schuurman 1993, Booth 1994), which has led to an impasse on at least two fronts: first, an inability to move beyond the weaknesses of old paradigms, such as Marxism and dependency theory; secondly, and ultimately inseparable from the first point, an inability to come to terms with changes in the global order in the 1970s and 1980s (see especially Corbridge 1990: 623).