ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in this book. The book analyses the discursive similarities and differences of the civilising mission and development. It explores the concept of 'development' and why the concept should be abandoned, and then reviews the Eurocentric, depoliticising, and authoritarian implications of the concept. The book evaluates the documents of one of the institutions often identified with neoliberalism, the World Bank, and analyses the massive shifts that have occurred in the representation of poverty and the corresponding strategies in this institution between 1970-2000. It looks at different programmes and projects of development of the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s and finds that there has been a shift in relations of power concomitant to the transformation of development discourse and that development functions as an empty signifier that can be filled with various contents. The book deals with the question of what discourse analysis can contribute to development studies.
