Abstract
There are words that are fundamental for a society to imagine and express itself; words whose changes in meaning mirror the transformations and the challenges that people confront. These are words that need to be studied to understand a society, its transformation and possible future. Thirty years ago, Richard Williams (1983) named these words ‘keywords’. ‘Development’ is one of the main keywords of the current public and academic debate that engages a growing audience of politicians, activists and social scientists worldwide.
As Amartya Sen points out in his foreward to this volume (p. x), development ‘is particularly concerned with reversing the solitariness of human efforts to improve their infidel lives, through attempts to overcome the nastiness, the brutishness, and the shortness of human lives through human interactions, within the boundaries of a state, but also across the boundaries’. Despite its present prominent cultural role, the history of this keyword is relatively recent, being rooted in the history of Western thought and politics. ‘Development’ has been part of the lexicon of economics since the works of classicist writers such as David Hume and Adam Smith, and later John Stuart Mill. They used this term to address questions of economic growth, distribution of wealth and the human principles underlying individual and collective behaviour. However, it is only in the 20th century, after World War II, that this keyword was invested with new meaning, being central to the rhetoric of the Marshall Plan and other programmes of reconstruction in Europe and Asia. Since then, ‘development’ has grown into the main word that describes a wide field emerged as the confluence of povertyfighting, infrastructure-building, institution and international political alliance-strengthening. Since then ‘development’ programmes have been launched worldwide, largely aimed at former colonial territories in South America, Africa, Asia and Oceania. International institutions and NGOs have been the key players of this rush towards development, drawing social, economic and political trajectories that can hardly be summarized as a single direction. Thus, as the editors of the volume suggest:
[D]evelopment is no longer seen purely in terms of economics and economic growth. It is also no longer seen as being dependent either solely on state direction or solely on the free play of markets. And development ‘wisdom’ no longer emanates from the developed countries of the north. As a result of the current mutability in the field, the moment appears ripe for a stocktaking of where we are, analysis of how we got here, and some speculation on what all this portends for the future. (p. 1)
The book follows this conclusion and contributes to explore a field of study that has expanded from the initial questions of ‘how to overcome scarcity?’ and ‘how to generate income?’ and now encompasses a ‘bewildering number of different sorts of goals at varying scales of ambition and costs: from national income to individual freedoms, from global health to safer communities’ (p. 5).
The volume is divided into three parts. The first one deals with the main critical issues that shaped development theory since its beginning (pp. 17–169). The nine chapters highlight the progressive expansion of the notions of development ‘beginning with the straightforward increases in average income, to incorporate broader aspects of well-being’ (p. 17), and the growing involvement of social sciences other than economics. As the authors point out, this positive transformation led to the present tension in development discourse between broad, universal prescriptions and specific applications.
Picking from the questions raised in the early nine chapters, the second and largest part of the volume presents the key concepts of development studies (pp. 169–630). The concepts are organized in five sections that deal with specific areas of the debate: the relationship between state and society, economy, peace and security, sustainability and health, and technology and innovation. The chapters analyse the roles played by main institutions such as international bodies, states, banks, firms and NGOs, and the increasing relevance of environment, health and technology in shaping the field of development. The 27 chapters, thus, bring to the foreground the interconnectedness of development strategies and actors.
This element appears even more clearly in the third and final part (pp. 631–898). It analyses real-life experiences and practices working in the field. The first eight chapters investigate regions, in Asia, South America and Africa, as the subjects of development projects. The remaining eight chapters closely investigate institutions, such as state, civil society, NGOs, with operational or consultative roles in development. These contributions describe an international picture of the different ongoing trajectories that come under the common rubric of ‘development’.
Through its richness and depth, the volume addresses a wide audience of students and researchers interested in the issue of development. In particular, it is a useful tool for those scholars looking for a starting point for grasping the fundamental issues presently at stake and an introduction to the main territories explored by the research.
The book provides a synthesis, or at least a shared framework, of a debate that appears to have multiplied its perspectives. While this multiplicity may be puzzling at first glance, as suggested by the editors, it is a potential resource for this field of study and action that, in the near future, has to address a conscious diversification of objectives to tackle the issues of each territory. The contribution given by the book is fundamental to meeting this challenge.