Development Theory and Practice in a Changing World

Taking a critical and historical view, this text explores the theory and changing practice of international development. It provides an overview of how the field has evolved and the concrete impacts of this on the ground on the lives of people in the Global South.

Development Theory and Practice in a Changing World covers the major theories of development, such as modernisation and dependency, in addition to anti-development theories such as post-modernism and decoloniality. It examines the changing nature of immanent (structural) conditions of development in addition to the main attempts to steer them (imminent development). The book suggests that the era of development as a hegemonic idea and practice may be coming to an end, at the same time as it appears to have achieved its apogee in the Sustainable Development Goals as a result of the rise of ultra-nationalism around the world, the increasing importance of securitisation and the existential threat posed by climate change. Whether development can or should survive as a concept is interrogated in the book.

This book offers a fresh and updated take on the past 60 years of development and is essential reading for advanced undergraduate students in areas of development, geography, international studies, political science, economics and sociology.

Pádraig Carmody is Associate Professor in Geography, Head of Department, Fellow and director of the Masters in Development Practice at Trinity College Dublin and Senior Research Associate at the University of Johannesburg. His research centres on the political economy of globalisation and economic restructuring in Southern and Eastern Africa. He has published in a variety of journals, such as Economic Geography, World Development and Political Geography, amongst others. He has published seven books. The second edition of his New Scramble for Africa has recently been published. He sits of the boards of the Journal of the Tanzanian Geographical Society, African Geographical Review, Political Geography and Geoforum, where he was previously editor-in-chief. He is currently an associate editor of the journal Transnational Corporations, published by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.