Encountering Development

By Arturo Escobar,

Book cover of Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World

Book description

How did the industrialized nations of North America and Europe come to be seen as the appropriate models for post-World War II societies in Asia, Africa, and Latin America? How did the postwar discourse on development actually create the so-called Third World? And what will happen when development ideology collapses?…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Encountering Development as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

This book changed everything I thought I knew about development.

It makes the compelling case that the project of international development creates the condition of ‘underdevelopment’.

Drawing on key thinkers of the time, Edward Said and Michel Foucault, Escobar shows how development as a domain of thought and action produces the ‘third world’ as a site for intervention by former colonial powers, thereby continuing the imperial project.

As someone familiar with local development, I (and others), don’t share his faith in grassroots organisations as a solution, but find his analytical tools critical in interrogating how they work.

And as a…

From Tanya's list on anthropology of development.

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