Critical Reflections on Development

Designed as a critique of the key failures of international development, this book brings together practitioners, policy-makers, researchers, activists, and academics in an attempt to work toward a shared conceptualisation of development by outlining and critically reflecting on their own understanding of development. Front Matter....Pages i-viii Introduction....Pages 1-12 Reconceptualising Development: The Painful Job of Thinking....Pages 13-32 The g7+ Group of Fragile States: Towards Better International Engagement and Accountability in Aid Delivery to Fragile Nations....Pages 33-49 After the Washington Consensus: Rethinking Dominant Paradigms and Questioning ‘One Size Fits All’ Orthodoxies....Pages 50-68 Development Aid, Civil War and the Containers of Capitalism....Pages 69-89 The Good Governance-Human Rights Nexus....Pages 90-103 Reconceptualising International Aid and Development NGOs....Pages 104-121 A Trojan Horse? International Development Agencies Embrace Business Practices and Mental Models....Pages 122-138 Seeing the Forest for the Carbon: Interrogating Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD)....Pages 139-161 Reconceptualising Development: The Turn to Civil Society?....Pages 162-185 A Feminist Reflection on the Declarations of Paris and Dili: Towards Re-Imagining the Aid and Development Endeavour....Pages 186-206 Reproduction and Property in Rural China: Development and Discrimination....Pages 207-237 Conclusion....Pages 238-242 Back Matter....Pages 243-252 While a number of societies have begun to lift themselves out of poverty, many more remain in what appears to be a permanent cycle of failure, inappropriate development and exploitation. Assessing this repetition of development failures, this book critically analyses some of the key features of conventional development paradigms, explaining why they have been less successful in addressing outstanding development problems and offering alternative ways forward. With contributions from development practitioners as well as academics, the result is a novel blend of theory and practice in critiquing the development field (site de l'éditeur)