Philip McMichael, Professor, Development Sociology. Introducing:
Contesting Development: Critical Struggles for Social Change (2010)
Wednesday, March 31st 5pm
Cornell Store Book Department
A true product of recent Cornell research, Contesting Development is
the result of eight years of work by current and former graduate
students of Development Sociology. Through a series of case-studies
of struggles for survival and social justice, the authors provide
critical resources for unsettling and challenging the premises and
promise of development. Edited by Philip McMichael, this volume
"provides an important complement or corrective to existing accounts
of development." Five of the fourteen contributors will discuss the
book's content.
Development prescriptions advocate market solutions to all manner of
social and ecological problems. And yet there is substantial evidence
that these are not optimal solutions by any means, and that there are
other, emergent, solutions. Those struggling on the margins of
development reveal the many flaws and limitations of the dominant
market culture, and reinforce a critique of the core assumptions by
which market-driven development organizes the world. The contributors
present case studies from India, Pakistan, Japan, Brazil, Mexico,
Malawi, South Africa and Nigeria in their attempts to analyze issues
of education, rural and urban living, racism, gender disparity, and a
host of other interconnected forces within the political economy of
development.
At a time when the development promise is increasingly in
question, with dwindling social gains, the vision of modernity is
losing its certitude. This moment is observable through the lens of
critical struggles of those who experience disempowerment,
displacement, and development contradictions.we learn about the
underbelly of the system, how its disempowered subordinates
self-organize, and how they reveal the limiting assumptions of
development and alternative conditions of possibility, through their
struggles to become historical subjects.
Please join us for this very special celebration of the publication of
Contesting Development. Following a short account of the intellectual
project behind the book, and brief presentations on particular social
struggles, there will be a question and answer period moderated by
Professor McMichael. Light refreshments will be available throughout
the event, and copies of Contesting Development will be discounted 20%
for this special event.
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