The rise & fall of development theory

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Title:

Author:

Leys, Colin, 1931-

ISBN:

9780253210166

9780253330833

9780852553596

9780852553503

Personal Author:

Leys, Colin, 1931-

Publication Information:

Nairobi : EAEP ; Bloomington : Indiana University Press, c1996.

Physical Description:

viii, 205 p. ; 25 cm.

Contents:

I. Development Theory. 1. The Rise & Fall of Development Theory. 2. Underdevelopment & Dependency: Critical Notes. 3. Samuel Huntington & the End of Classical Modernization Theory. 4. Rational Choice or Hobson's Choice? The 'New Political Economy' as Development Theory -- II. Development Theory & Africa. 5. African Economic Development in Theory and Practice. 6. The State & the Crisis of Simple Commodity Production in Africa. 7. Learning from the Kenya Debate. 8. African Capitalists & Development. 9. Development Theory & the African Tragedy.

Abstract:

This book is a 'stock-taking' of development theory at the end of the twentieth century. It argues that the assumptions on which development theory has rested since the 1950s no longer hold. The ex-colonial 'third world' for which development theory was originally developed has fractured into increasingly diverse regions, while the end of the post-war regime of regulated international trade and capital movements has drastically curtailed the scope for state economic intervention. A much broader-based, more historical and more explicitly political theoretical effort is now called for.

Subject Term:

Development economics.

Economic development.

Geographic Term:

Africa, Sub-Saharan -- Economic conditions -- 1960-

Copies:

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Item Barcode	Shelf Number	Copy	Status
Searching... 1:IIEMSA	1:GEN-BOOK	33168015746049	338.9 L685R 1996	1	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

"He has this wonderful and rare capacity to delineate the most complex of arguments in the most limpid prose. He never takes refuge in jargon. He demolishes pretentiousness. He is disarmingly honest. He hits you between the eyes. He is not afraid to be a lone voice as, increasingly, nowadays he is, the still small voice of humane sanity in an increasingly barbarous and market-oriented world. He makes immediate sense to anybody voting marginally to the left of Genghis Khan, Mrs. Thatcher or Newt Gingrich." ?John Lonsdale, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.

This book is a "stock-taking" of development theory at the end of the 20th century. It argues that the assumptions on which development theory has rested since the 1950s no longer hold. The postcolonial "third world" for which development theory was originally developed has fractured into increasingly diverse regions, while the end of the postwar regime of regulated international trade and capital movements has drastically curtailed the scope for state economic intervention. A much broader based, more historical and more explicitly political theoretical effort is now called for.