Melissa Butcher - New Perspectives in International Development

Published by

Bloomsbury Academic
an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square
London WC1B 3DP
United Kingdom

and

175 Fifth Avenue
New York
NY10010
USA
www.bloomsburyacademic.com

In association with

The Open University
Walton Hall, Milton Keynes
MK7 6AA
United Kingdom

First published 2013

Copyright 2013 The Open University

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted or utilised in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

Edited and designed by The Open University.

Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by Latimer Trend and Company Ltd, Plymouth.

CIP records for this book are available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-1-78093-243-9 (hardback)
ISBN 978-1-78093-251-4 (paperback)
ISBN 978-1-78093-248-4 (Epub eBook)
ISBN 978-1-78093-249-1 (PDF eBook)

1.1

Cover image Qilai Shen/Panos.

This book forms part of the series International Development published by Bloomsbury Academic in association with The Open University. The two books in the series are:

International Development in a Changing World
(edited by Theo Papaioannou and Melissa Butcher)
ISBN 978-1-78093-234-7 (hardback)
ISBN 978-1-78093-237-8 (paperback)
ISBN 978-1-78093-235-4 (Epub eBook)
ISBN 978-1-78093-236-1 (PDF eBook)

New Perspectives in International Development
(edited by Melissa Butcher and Theo Papaioannou)
ISBN 978-1-78093-243-9 (hardback)
ISBN 978-1-78093-251-4 (paperback)
ISBN 978-1-78093-248-4 (Epub eBook)
ISBN 978-1-78093-249-1 (PDF eBook)

This publication forms part of the Open University module
TD223 International development: making sense of a changing world. Details of this and other Open University modules can be obtained from the Student Registration and Enquiry Service, The Open University, PO Box 197, Milton Keynes MK7 6BJ, United Kingdom (tel. +44 (0)845 300 60 90,
email general-enquiries@open.ac.uk).

www.open.ac.uk

Welcome to New Perspectives in International Development, the second volume of the companion text book to the Open University module International development: making sense of a changing world. This book will focus on some of the latest thinking in international development that is moving the debate into areas such as the connection between fear, security, conflict and sustainable development. Looming energy crises and concerns surrounding the impact of environmental and climate change have led to an increasing focus in Development Studies on the role of technology and resources. Finally, the book takes up the theme of wellbeing, a growing body of research that is attempting to find new ways to assess development policies and practices, including making development personal.

The book maintains the theme of development as a process of change, examined through the lens of historical transformation, contested sites of power, the capacity for human agency to affect change, and the different scales, from the local to the transnational, at which change can occur. The interaction between these threads and the particular case studies highlights the complex processes involved in international development that cannot be understood in isolation.

This interaction extends to academic research and the chapters in this book represent an interdisciplinary understanding of new perspectives in international development. Writers bring their own theoretical and empirical tools from social sciences including geography, politics, international relations, economics and environmental science. As noted in the companion volume to this book (International Development in a Changing World), every subject has its own language with a vocabulary of terms that are used to engage with, describe, analyze and interpret the subject. Development is no different and this second volume adds to this vocabulary, enabling you to learn and practice new terminology through its application to relevant case studies. If you have a social science background you will already be familiar with some of the terms used here. If you come from a natural science or technological background, you may need to be a bit more patient, although theres no need to feel daunted. In order to help you with the vocabulary of New Perspectives in International Development, we have produced a glossary located at the end of this book; key terms are highlighted in the text in bold.

The theoretical concepts you will come across, such as risk society (see Chapter 5), positive and negative freedom (see Chapter 4), or modernization (see Chapter 6), provide general and normative explanations about how social transformations and deliberative human actions are thought to occur, informing policy and practice. However, as all theory is context dependent, and therefore cannot be understood in abstraction from the concrete relations of history, power and agency, and scale, chapters move from the theoretical to include case studies. Theory is placed in the context of the deliberate actions of people to improve their livelihoods, communities and societies. For this reason, as you read through the chapters in this book you will come across many activities that give you an opportunity to apply the theories you read about to real-world examples. These activities are of three kinds:

As in International Development in a Changing World, these different kinds of activity also start from the basic assumption that you only really learn something when you have to teach it, even if that is teaching yourself. However, we follow these activities with a Discussion text of our own which can give you ideas to build on or compare your own thoughts with.

New Perspectives in International Development begins by asking the question what is it that we are afraid of? The answer to this question will obviously vary depending on context but, as Joseph Hanlon points out, fears and vulnerabilities are interconnected. The rise of China may cause concern for policy makers in the USA who fear a loss of influence, workers in Detroit may fear losing their livelihoods, while others may worry about the impact on the environment of Chinas demand for more resources. Rural migrants in Chinas burgeoning cities may fear starvation and homelessness with the decline of the welfare state in that country. The interconnected processes of development generate and exacerbate many of these fears.