Encountering Development


Book Description

Originally published: 1995. Paperback reissue, with a new preface by the author.




Encountering Development


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? To answer these questions, Arturo Escobar shows how development policies became mechanisms of control that were just as pervasive and effective as their colonial counterparts. The development apparatus generated categories powerful enough to shape the thinking even of its occasional critics while poverty and hunger became widespread. "Development" was not even partially "deconstructed" until the 1980s, when new tools for analyzing the representation of social reality were applied to specific "Third World" cases. Here Escobar deploys these new techniques in a provocative analysis of development discourse and practice in general, concluding with a discussion of alternative visions for a postdevelopment era. Escobar emphasizes the role of economists in development discourse--his case study of Colombia demonstrates that the economization of food resulted in ambitious plans, and more hunger. To depict the production of knowledge and power in other development fields, the author shows how peasants, women, and nature became objects of knowledge and targets of power under the "gaze of experts." In a substantial new introduction, Escobar reviews debates on globalization and postdevelopment since the book's original publication in 1995 and argues that the concept of postdevelopment needs to be redefined to meet today's significantly new conditions. He then calls for the development of a field of "pluriversal studies," which he illustrates with examples from recent Latin American movements.




Encountering Development


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? To answer these questions, Arturo Escobar shows how development policies became mechanisms of control that were just as pervasive and effective as their colonial counterparts. The development apparatus generated categories powerful enough to shape the thinking even of its occasional critics while poverty and hunger became widespread. "Development" was not even partially "deconstructed" until the 1980s, when new tools for analyzing the representation of social reality were applied to specific "Third World" cases. Here Escobar deploys these new techniques in a provocative analysis of development discourse and practice in general, concluding with a discussion of alternative visions for a postdevelopment era. Escobar emphasizes the role of economists in development discourse--his case study of Colombia demonstrates that the economization of food resulted in ambitious plans, and more hunger. To depict the production of knowledge and power in other development fields, the author shows how peasants, women, and nature became objects of knowledge and targets of power under the "gaze of experts."




Territories of Difference


Book Description

In Territories of Difference, Arturo Escobar, author of the widely debated book Encountering Development, analyzes the politics of difference enacted by specific place-based ethnic and environmental movements in the context of neoliberal globalization. His analysis is based on his many years of engagement with a group of Afro-Colombian activists of Colombia’s Pacific rainforest region, the Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN). Escobar offers a detailed ethnographic account of PCN’s visions, strategies, and practices, and he chronicles and analyzes the movement’s struggles for autonomy, territory, justice, and cultural recognition. Yet he also does much more. Consistently emphasizing the value of local activist knowledge for both understanding and social action and drawing on multiple strands of critical scholarship, Escobar proposes new ways for scholars and activists to examine and apprehend the momentous, complex processes engulfing regions such as the Colombian Pacific today. Escobar illuminates many interrelated dynamics, including the Colombian government’s policies of development and pluralism that created conditions for the emergence of black and indigenous social movements and those movements’ efforts to steer the region in particular directions. He examines attempts by capitalists to appropriate the rainforest and extract resources, by developers to set the region on the path of modernist progress, and by biologists and others to defend this incredibly rich biodiversity “hot-spot” from the most predatory activities of capitalists and developers. He also looks at the attempts of academics, activists, and intellectuals to understand all of these complicated processes. Territories of Difference is Escobar’s effort to think with Afro-Colombian intellectual-activists who aim to move beyond the limits of Eurocentric paradigms as they confront the ravages of neoliberal globalization and seek to defend their place-based cultures and territories.




A World of Difference


Book Description

Widely regarded as the standard text on development geography, this volume examines the nature and causes of global inequality and critically analyzes contemporary approaches to economic development across the third world. Students gain a deeper understanding of the interacting dynamics of culture, gender, race, and class; biophysical factors, such as climate, population, and natural resources; and economic and political processesa "all of which have led to the present-day disparities between the first and third worlds. Numerous examples, sidebars, and figures illustrate how people in the global South are experiencing and contesting the forces of globalization. New to This Edition Updated to reflect a decade of economic, political, and social changes Extensively revised; more fully integrates postcolonial and feminist perspectives Broadens the prior edition's focus on Africa with examples from around the world A chapter on the promises and pitfalls of sustainable development.




Developing a Strategy for Missions (Encountering Mission)


Book Description

In this addition to the highly acclaimed Encountering Mission series, two leading missionary scholars offer an up-to-date discussion of missionary strategy that is designed for a global audience. The authors focus on the biblical, missiological, historical, cultural, and practical issues that inform and guide the development of an effective missions strategy. The book includes all the features that have made other series volumes useful classroom tools, such as figures, sidebars, and case studies. Students of global or domestic mission work and mission practitioners will value this new resource.




Encountering Theology of Mission


Book Description

Leading evangelical mission experts offer a comprehensive theology of mission text, providing biblical, historical, and contemporary perspectives.




About Arturo Escobar: "Encountering Development"


Book Description

Literature Review from the year 2011 in the subject Politics - Topic: Development Politics, grade: 1,7, University of Auckland (Centre for Development Studies), course: Contemporary Theories of International Development, language: English, abstract: The field of development studies has seen an endless coming and going of various new paradigms in the latter half of the 20th century. They all claimed to be highly innovative, stirring hope that, after all the dissatisfactory experiences prior to their emergence, the big problems of developing countries can finally be solved. A vast body of major theory on development emerged since the 1940s, such as Modernisation theory, Dependency theory, World-Systems theory, and Neoliberalism with its strucural adjustment programms (Chant & McIlwaine, 2009). In the early to mid-1990s, an outraged collection of texts, highly critical of all those conventional development approaches, emerged. In contrast to former controversies, these writings were novel in the way that they casted “a serious doubt not only on the feasibility but on the very desirability of development” itself (Escobar, 2000, p. 11), making use of newly revised poststructuralist and discursive approaches. This way of criticism became known as post-development. According to McGregor (2009, p.2), the “most influential and widely read text however” was Escobar’s (1995) Encountering Development: The Naking and Unmaking of the Third World. This article aims to review this book and is divided into three parts. The first section provides a brief summary of the text, followed by an analysis dealing with major potential contradictions and their relative insignificance, closing with the final part by highlighting the huge and unique impact the book had in the field of development studies and especially in the branch of post-development theory.




Public Management as a Design-Oriented Professional Discipline


Book Description

While public management has become widely spoken of, its identity and character is not well-defined. Such disparity is an underlying problem in developing public management within academia, and in the eyes of practitioners. In this book, Michael Barzelay tackles the challenge of making public management into a true professional discipline. Barzelay argues that public management needs to integrate contrasting conceptions of professional practice. By pressing forward an expansive idea of design in public management, Barzelay formulates a fresh vision of public management in practice and outlines its implications for research, curriculum development and disciplinary identity.




Encounters with Children


Book Description

TABLE OF CONTENTS. 1. Basic perspectives: biases and format / S. D. Dixon and M. T. Stein. 2. Setting the stage: theories and concepts of child development / S. D. Dixon. 3. Interviewing in a pediatric setting / M. T. Stein. 4. Designing an office with a developmental perspective / M. T. Stein. 5. The prenatal visit: making an alliance with the family / S. D. Dixon. 6. The newborn examination: innate readiness for interaction with the environment / S. D. Dixon. 7. The hospital discharge examination: getting to know the individual child / M. T. Stein. 8. The special care nursery: unlocking the behavior of the vulnerable neonate / S. D. Dixon and P. Gorski. 9. Five days to four weeks: making a place in the family / P. Kaiser and S. D. Dixon. 10. Five weeks to two months: getting on track / M. T. Stein. 11. Three to four months: having fun with the picture book baby / S. D. Dixon. 12. Five to Six months: reaching out to play / S. D. Dixon, M. J. Hennessy, and P. Kaiser. 13. Seven to eight months: separation and strangers / P. Kaiser and S. D. Dixon. 14. Nine to ten months: active exploration in a safe environment / P. Kaiser and S. D. Dixon. 15. One year: one giant step forward / S. D. Dixon and M. J. Hennessy. 16. Eighteen months: asserting oneself, a push-pull process / M. T. Stein. 17. Two years: learning the rules language and cognition / S. D. Dixon, H. Feldman, and E. Bates. 18. Two and one-half to Three years: emergence of magic / S. D. Dixon. 19. Four years: clearer sense of self / N. Putnam and S. D. Dixon. 20. Five years: entering school / P. Nader. 21. Six years: Learning to use symbols / N. Putnam and M. T. Stein. 22. Seven to ten years: growth and competency / N. Putnam. 23. Seven to Ten years: the world of the elementary school child / R. D. Wells and M. T. Stein. 24. Overview of adolescence / M. E. Felice. 25. Eleven to thirteen years: early adolescence - age of rapid changes / M. E. Felice. 26. Fourteen to sixteen years: mid-adolescence the dating game / M. E. Felice. 27. Seventeen to twenty-one years: late adolescence / L. I. Rice and M. E. Felice. 28. Special Families / R. D. Wells, N. Putnam, and M. T. Stein. 29. Childrens encounters with illness: hospitalization and procedures / M. T. Stein. 30. Child advocacy: a pediatric perspective / M. T. Stein, S. D. Dixon, and J. E. Schanberger. 31. The use of drawings by children in the pediatric office / J. B. Welsh. 32. Books for parents, videos for kids: an annotated bibliography / P. Kaiser, M. Caffery, H. J. Brehm, S. D. Dixon, M. T. Stein, and M. E. Felice.