Post-colonial, post-modern and feminist critiques have challenged the ways we theorise and practice development. Development is not just the conclusion of economic logic; its histories reveal a legacy of contested power, illuminating the contemporary battlefields of knowledge.

These essays explore the language of development, its rhetoric and meaning within different political and institutional contexts. The contested ideas behind world development are explained, with illustrative material, sensitive to place and time, chiefly drawn from Asia, Africa and Latin America.

This book examines the power of development to imagine new worlds and to constantly reinvent itself as the solution to problems of national and global disorder.