Handbook on Alternative Global Development

Challenging the dominant and mainstream views in global development, this pioneering Handbook questions the entirety of the development process in order to outline holistic political economies of development, discontents, and alternatives. Critically engaging with key theoretical debates and constructs in development studies, the contributors assess the problem of global development and underdevelopment, and the existing problematic explanations and solutions, before outlining alternatives. Chapters explore the nature of development, engaging with, critiquing, and going beyond the dominant theoretical approaches of modernisation, dependency, neoliberalism, human development, sustainable development, and postdevelopment. The chapters further examine more recent powerful forces of change, including sustainability, self-reliance, social and solidarity economies, and ecological alternatives. The Handbook makes a convincing case for an open-ended, ongoing theorisation of development and leaves readers with a key take-away: that not only inequalities but also social stratification can be used to frame the theorising, teaching, practice, praxis, policies, politics, activism, and indeed everything in the political economy of development. Underpinning innovative new research on development, this Handbook will prove invaluable to students and scholars of development studies, development economics, political economy, and social policy in emerging countries. Global in scope, policymakers and practitioners working in the Global South and the Global North will also find this Handbook refreshing.