Review
"An authoritative and up to date overview that combines accurate and insightful overviews of the major contributions in the field with their own original and illuminating arguments."
--James Ferguson, Stanford University
"In our transforming, turbulent, multi-polar era, 'development' has definitively expanded beyond the discourses and practices of an aid industry to encompass far wider capitalist processes--as well as struggles against them. In this welcome new version of their acclaimed earlier book, Gardner and Lewis carve anthropology's place in this brave new development world--charting and navigating change, questioning its social basis and morality, posing essential questions about who gains, who loses and why, and empowering alternatives. Essential reading for all involved with anthropology or development--and essential proof that they should engage their perspectives with each other more deeply and more often."--Melissa Leach, Institute of Development Studies
"This new edition of a classical book on anthropology of development and anthropology in development combines the quality of the original with fresh and up-to-date analysis. The already impressive state of arts of the first book has been extended to most of the rapidly expanding literature of the last twenty years. This book is essential for anyone interested by debates concerning the relation between anthropology and development."
--Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan, École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Marseilles
"As the 'post-modern challenge' to development and social theory came and went, what happened to its insights and perhaps even its excesses? One thing is certain: Development continues to be a powerful cultural imaginary and set of practices, a space of power. By subjecting the 'really existing worlds of development' to an acutely perceptive anthropological lens, this carefully reworked volume by two of development's most accomplished scholars re-invigorates, like no other treatise in the field, the connection between research, critique, and action in inspired and practical ways. Their deeply constructive approach to development results in a compelling Anthropology of Engagement that unveils the tactics of power while at the same time illuminating paths towards less unequal and more livable worlds."
--Arturo Escobar, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
"Ameliorates the despair which students of development often feel once they come to understand the complexity, and the vested interests, of the aid industry."--LSE Magazine
"Anthropology and Developmentconcludes with a punctilious and succinct assertion of what the authors strive to maintain throughout the book: anthropology of development, like other socially engaged disciplines, has built on its past and surrounding dynamics to become self-reflexive. There is no doubt that [this book] is a staple for anyone interested in the subject."--Allegra Laboratory Reviews
About the Author
Katy Gardner is Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics and the author of Global Migrants, Local Lives (Oxford University Press, 1995), Discordant Development (Pluto, 2012) and Anthropology and Development (Pluto, 2015). David Lewis is Professor of Social Policy and Development in the Department of Social Policy, London School of Economics. He is the author of Bangladesh: Politics, Economy and Civil Society (CUP, 2012), co-author of Anthropology and Development (Pluto, 2015) and co-editor of The Aid Effect (Pluto, 2005).
