Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective (Sociology for a New Century Series) - Softcover

McMichael, Philip

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0761988106 ISBN 13: 9780761988106

Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc, 2003

Synopsis

The distribution of the world′s material wealth is far from even. And while most of the western world may be accustomed to a commercial culture, there are other cultures (e.g., Amish, Islamic, peasant) that are not commercial or are uncomfortable with commercial definition. Because cultural meaning is not universally defined through the market, "globalization," as it is currently understood, is not necessarily a universal aspiration.

 

Why then, is there so much talk of globalization? In this Third Edition of Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective, author Philip McMichael provides a narrative of how development came to be institutionalized as an international project, pursued by individual nation-states in the post-colonial era. This new edition has been updated and revised to incorporate the treatments of fundamentalism, terrorism, the AIDS crisis, and the commercialization of services via the World Trade Organization.

 

The evident failure of many countries to fulfill this promise of development and the world′s growing awareness of environmental limits have forced a reevaluation of the development enterprise. Development and Social Change traces the changing fortunes of development efforts, the shortcomings of which have produced two responses. One is to advocate a thoroughly global market to expand trade and spread the wealth. The other is to reevaluate the economic emphasis and to recover a sense of cultural community.

 

Features of this book:

• A world-historical perspective that situates globalization in the declining fortunes of the postwar development project.
• A political perspective that views development and globalization as practices managed by historic elite groupings, as mechanisms of power and world ordering.
• An emphasis on resistance and social movements as actors shaping the meaning and direction of both development and globalization, as they impact societies around the world.
• A series of case studies that allow in-depth examination of development/globalization dilemmas and paradoxes.

 

Development and Social Change is the first book to present students with a coherent explanation of how "globalization" took root in the public discourse and how "globalization" represents a shift away from development as a way to think about non-western societies. This is an ideal text for undergraduate and graduate students studying globalization, social development, and social change in Sociology, Political Science, Anthropology, and International Studies.

To read a sample chapter from Development and Social Change click on "Additional Materials" in the left column under "About This Book" or simply click here.

 

About this title

About the Author

Philip McMichael grew up in Adelaide, South Australia, completing undergraduate degrees in economics and in political science at the University of Adelaide. After traveling in India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan and doing community work in Papua New Guinea, he pursued his doctorate in sociology at the State University of New York at Binghamton. He has taught at the University of New England (New South Wales), Swarthmore College, and the University of Georgia, and he is presently Emeritus Professor of Global Development at Cornell University, in Ithaca, NY. Other appointments include Visiting Senior Research Scholar in International Development at the University of Oxford (Wolfson College) and Visiting Scholar, School of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Queensland.

His book Settlers and the Agrarian Question: Foundations of Capitalism in Colonial Australia (1984) won the Social Science History Association’s Allan Sharlin Memorial Award in 1985. In addition to authoring Food Regimes and Agrarian Questions (2013), McMichael edited The Global Restructuring of Agro-Food Systems (1994), Food and Agrarian Orders in the World Economy (1995), New Directions in the Sociology of Global Development (2005) with Frederick H. Buttel, Contesting Development: Critical Struggles for Social Change (2010), The Politics of Biofuels, Land and Agrarian Change (2011) with Jun Borras and Ian Scoones, and Finance or Food? The Role of Cultures, Values and Ethics in Land Use Negotiations, with Hilde Bjørkhaug and Bruce Muirhead (2020).

He has served twice as chair of his department, as director of Cornell University’s International Political Economy Program, as chair of the American Sociological Association’s Political Economy of the World-System Section, as president of the Research Committee on Agriculture and Food for the International Sociological Association. He is also an active member of the International Studies Association. He has also worked with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Civil Society Mechanism of the FAO’s Committee on World Food Security (CFS), the UN Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), the international peasant coalition Via Campesina, and the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty.

Edition details

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0761988106
• ISBN 13: 9780761988106
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 3
• Number of pages: 400