Autonomous Development: Humanizing the Landscape : An Excursion into Radical Thinking and Practice - Hardcover

Carmen, Raff

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1856493873 ISBN 13: 9781856493871

Publisher: Zed Books, 1996

Synopsis

At a time of widespread disillusion as to what development has in practice done to the lives of hundreds of millions of marginalised people over the past 40 years, this book seeks to reclaim development as a project of people's own autonomous agency. Born out of three decades of field experience and working with 'Third World' students, it revisits the primary question of what development ought really to be about. Raff Carmen starts from the conviction that development is too important to be left to the developers. He critically examines what has gone on under its name, finding it wanting both as an epistemological category and a sound operational practice. Instead, he presents a counter-view of development as an act of creation whereby people exercise their inalienable right 'to invent their own future' as authors of an ongoing process of transforming and humanising the landscapes they inhabit.

About this title

About the Author

Raff Carmen is an emeritus professor at the University of Manchester.

Review

"In his lucid, original and challenging style, Raff Carmen strips away the comfortable myths of world development and replaces them with a compelling call to ‘humanize the landscape." – Wendy Harcourt, Society for International Development

"The methods and ideas forcefully expounded by Raff Carmen are of urgent relevance... an explosive critique of dominant top-down and ethnocentric development ideology." - Thierry Verhelst, Network Cultures, author of No Life without Roots

"Raff Carmen is one of very few challenging and ground-breaking thinkers who can change the way in which we perceive and practise ‘development’. In this comprehensive book, he succeeds in interweaving a vast panorama of theories and methodologies with practical case studies to bring complex issues dramatically to life... He convinces us that alternative approaches have worked and can work in the future." - David Archer, Head of International Education, ACTIONAID

"An incisive look at many of the new ideas around ‘development’. Critical, original and accessible." - Ben Oakley, University of Bristol

"A refreshing and welcome addition to the discourse on South World development. In an era where socio-economic disparities between South and North are increasing, and the mass media give consumers the world according to McCoke, voices like Carmen’s are vitally important.... A comprehensive analysis of both the barriers to and hopes for development in the South.... Highly recommended for people interested in people-centred economics." - Professor Farah M. Shroff, University of Toronto

"Carmen’s incisive arguments are thought-provoking and refreshing in their intellectual appeal and pragmatic ‘development’ prescriptions. His whole analysis is based on two pristine principles: People cannot ‘be’ ‘put’ first: development is people. People are not the problem: they are the solution. A readable book for the development policy and programme practitioners, social activists and Third World commentators alike." - P. Jegadish Gandhi, Vellore Institute of Development Studies, India

Edition details

• Publisher: Zed Books
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 1856493873
• ISBN 13: 9781856493871
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 256