Class Dynamics of Development

This book argues that class relations are constitutive of development processes and central to understanding inequality within and between countries. It does so via a transdisciplinary approach that draws on case studies from Asia, Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. Contributors illustrate and explain the diversity of forms of class relations, and the ways in which they interplay with other social relations of dominance and subordination, such as gender and ethnicity as part of a wider project to revitalise class analysis in the study of development problems and experiences.

Class is conceived as arising out of exploitative social relations of production, but is formulated through and expressed by multiple determinations. By illuminating the diversity of social formations, this book illustrates the depth and complexity present in Marx’s method.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.

Jonathan Pattenden is a Senior Lecturer in Politics and Development Studies at the University of East Anglia, UK, and author of Labour, State and Society in Rural India: A Class-relational Approach (2016). His research interests centre on the political economy and political sociology of development and class relations in India and elsewhere in Asia.

Liam Campling is Senior Lecturer in Political Economy at Queen Mary University of London, UK. His research is on the interplay of multinational enterprises, international trade, the political economy of industrial development and environmental change. His research focuses on the interplay of multinational enterprises, international trade, and the political economy of industrial development and environmental change.

Satoshi Miyamura is Lecturer in the Economy of Japan in the Department of Economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, UK. His research interests are in the political economy of development in India and Japan and the economics of labour and institutions.

Benjamin Selwyn is Professor of International Relations at the University of Sussex, UK. He is author of Workers, State and Development in Brazil (2012) and The Global Development Crisis (2014), and The Struggle for Development (2017).