Developing Hegemony: World Order and the Transnational Field of Development

At a time of multiple challenges to the liberal international order, development has become one of the most contentious areas of world politics. Dominant powers have reduced their assistance and overtly fused development with national and security interests, while rising powers like China have become major donors promoting new models and norms. Advancing an innovative Bourdieusian-inspired analysis of global politics as interaction between transnational fields, this book places development in the context of contemporary transformations in world order. It traces the history of development as a field of struggle from 1945 to the present, and argues that development is central to the emergence, maintenance, and transformation of world order. The authors show how the global field of development is characterized by a specific form of interest—an interest in disinterest—that performs the social alchemy of converting economic and military power into the symbolic power that is crucial for international hegemony. In the current geopolitical context, the ability of development to produce this symbolic power is dissolving and transforming, making the field one of the crucial sites where attempts to build an alternative global order are emerging and will be historically tested.

Rita Abrahamsen is Professor of African Studies, University of Oxford. Michael C. Williams is Professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa.