Globalisation, poverty and conflict: a critical 'development' reader.

Is ‘development’ passé? Is it merely a by-product or a ‘trickle down’ effect of economic growth, spurred by globalisation? Will poverty simply diminish with increased global markets? This state-of-the-art critical ‘development’ reader deals with these and related questions. Globalisation, Poverty and Conflict examines the inter-relationships between globalisation, poverty and conflict. It complements current debates in the field of development studies and, in an era in which development fatigue seems to have become more profound than ever before, it brings the importance of development once again to the forefront. Achieving the Millennium Development Goals by 2015 is a concrete target which many governments have agreed to work towards.Whether these goals can be realised is another issue. Nonetheless, the Millennium Development Goals have brought more focused attention to development in the past few years and renewed debate about the relationships between the process of globalisation and widespread poverty and the emergence of violent conflicts.

The authors in this edited volume discuss these inter-related and highly controversial topical elements of development in a number of chapters organised around three sets of issues: (1) globalisation, inequality and poverty; (2) governance, civil society and poverty; and (3) resource degradation, institutions and conflict. The contributions represent current thinking on (and practice of) development policy, poverty reduction, the need for multi-level democratic institutions, and the containing and prevention of conflicts. The authors confront the predominant mainstream ideas on ‘development’ and propose alternatives.

The chapters, written by a select group of scholars and development practitioners, will be of direct interest to those involved in this field of social sciences and in ‘development practice’, but they are composed in such a way as to remain accessible for the generallyinterested reader.

Max Spoor is Associate Professor and Coordinator of the Centre for the Study of Transition and Development (CESTRAD), Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, The Netherlands, and Extraordinary Professor, Centre of International Relations and International Cooperation (CIDOB), Barcelona, Spain.