Rethinking Development In South Asia

This book challenges the way development has been conceptualized and practiced in South Asian context, and argues for its deconstruction in a way that would allow freedom, choice and greater well-being for the local people. Far from taking development for granted as growth and advancement, this book unveils how development could also be a destructive force to local socio-cultural and environmental contexts. With a critical examination of such conventional development practices as hegemonic, patriarchal, devastating and failure, it highlights how the rethinking of development could be seen as a matter of practice by incorporating peopleâ (TM)s interest, priorities and participation. The book theoretically challenges the conventional notion of hegemonic development and proposes alternative means, and, practically, provides nuances of ethnographic knowledge which will be of great interest to policy planners, development practitioners, educationists and anyone interested in knowing more about how people think about their own development.

This book challenges the way development has been conceptualized and practiced in South Asian context, and argues for its deconstruction in a way that would allow freedom, choice and greater well-being for the local people. Far from taking development for granted as growth and advancement, this book unveils how development could also be a destructive force to local socio-cultural and environmental contexts. With a critical examination of such conventional development practices as hegemonic, patriarchal, devastating and failure, it highlights how the rethinking of development could be seen as a matter of practice by incorporating people’s interest, priorities and participation. The book theoretically challenges the conventional notion of hegemonic development and proposes alternative means, and, practically, provides nuances of ethnographic knowledge which will be of great interest to policy planners, development practitioners, educationists and anyone interested in knowing more about how people think about their own development.

First published in 1987, this volume stresses the importance of development studies for sociology, as P. W. Preston argues that this field of study is emerging from the technical social scientific ghetto back into the mainstream of the ‘classical tradition’ of social theorizing, represented by Marx, Weber and Durkheim. Preston discusses the position of development studies in relation to the wider group of the social sciences in general and to sociology in particular. Using examples mainly from the study of Southeast Asia, he looks at the diversity of available ‘modes of social theoretic engagement’ and considers the work of the colonial administrator scholar, the humanist academic scholar, and the scholar who theorises on behalf of the planners, discusses the mode of political writing, and Marxian analyses of development; and considers the particular problems surrounding the elites of post-colonial ‘nation states’.

Masina reassesses the last thirty years of economic development in East Asia in light of recent dramatic events, challenging scholars and policy makers to critically review development strategies.

This book makes an interdisciplinary in-depth study of refugees, migration, conflicts, and development in the South Asian region. By depicting the socio-economic and security aspects of migration along with human security, this book has projected the vulnerability of this region.

This book offers a comprehensive and accessible treatment of recent academic and policy studies of basic education in South Asia.