Contesting Development

Yale Agrarian Studies Series

by Patrick Barron, Michael Woolcock, Rachael Diprose

This pathbreaking book analyzes a highly successful participatory development program in Indonesia, exploring its distinctive origins and design principles and its impacts on local conflict dynamics and social institutions.

375 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2011

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Reviews

[John]

It's an important contribution to the literature on rural development projects. The authors take a middle road between establishment developmentalism and tear-it-all-down critical scholarship, taking both sides seriously and grappling with tough issues. They describe a remarkable project--remarkable in that the World Bank let it happen--that drew on insights from across the social sciences to try to help communities across Indonesia access funds to provide public goods, and in the process help residents of those communities govern themselves more effectively. They focus on the how the problem-solving forums in the program helped people deal with conflict. It's not an all-roses picture of the program, taking a hard-nosed look at the ways that development projects necessarily bring conflicts and run into the messy politics of the places they're introduced into. And the closing chapter is a solid argument for a new, critically pragmatic way of thinking about development.

[Hrabrina Nikolova]

Good book - very thorough research!