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The End of Development? Development Theory in Historical Perspective: The Power of Knowledge for Social Change

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Tracing the historical and intellectual origins of post-development, Arresting Development, explores the impact of post-development theorizing on the study of international development and it compares across cultures of theory, methodology and practice to achieve universal understandings about values, identity and development.

208 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 10, 2008

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About the author

Craig Johnson

7 books1 follower
Craig Johnson
Associate Professor
BAH (Queen's University), MA (University of Toronto), Ph.D. (London School of Economics)

Areas of interest
Comparative politics; Asian politics; international development; poverty; human security; climate change; democratic governance; decentralization; Thailand; India; Bangladesh.
I teach in the field of international development, and specialize primarily on the politics of aid, the politics of India and the political economy of globalization and development. I hold a Ph.D. in International Development from the London School of Economics (http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/DESTIN), where my work on environmental degradation and ethnic conflict in Southern Thailand explored the conditions under which local communities can establish proprietary rights of access and conservation in common pool resources, such as forests and fisheries. Prior to joining the University of Guelph in 2002, I was a post-doctoral fellow with the Overseas Development Institute (www.odi.org.uk) in London, England. In 2008 and 2009 I was a James Martin 21st Century Visiting Fellow in the Environmental Change Institute (http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk) at Oxford University.
Outside of my professional life, I am a father of three and am married to the locally-renowned furniture and cabinet maker, Sara Moore. I live in the “Royal City” of Guelph, Ontario.

Current research interests and opportunities

My research lies in the field of comparative and Asian politics, and concerns the politics of decentralization, democratic governance and human security, primarily in Thailand, India and, more recently, in Bangladesh. One major area of work for me concerns the long-term patterns of migration, displacement and violence affecting the political and economic security of India’s religious minorities. A central aim in this research is to understand the factors affecting the participation and inclusion of religious (and primarily Muslim) minorities in India’s local democratic forums, the “panchayats”. Currently, I am leading a three year project (funded by SSHRC, starting in 2009), which is looking at the protection, accommodation and participation of India’s religious minorities in the panchayats. Field research for this project will not begin until 2010, but I am currently recruiting prospective graduate students (at either the MA or Ph.D. level). Information about the project and about possible opportunities for graduate study may be obtained by emailing me at cjohns06@uoguelph.ca.

A second area of interest concerns the institutional mechanisms by which international development assistance may strengthen the rights and entitlements of populations displaced by the impacts of climate change. Currently at Oxford I am taking forward new work on the ways in which asset transfers, conditional cash transfers and other forms of social protection may facilitate pro-poor adaptation to climate change. Later this year, I will be helping to design the second phase of the UK Department for International Development’s Chars Livelihoods Programme (www.clp-bangladesh.org), a 7-year program aimed at strengthening the livelihoods and reducing vulnerability of very poor households to chronic flooding and long-term environmental change in the island “char” communities of central Bangladesh.

Finally, I take a long-standing interest in the state of the art of development theory and practice. My book Arresting Development (Routledge, 2009) looks at the ways in which competing ideologies have shaped the construction of knowledge for development (http://www.routledge.com/books/Arrest...). A central theme concerns the rise and fall of the “grand” development theories of Marxism and dependency, and the various intellectual traditions that have now entered the field. A central claim is that development has become very good at documenting the nuance and complexity of local development processes, but

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