01 / Reading Guide
Reading Guide
Citation
Escobar, A. (2011). Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (with a new preface for the 2012 edition). Princeton University Press. (First published 1995.)
Chapter Summary
The book has a long new preface written for the 2012 edition, the original 1995 preface and six chapters, followed by notes, references and an index. The description below follows the published chapter titles, the publisher's description and a published review.
Preface to the 2012 edition
The publisher describes this preface as a substantial new introduction. In it Escobar reviews the debates on globalization and postdevelopment since the book first appeared in 1995, argues that the concept of postdevelopment has to be redefined for present conditions, and calls for a field of "pluriversal studies", which he illustrates with examples from recent Latin American movements. It runs to nearly forty pages, so it is a text in its own right and not a short note.
Development and the Anthropology of Modernity
The opening chapter sets out the book's approach. According to the publisher, Escobar applies the tools for analysing the representation of social reality that became available in the 1980s to development discourse and practice in general. A review of the book summarises the central proposal as treating development as a "historically singular experience" analysed along three axes: the forms of knowledge that produce it, the system of power that regulates its practice, and the forms of subjectivity through which people come to see themselves as developed or underdeveloped.
The Tale of Three Worlds and Development
This chapter turns to the postwar setting. The publisher's framing is that North America and Europe came to be seen as the models for societies in Asia, Africa and Latin America, and that the postwar discourse on development in effect created the "Third World" as an object of knowledge and intervention.
Tales of Growth and Capital
The publisher singles out the role of economists in development discourse. The chapter title points to the narratives of economic growth and capital in this discourse; the publisher's note on economists suggests it is where the economists' part in shaping development is examined.
Tales of Food and Hunger
This is the book's Colombia case study. According to the publisher, it shows that the "economization of food" produced ambitious plans and more hunger. The review adds that food and nutrition, like poverty and public health, are treated in the book as concepts produced within the development paradigm and not as given facts.
Tales of Peasants, Women, and the Environment
Here the argument is extended to other fields of development. The publisher says the chapter shows how peasants, women and nature became objects of knowledge and targets of power under the "gaze of experts".
Imagining a Postdevelopment Era
The closing chapter discusses alternative visions for a time after development ideology collapses. The review notes that Escobar's own proposals for alternatives are only sketched in this book and are taken further in his later work on the pluriverse.
Key Concepts
Preface to the 2012 edition and the opening chapter
- Development as discourse: the idea that development is a domain of thought and action created by forms of knowledge, systems of power and forms of subjectivity, rather than a neutral process.
- Postdevelopment: the possibility of thinking and living beyond development ideology, which the 2012 preface argues must be redefined.
- Pluriversal studies: the field Escobar calls for in the new preface, illustrated with recent Latin American movements.
Chapters on the Third World, growth and food
- The Third World as an object of knowledge: the argument that development discourse helped produce the category it claimed to describe.
- Economization of food: the treatment of hunger as an economic problem, examined in the Colombian case.
Chapters on peasants, women, the environment and postdevelopment
- Gaze of experts: the way peasants, women and nature become things to be known and managed.
Critical Analysis
Strengths
- A clear central question. The publisher's description frames the whole book around how industrialised countries came to be seen as the models for the rest of the world and how that created the "Third World". Each chapter title (the three "worlds", growth, food, peasants, women and the environment) names a field in which the question is pursued.
- Combines theory with a case. The book joins a general analysis of development discourse with a sustained Colombian case on food and nutrition, so the argument is not left abstract.
- An updated edition. The 2012 preface connects the 1995 argument to later debates on globalization and postdevelopment, and gives a reader a way to judge what has changed since the original publication.
- Influence on later work. A 2024 review in the Journal of Ethnic and Diversity Studies (Phang, Olmedo and Pue) says that nearly thirty years after publication the book still offers insights into the critique of development and into the possibility of a pluriversal world.
Limitations
- Alternatives remain a sketch. The same review judges that the book's proposal for alternatives stays in the realm of philosophical epistemology and is "not yet a manifesto"; it suggests reading the book together with Escobar's later writing on the pluriverse.
- Dense, theory-led argument. The publisher's account relies on discourse analysis and ideas of power and representation, so the book assumes readers can follow a theoretical argument and is not a practical guide for development work.
- The case material is dated and narrow. The main empirical case is Colombian and the main analysis concerns the postwar decades up to the 1990s. The new preface is where the book is brought forward, so it is worth reading alongside more recent work on development.
Where It Fits in the Course
In the course on the anthropology of globalization and development, Encountering Development is the theoretically demanding critique. Two books are textbooks on anthropology and development: Crewe and Axelby's introduction, which treats development as relationships between donors, governments, organisations and the people they aim to help, and Gardner and Lewis's critical textbook, which examines how development thinking and practice have changed since the 1990s. Eriksen's Globalization: The Key Concepts is a short introduction to how global connections change local life. Talal Asad's Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter is a critical examination of the relation between anthropology and colonialism, and it pairs well with Escobar's argument that development policies became forms of control comparable to colonial ones.
A sensible order is to read one of the textbooks first for the vocabulary and history of aid, then Escobar for the discourse-centred critique, and then the other textbook or Asad to see how the critique is debated.
How to Use This Book
The book is aimed at advanced undergraduates and graduate students in anthropology, geography, development studies or postcolonial theory who can follow a theoretical argument; some familiarity with social theory (the review points to Foucault's idea that power is everywhere) is useful. It is not an introduction to development policy.
A workable plan is to read the 2012 preface and the opening chapter first, because they state the approach and the three axes of knowledge, power and subjectivity. Then read "The Tale of Three Worlds and Development" and "Tales of Growth and Capital" as the core of the argument. "Tales of Food and Hunger" is the book's detailed case and is the best place to see the method applied; "Tales of Peasants, Women, and the Environment" extends it, and "Imagining a Postdevelopment Era" can be read last, ideally followed by Escobar's later work on the pluriverse. While reading, keep a running list of which categories (poverty, hunger, growth, the peasant) the book treats as constructed, and ask what evidence supports each claim. Pair the book with an ethnography of a specific development project for contrast.