Theories of Development: Contentions, Arguments, Alternatives

Citation

Peet, R., & Hartwick, E. (2015). Theories of Development: Contentions, Arguments, Alternatives (3rd ed.). Guilford Press.

Chapter Summary

Context and Argument

Richard Peet and Elaine Hartwick, both human geographers, present the main theories of development and criticise each in turn. Their starting point is a distinction between economic growth, an increase in output and income that can leave poverty and inequality untouched, and development, which they define as a better life for everyone, beginning with basic needs and decided democratically. The book openly takes sides: the authors describe their position as socialist, radically democratic and "critical modernist", and argue that development is a worthwhile modern ideal that has been distorted by its capitalist form. The 370-page book has eight chapters in three parts. The third edition, published in 2015 after editions in 1999 and 2009, updates the data, adds discussion of writers including Thomas Piketty, Richard Florida, William Easterly, Niall Ferguson and Arturo Escobar, and responds to the financial crisis, the rise of finance capitalism and climate change.

Chapter 1: Introduction: Growth versus Development

The introduction defines development against growth and explains the authors' geographic perspective, which looks at relations between societies and nature and at relations across space. It reviews how growth is measured (GNP, GDP, GNI and the World Bank's income groups) and presents data on global inequality, including long-run Gini estimates and top income shares. It then discusses the Human Development Index and criticises official measures: they miss informal and women's work, hide inequality behind averages, and imply a league table of countries. Personal observations of poverty in South Africa, Lesotho and India follow, and the chapter ends with a guide to the rest of the book.

Part I: Conventional Theories of Development

Chapter 2: Classical and Neoclassical Economics. The chapter traces the Enlightenment philosophy behind Adam Smith and David Ricardo and follows economics into its mathematical neoclassical phase. Its aim, the authors say, is to show that the dominant idea of development as capitalist growth reflects one class's reading of western European history, and to criticise its foundations.

Chapter 3: From Keynesian Economics to Neoliberalism. This chapter runs from Keynesian state intervention through Latin American structuralism and post-war development economics to the neoliberal "counterrevolution", from the Austrian School and the Chicago economists to the World Bank and the Washington Consensus. It ends with what the authors call the "post-Washington benevolent consensus" and argues that conventional growth theories are flawed at the root.

Chapter 4: Development as Modernization. The authors first examine late nineteenth-century theories that explained unequal development through nature, in strong (environmental determinist) and weaker (resource-based) versions, and note their recent comeback. They then turn to modernization theory in the Weberian tradition, with its universal stages of growth and its picture of modern institutions spreading from Euro-American cores, and link it to recent proposals around the millennium development goals.

Part II: Nonconventional, Critical Theories of Development

Chapter 5: Marxism, Socialism, and Development. Dependency theory, the most powerful critique of modernization, is presented together with its Marxist foundations: labour and the productive forces, class struggle, dialectics, modes of production and their articulation. The authors respond to critics from their own socialist position and discuss socialist development in the Soviet Union, Cuba and Venezuela.

Chapter 6: Poststructuralism, Postcolonialism, and Postdevelopmentalism. This chapter covers critiques that treat development itself as a technique of power. It examines postcolonial perspectives and the postdevelopment proposals for local, simpler, "degrowth" ways of living. The authors take these critiques seriously but argue that they reject modernity too readily.

Chapter 7: Feminist Theories of Development. It asks why women's work has been left out of development theory and reviews the main approaches: women in development (WID), women and development (WAD), gender and development (GAD), women, environment and alternatives to development (WED), and postmodernism and development (PAD). The authors place themselves closest to WAD.

Part III: Critical Modernism

Chapter 8: Critical Modernism and Democratic Development. The conclusion sets out the authors' alternative. Development should increase the capacity of the poorest people, meaning democratic control over production and reproduction rather than either private or state ownership. The chapter discusses the ethics of development and radical democracy and ends with a proposal offered for discussion, not as a blueprint.

Key Concepts

• Growth versus development: the difference between a larger economy and a better life for everyone, judged by conditions of production, what is produced and who controls it.
• Developmentalism: belief in the viability and desirability of deliberately produced economic and social progress.
• Human Development Index: the UNDP's broader measure of longevity, knowledge and income, discussed with its inequality-adjusted variant.
• Neoliberal counterrevolution and Washington Consensus: the turn against state-led development that shaped the policies of the World Bank and other international financial institutions.
• Modernization theory: the view that development spreads as rational institutions diffuse from Western cores through stages of growth.
• Dependency and underdevelopment: the argument that contact with the capitalist core actively underdeveloped the periphery.
• Postdevelopmentalism: the rejection of development as a project of modern power.
• WID, WAD and GAD: successive feminist frameworks for bringing gender into development theory.
• Critical modernism: the authors' own position, which keeps the emancipatory aims of modernity while rejecting its capitalist form.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Range in one volume. Eight chapters move from classical economics to feminist theory, giving conventional and critical traditions equal space. Endorsements on the publisher's page stress this breadth, from classical and neoclassical economics to poststructuralism and feminism.
• Theory tied to evidence and history. The sample chapter combines conceptual argument with data on inequality and with the history of institutions such as the World Bank and the international financial institutions.
• A clear, declared position. Readers always know where the authors stand: they criticise each theory and then defend their own alternative in a separate final part, so the argument can be followed and challenged.
• Explicit guidance to readers. The introduction summarises every chapter and suggests rereading that summary later; it also invites readers who want the destination first to read the conclusion early.

Limitations

• Strongly partisan. The authors describe conventional economics as "hopelessly flawed" and write from an openly socialist stance. Students need other sources for a sympathetic account of mainstream growth economics.
• Dense in places. The authors warn that parts of the book will be difficult and that the opening summaries form a "dense jungle of abstractions" on first reading.
• Data from the mid-2010s. The statistics and policy debates date from 2015; later developments in global inequality and development policy are not covered.

Where It Fits in the Course

This is the course's main book on development theory. McMichael and Weber's Development and Social Change narrates development as a historical project from colonialism to current crises; the site's page for it notes that theory has only one section there and recommends this book as the partner for a detailed critical survey of theories. Haslam, Schafer and Beaudet's Introduction to International Development is a broader multi-author introduction that also covers institutions and practice, and Steger's Globalization: A Very Short Introduction is a short overview of globalization. Read one of these first if development studies is new. Peter Evans's Embedded Autonomy, a comparative study of developmental states in Brazil, India and South Korea, makes a good case study to test the chapters on Keynesian, structuralist and neoliberal thinking. Held and colleagues' Global Transformations offers a systematic framework for analysing globalization that complements the theory-by-theory approach here.

How to Use This Book

The book suits upper-level undergraduates and postgraduates. An introductory course in a social science helps; no formal economics is required, but Chapters 2 and 3 move quickly through economic ideas, so a basic glossary of economic terms is useful. Read Chapter 1 first, including its chapter-by-chapter plan, and return to that plan after each part. Chapters 2–4 and 5–7 can be read as two contrasting blocks: for each theory, note its view of what development is, what causes underdevelopment, and what policy follows. Chapter 8 can be read early, as the authors suggest, if you want to see their alternative before the critiques.

Because the book argues a position, pair each chapter with a more neutral source on the same theory, and note where the authors' critique depends on their own values and where on evidence. The data in Chapter 1 date from about 2012–14; updating one table (for example, income groups or the HDI ranking) with current World Bank or UNDP figures is a good exercise.