Crawford School of Public Policy

Crawford Associate Professor Elise Klein has written a new book with Professor Uma Kothari from the University of Manchester to help challenge students’ views on development.

The two award winning authors crafted the Advanced Introduction to Critical Global Development as an easy-to-digest textbook for undergraduate and postgraduate students. The authors hope this book sparks “a rethinking of dominant knowledge on development”. Through elevating often marginalised analyses and ideas that have been present for a long time, the book aims to encourage ways forward in research, teaching, policy and practice.

While Global North countries often perceive themselves as a force for good through the provision of development aid, trade and finance, this book explains how development often has perpetuated inequality and damage. Despite notions that the colonisation of Global South countries is over, the book also examines how coloniality endures in economic, military, and political power structures, yielding far-reaching implications for subsequent developmental endeavours.

The Advanced Introduction makes clear that development is not a thing or an endpoint. It is messy, and there is no linear path to achieve one outcome. Elise Klein says, “It is highly politicised. It’s always about power and privilege, and the perspectives elevated in the book highlight ways of thinking and challenging conventional approaches that haven’t worked, whilst at the same time, presenting a range of strategies for guiding change towards achieving global social justice.”

Congratulations Elise and Uma on your new book!

If this book interests you, you can pick up a copy here.

Or if you are staff or a student at ANU, you can read it online through the library here.