For over two hundred years, the domination of some countries by others has been intrinsic to international relations, with national economic and political strength viewed as essential to a nation's survival and global position. Mastering Space identifies the essential features of this state-centredness and suggests an optimistic alternative more in keeping with the contemporary post-Cold War climate. Drawing on recent geopolitical thinking, the authors claim that the dynamism of the international political economy has been obscured through excessive attention on the state as an unchanging...

This six-volume set is divided into four sets of readings. The first set locates development as a critical concept within the social sciences. The second set examines the causes and consequences of development as a great transformation. Key topics include: the transformation of peasant economies; agribusiness; rural-urban relations; markets; industrialization; workers; trade; and aid and structural adjustment. The third set of readings considers the politics of development, looking in turn at states, civil societies, NGOs, corruption and resistance. The final readings looks at visions of...

Poor people confront the state on an everyday basis all over the world. But how do they see the state? This book considers the Indian example where people's accounts, in particular in the countryside, are shaped by encounters staged at the local level, and are also informed by ideas circulated by the government and the broader development community. Drawing extensively on fieldwork conducted in eastern India, the authors review a series of key debates in development studies on participation, good governance, and the structuring of political society in South Asia.

In Debt and Development Stuart Corbridge offers an exciting new approach to the study of both debt and development, focusing on the international debt crisis of the 1980's and 1990's, and it's economic and geo-political consequences. Moving far beyond the framework of a narrative account, the author demonstrates that interpretations of this crisis - and attempts to manage it - are themselves reflections of wider assumptions about the dynamics of development and the organization of the global economy.

Part I sets out to provide the 'standard narrative' of the debt crisis from the...

When India was invented as a "modern" country in the years after Independence in 1947 it styled itself as a secular, federal, democratic Republic committed to an ideology of development. Nehru's India never quite fulfilled this promise, but more recently his vision of India has been challenged by two "revolts of the elites": those of economic liberalization and Hindu nationalism. These revolts have been challenged, in turn, by various movements, including those of India's "Backward Classes." These movements have exploited the democratic spaces of India both to challenge for power and to...

When India was invented as a "modern" country in the years after Independence in 1947 it styled itself as a secular, federal, democratic Republic committed to an ideology of development. Nehru's India never quite fulfilled this promise, but more recently his vision of India has been challenged by two "revolts of the elites": those of economic liberalization and Hindu nationalism. These revolts have been challenged, in turn, by various movements, including those of India's "Backward Classes." These movements have exploited the democratic spaces of India both to challenge for power and to...

International debt is a major concern both for the countries involved and for the economies financing it. Stuart Corbridge brings together eighty-eight major articles to provide the most comprehensive and up to date analysis of this key global issue. Articles tracing the origins and development of the international debt crisis are followed by a selection of key regional studies investigating debt in Latin America, Africa and the Pacific. The involvement of banks and financial institutions is also explored.

Twenty years ago India was still generally thought of as an archetypal developing country, home to the largest number of poor people of any country in the world, and beset by problems of low economic growth, casteism and violent religious conflict. Now India is being feted as an economic power-house which might well become the second largest economy in the world before the middle of this century. Its democratic traditions, moreover, remain broadly intact.

How and why has this historic transformation come about? And what are its implications for the people of India, for Indian society and...

As India emerges as a major economic power, producing dollar billionaires rising at the rate of 17 per year, more than 800 million Indians eke out a living on less than two dollars a day. This book takes the reader to the underbelly of the Indian boom, an India that is not shining but is struggling to survive. From the Indo-Soviet Bhilai Steel Plant in Chhattisgarh, where an aristocracy of labour is increasingly being replaced by a more vulnerable contract labour force, we move to the banks of the Hoogly River. Here, Norwegian shipping companies exploit a precarious labour force that is as...

First published in 2010. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.