Wasteful over-consumption (by some) in the developed countries and the continuing, in some cases worsening, hunger of millions in the Third World is a dramatic indication that food problems are urgent. Anger is not enough and this book, which comes from the research group on Development Policy and Practice in the Open University (DPP), aims to provide some of the analytical tools needed for serious action. Case studies to show ways in which food aid has been used by donor countries for political ends; descriptions of the relationships between markets and human needs; articles on the problems...

At the beginning of the twenty-first century an idealized view of markets informs government policy. Real differences in how markets interact with social change are obscured and public action on poverty is constrained. Markets, Class and Social Change uses a detailed study of the grain trade in Bangladesh to show how socially-constrained patterns of market involvement may systematically benefit the rich while disadvantaging the poor. More generally, the book suggests that markets are implicated in the making of society, its divisions, identities and directions.