On the Edges of Development: Cultural Interventions

Big business, financial institutions, and capitalist powers have wreaked much havoc on the Third World in the name of development. This book re-imagines development through a careful and imaginative exploration of some of the many ways that culture – in the broadest sense of lived experience and its representation – can recenter resistance, suggest alternative models, and advance critiques of development as it is currently practiced. The diverse group of scholars and activists who contribute chapters to the volume engage with the puzzle of how best to conceptualize an alternative development that improves the living conditions of women and men in different parts of the world and simultaneously demands solutions that focus on the integration of gender, diversity, and development with the realities of people’s lives.

Kum-Kum Bhavnani is Professor of Sociology and Director of the program in Women, Culture, and Development at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
John Foran is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Priya Kurian teaches environmental politics and media and politics at the University of Waikato, New Zealand.
Debashish Munshi teaches Management Communication at the University of Waikato, New Zealand.

Introduction: From the Edges of Development Kum-Kum Bhavnani, John Foran, Priya Kurian and Debashish Munshi Part 1: Refusing Representations of Development 1. October 17, 1961 Moustafa Bayoumi 2. Ode to "Quasheba": Resistance Rituals Among Higgler Women in Jamaica Hume N. Johnson 3. Plural Economies and the Conditions for Refusal: Gendered Developments in Bangkok Ara Wilson 4. Dancing on the Edge: Women, Culture, and a Passion for Change Kum-Kum Bhavnani and Krista Bywater 5. Resisting Westernity and Refusing Development Molefi Kete Asante Part 2: Emergent Discourses of Development 6. From Roosevelt in Germany to Bush in Iraq: Development’s Discourse of Liberation, Democracy, and Free Trade Josefina Saldaña 7. Migrants, Genes, and Socio-Scientific Phobias: Charting the Fear of the "Third World" Tag in Discourses of Development in New Zealand Priya Kurian and Debashish Munshi 8. OFW Tales, or Globalization Discourses and Development Ming-Yan Lai 9. Erratic Hopes and Inconsistent Expectations for Mexican Rural Women: A Critique of Economic Thinking on Alternatives to Poverty Magadalena Villarreal 10. From Old to New Political Cultures of Opposition: Radical Social Change in an Era of Globalization John Foran Part 3: Fictions of Development 11. Mama Benz and the Taste of Money: A Critical View of a "Homespun" Rags-to-Riches Story of Post-Independence Africa Lena Khor 12. History, Development, and Transformation in Paule Marshall’s The Chosen Place, The Timeless People: A Conversation Among Students of Development Erin Kennedy, Edwin Lopez, Moira O’Neil and Molly Talcott 13. Urduja through the Looking Glass: A Response to Colonial Trauma Tera Maxwell 14. Fictions of (Under)Development: Hunger Artists in the Global Economy Françoise Lionnet.Afterword Susanne Schech