Manfred Max-Neef – författare

This book, now available in English for the first time, has become a classic since it was first published in 1982. Translated into five languages, it has had an extraordinary influence on grassroots development projects.The author relates two of his own experiences in 'barefoot economics', interspersing these moving and insightful accounts with reflections on development projects and experts, pioneering criticism of of orthodox development economics, and a new vision of development in which the poor must learn to circumvent the national economic system.

The past fifty years have witnessed the triumph of an industrial development that has engendered great social and environmental costs. Conventional economics has too often either ignored these costs or failed to analyse them appropriately. This book constructs a framework within which the wider impacts of economic activity can be both understood and ameliorated. The framework places its emphasis on an in-depth understanding of real-life processes rather than on mathematical formalism, sressing the independence of the economy with the social, ecological and ethical dimensions of human life.