Critical Concepts in Development Studies – serie

Development economics is in many senses the most fundamental field within the discipline of economics, focused on understanding how resource allocation, human behaviour, institutional arrangements, and private and public policy jointly influence the evolution of the human condition. As the opening sentence of T.W. Schultz’s 1979 Nobel Prize lecture declared, ‘Most of the people in the world are poor, so if we knew the economics of being poor, we would know much of the economics that really matters.’Development economics research ultimately explores why some countries, communities, and people are rich and others poor. Rapid economic growth is, in historical terms, a recent phenomenon confined to the past 300 years for less than one-quarter of the world’s population. Growing and seemingly persistent gaps in prosperity between rich and poor peoples - within and between countries - contributes to sociopolitical tensions, affects patterns of human pressure on the natural environment, and generally touches all facets of human existence. Understanding the process of economic development is thus central to most research in economics and the social sciences more broadly. Development economics nonetheless emerged as a distinct field of analytical, empirical, and institutional research only in the past half century or so, with especially rapid progress in the past generation.Development Economics is a new Major Work from Routledge. Edited by a well-established scholar who has published broadly in the field, this four-volume collection provides a thorough review of the evolution of the field, covering development microeconomics, meso-level institutional phenomena associated with communities and markets, as well as development macroeconomics, in each case integrating theoretical and empirical research. Including a newly written and extensive introductory essay that summarizes the state of the field and the history of thought in development economics for those new to the area, the collection will be welcomed by academic researchers, policy practitioners, and students alike.

Edited and introduced by a leading researcher and activist, this four-volume Major Work in the Routledge Critical Concepts in Development series, brings together both cutting-edge and canonical research about gender and development which will enable development scholars, policy-makers and workers to understand and address such challenges more effectively. With introductions, newly written by the editor, which place the collected material in its historical and intellectual context, Gender and Development is an essential collection destined to be valued by scholars, students and practitioners as a vital research resource. Selected Contents: Volume I: Theory and classics. Volume II: Laws and Methods. Volume III: Natural Resource Use, Labour, Microfinance. Volume IV: Social, political, cultural, sexuality, and health networks

Virtually all national cases of rapid, widespread progress from poverty to wealth have been causally associated with the transformation of agricultural systems. From eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe and North America to late twentieth-century East Asia, striking increases in agricultural productivity, improvements in food safety, and the markedly reduced costs of food distribution have dramatically bettered the quantity, quality, and variety of food available at lower prices. Around the globe, these agricultural advances have permitted unprecedented growth in incomes, life expectancy, and other quality-of-life indicators, and have decreased the risk of chronic or acute malnutrition. Furthermore, increased investment in education and non-agricultural activities in developed economies has also been enabled.Understanding the process of agricultural development is therefore central to most contemporary research and advanced study in development studies, agricultural economics, and cognate areas. To enable users to make sense of the subject’s vast literature and the continuing explosion in research output, Routledge is pleased to announce this new four-volume collection from our 'Critical Concepts in Development Studies' series. Edited by a leading scholar in the field, Agricultural Development brings together, in one easy-to-use resource, the foundational and the very best cutting-edge scholarship in agricultural development. It provides a thorough review of the evolution of agricultural development, integrating theoretical and empirical research.With a full index, chronological table of contents, and also supplemented by an extensive introductory essay, newly written by the collection’s editor, which summarizes the state of the subdiscipline and outlines its history, Agricultural Development is an essential reference work for academic researchers, policy practitioners, and students alike.

Serious research into the problematic and contested relationship between notions of gender, poverty, and development continues to blossom. Indeed, the work of scholars in this cross-disciplinary field supports numerous international journals, regional organizations, and global conferences. Moreover, as the formal end of the Millennium Development Goals era approaches—after which a new set of ‘Sustainable Development Goals’ for the so-called ‘Post-2015 Agenda’ are sure to feature gender—such research is destined to grow still further.To make some sense of the wide range of approaches and complex theories that have informed thinking in this area, Routledge announces a new title in its acclaimed Critical Concepts in Development Studies series. Edited by a leading and emerging scholar with an international reputation, Gender, Poverty, and Development is a definitive, four-volume collection of cutting-edge and foundational research which provides users with a ‘mini library’ on the gendered dimensions of the causes, contexts, and consequences of international poverty.The collection is fully indexed and supplemented with a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editors, which places the gathered materials in their historical and intellectual context. Gender, Poverty, and Development will be particularly useful as a database allowing scattered and often fugitive material to be easily located. It will also be welcomed as a crucial tool permitting rapid access to less familiar—and sometimes overlooked—texts. For scholars, students, policy-makers, and development professionals, this is an essential one-stop research and pedagogic resource.

Incredibly, close to one-quarter of humanity lives without electricity or other modern forms of energy, while as many as one-third of the world’s population relies (at least in part) on traditional biofuels, such as cow dung or firewood, at great cost to its health, security, and economic welfare. Although these stark facts have only recently been fully acknowledged, energy deprivation is a major obstacle to development efforts around the world, especially—though not exclusively—in the ‘Bottom Billion’ economies of sub-Saharan Africa and developing Asia. Indeed, sustainable development cannot succeed without a robust energy-access component. Furthermore, this is not just a ghastly problem for the poor, but rather a global concern. Energy deprivation is a leading contributor to disease epidemics, social discontent, political unrest, and environmental instability—it gravely threatens the ‘energy-haves’ as well as the ‘have-nots’.Research in and around energy, poverty, and development is now flourishing. But much of the relevant literature remains inaccessible or is highly specialized and compartmentalized, so that it is difficult for many of those who are interested in the subject to obtain an informed, balanced, and comprehensive overview. This new four-volume collection from Routledge’s acclaimed series, Critical Concepts in Development Studies, meets the need for a reference work to make sense of the subject’s vast and dispersed literature.The collection includes a full index and is supplemented by a newly written introduction, which places the gathered materials in their historical and intellectual context. Energy, Poverty, and Development is an essential reference work which will be valued as a vital resource by students, academics, policy-makers, and practitioners.