Customer Reviews

The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power

5 star:		(5)
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3 star:		(1)
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I read this book in a Third World Development class. It takes a lot for a book to impress me the way this book has. For the first time, I could not put down a book I had to read for class. If you want a different, non-western perspective of development, this is a must read. The arguments and writing within the different topics are very strong. It's definitely a keeper and well worth the money. I highly recommend it!

I prescribe this book for an Executive MBA Class that I teach on Global Strategy. Most of the 20 students this year talked about this book as one of the most profound life-changing, world-view altering books they have ever read! I think the book is profound and thought provoking. I have earned four Master's Degrees and a Ph.D and nothing I have ever read in my life comes even close to The Development Dictionary in terms of the level of intellectual stimulation that it engenders. This is a wake up call and I hope more of my former colleagues in the World Bank and IMF would read it! It has been of immense scholarly and practical benefit in my work.

Like the related Post-Development Reader, this stunning collection of essays are mandatory for any development student or practitioner. It is essential for complementing all the traditional readings and providing an important critical outlook. The advantage of this book lies in its organization. Broken up by topic such as "Development", "Poverty", "Market", and "Science", the book provides excellent insights into these concepts. In fact it's critiques reach much further than just development, to science, the state, and modernity overall. A must read!

This is, as other reviewers have said, a good reader for opening up one's mind to diverse points of view on development and its primary topic areas -- poverty, population and the like.

I found the essay on poverty by Majid Rahnema especially useful in that it offers a far more expansive definition of "poverty" than do other approaches. Also, the opening essay by Gustavo Esteva called "Development" provides a good background on how the idea of "development" came to be, and how its application has been carried out in ways that have, ultimately, alienated many in the "developing" nations through its [presumably unintended] consequences.

My main complaint about this book is that it was published in 1992 and by this point in 2006 is quite dated. For instance, Barbara Duden's essay on population, while still somewhat interesting for its historical context, is of no help in understanding what has happened in this field since the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo in 1994. The ICPD agenda changed dramatically the ways in which "population activities" are conceived and carried out. In many ways, the ICPD work is directly responsive to the charges raised by Duden and others. I happen to know a bit about population in the context of "development," so I was able to understand that Duden's essay is dated, but it makes me wonder about the other essays in this book that are on topics I know little about. How much of what I read here, then, can I rely on to have remained accurate?

It would be great if the publisher would update this reader to make current the information it contains, especially since the voices and points of view offered here are not easy to find in a collected work of this sort. Until then, however, this book doesn't deserve more than 3 stars.

I hope we get to a point where the development dictionary is a household word. This book opened my eyes and gave me the ability to choose how I understand the world. For people who care about social and personal awareness, living responsibly, and getting to a sustainable global community, this book is an invaluable guide.

I am buying this book today because an organizational behavior professor I highly respect said recently it was the best book he'd read. I had flipped through his copy months earlier and recalled that it is dense with diverse essays. I am looking forward to reading it.