Reclaiming Development Studies: Essays for Ashwani Saith

(Hardback)

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The mission, relevance and intellectual orientation of development studies is increasingly challenged from various fronts such as decoloniality, global development and randomized control trials. The essays featured in this collection together argue for the need of the field to reclaim its critical political economy tradition. Building on the contributions of Ashwani Saith, the contributions touch upon many of the central questions of development studies centred around structural change, labour and inequality.

Reviews

A festschrift in honour of Ashwani Saith, Reclaiming Development Studies: Essays for Ashwani Saith is a scholarly critique of the current state of development studies, its underlying tensions, and its contradictions. Rebutting dominant approaches, the book offers a stimulating study of development as an enduring societal aspiration requiring a truly interdisciplinary method of study, in the tradition of Saiths wide-ranging, articulate and incisive contributions to the subject. Sukti Dasgupta, Chief, Employment, Labour Markets and Youth Branch, ILO, Geneva.

"An extraordinarily important volume that asserts that real human development can be conceived and achieved - through a deep and careful analysis of the structural causes of poverty, inequalities and climate change in the countries of the Global South. Goes a long way towards reconstructing an analytical center for the field of development studies that has been riven by scientism on one side, and a deep skepticism of the very idea and process of development on the other." Vamsi Vakulabharanam, Co-director, Asian Political Economy Program (PERI), and Department of Economics, University of Massachusetts Amherst, US

In explorations traversing the wide terrain of development studies, the essays in this volume celebrating the work of a leading scholar of development trajectories, are valuable contributions that survey, critique and take forward debates on the diverse issues the discipline covers. C. P. Chandrasekhar, economist and columnist

Ashwani Saiths scholarship and teaching is infused by the desire to, as the editors of this volume note, create the scholarly space for those speaking for development as an enduring societal ambition. This volume is a true testimony to this ambition, weaving analyses of a wide range of scholars that he inspired into a thread around his main contributions to the field. Arjan de Haan, IDRC, formerly ISS

This is a timely and much needed intellectual intervention for reclaiming development studies from its recent behavioural turn, and narrowing of scope, led by the international IFIs. The book brings together a remarkable set of authors revisiting older theories and contemporary issues in their essays in a way that showcases the breadth and depth within the tradition of development studies, its inherent interdisciplinarity, and potential as a transformative social science. Susan Newman, Professor and Head of Economics, The Open University, UK

Author Bio

Murat Arsel is Professor of Political Economy of Sustainable Development at the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University, Rotterdam.

Anirban Dasgupta is Associate Professor of Economics at South Asian University, New Delhi.

Servaas Storm is Senior Lecturer in Economics at TU Delft.