The Routledge Handbook of Global Development

Reviews / Votes

"This path-breaking Handbook moves thinking from its conventional 'international development' approach to a genuinely 'global development' framing. Drawing on contributions from a diverse and broad-based set of authors (not just the usual suspects) it examines today's big issues - sustainability and inequality - and explores the war of ideas that is needed if we are to reimagine and redirect human and planetary futures. The Handbook's chapters powerfully critique the retroliberalism that shapes contemporary policy and action and introduce the reader to emancipatory and transformative ways of understanding global problems and changing what individuals, communities, businesses and states can do. This is a 'must-have-on-my-bookshelf' publication."

David Hulme, Professor of Development Studies at the University of Manchester, Executive Director of the Global Development Institute; CEO of the Effective States and Inclusive Development Research Centre, UK

"Gradual changes in the political economy of the global order and the unprecedented increase in climate, health and biodiversity risk demands a collective rethink of the fundamentals of international development. In this watershed contribution, that not only distils problems of the current development machine but charts new ways ahead, the Handbook of Global Development is provocative and inspiring. Drawing from a new generation of development leadership and foregrounding fresh voices from the across the world, the book breaks new ground by setting out new modes of thinking supranationally, alternative ways of acting on transnational grand challenges and lays out innovative teaching approaches that, taken together, reshape the paradigm of global connections and challenges."

Susan Parnell, Global Challenges Research Professor in the School of Geography at the University of Bristol and Emeritus Professor at the African Centre for Cities (ACC) at the University of Cape Town

"This is a timely and invaluable handbook for anyone working in global development, or anyone wishing to. The contexts, actors, narratives, and challenges shaping development are constantly changing. It is incumbent on all of us - from students to the more experienced - to continually consider our own practice and positionality. Are we really "doing good" for the world's poorest and most disadvantaged? How can we do better? By taking a wide-ranging, multi-disciplinary approach, and explicitly addressing critical cross-cutting issues such as climate change, inequality and population growth, the chapters in this volume provide a rich resource to guide ongoing reflection and learning on these difficult questions. I can't recommend it highly enough."

Praveena Gunaratnam, DrPH, Global Public Health Specialist and Human Rights Activist

"This book is a valuable guide through a range of pressing issues for policy experts and students alike, who are grappling with the future of development from within and beyond the sector. Its established and emerging authors explore big questions like what to make of deglobalisation, changing donor systems and aid chains, and whether neoliberalism is really dead or just evolving. The book is a must-read for practitioners and scholars aiming to keep ahead of global trends, like the future of development finance and sustainable development."

Dr Amrita Malhi, Senior Advisor Geoeconomics, Save the Children

"The Routledge Handbook of Global Development stands poignantly at the cutting-edge of new thinking on challenges, prospects, possibilities, and desired development futures. Contributors have done a splendid job in bringing to the fore of academia and public policy the most recent challenges of Anthropocene and existentialism, extractivism and violence of development, migration and Covid-19, decolonization and many other topical themes; opening up important epistemological questions in the field of global development. This is a must-read Handbook and resource for scholars and policymakers alike, which fundamentally refreshes and nourishes the mind of all those who care to know the state of the world we live-in."

Professor Dr. Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Chair of Epistemologies of the Global South, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence, University of Bayreuth

"This Handbook provides an invaluable resource for all those concerned with contemporary global challenges. It goes beyond the usual description of the world's problems to address head on the ways in which these can be addressed through pedagogy, policy and practice. Importantly, in making a critical intervention into a field that is currently in flux it reveals shifting geographies of power and global relations. This truly international and interdisciplinary volume includes contributions from leading scholars in their field that illuminate the multiple influences and dynamics of contemporary development thinking and practice. It moves beyond despondency, to provide innovative and more hopeful engagements with global concerns, ones that can work towards advancing more equitable and sustainable futures. This Handbook encourages us to reflect more deeply on the ideologies and practices that have for so long characterised international development and development studies."

Professor Uma Kothari, Professor of Migration and Postcolonial Studies, Global Development Institute, University of Manchester, UK