Development Arrested
The Blues and Plantation Power in the Mississippi Delta
Published on 17. November 1998
Book
Hardback
368 pages
978-1-85984-811-1 (ISBN)
Description
Development Arrested is a major reinterpretation of the two-centuries-old conflict between the African Americans and planters in the Mississippi Delta. Woods traces the decline and resurrection of plantation ideology in national public policy debates, showing the ways in which African Americans in the Delta have continued to push forward their agenda for social and economic justice despite having suffered countless defeats under the planter regime. Woods interweaves the role of music in sustaining their efforts, surveying a musical tradition that embraced a radical vision of social change.
Reviews / Votes
[A] stunning and fresh analysis of the political economy of white supremacy and the redemptive power of the blues. All Americans, especially students, scholars, general readers and policy makers, who care about the extension of democracy and the future of black freedom, should read and discuss Clyde Wood's intriguing book. -- Darlene Clark Hine, co-author of <em>A Shining Thread of Hope: The History of Black Women in America</em> Development Arrested has no peer, for Clyde Woods is a rare scholar who takes the blues seriously as theory and social critique. Arguing that this folk discourse emerged in response to economic and political restructuring in the Delta during the 20th century, he goes on to show how it constitutes a critique of the plantation South, New South modernization, and the transformation of capitalist agriculture during the so-called Green Revolution. To paraphrase something Marx said a long time ago, Development Arrested reveals the connection between the arm of criticism (i.e. the blues/social science) and the criticism of arms: struggle for power in the Delta. -- Robin D.G. Kelley, author of <em>Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class</em> Woods should be applauded for pointing out the absurdity of a situation in which, for instance, whole families-made obsolete my machinery, genetic research, and high yield fertilizers-are allowed to starve within eyeshot of fields that government pay affluent farmers to leave fallow. * Oxford American *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 153 mm
Thickness: 28 mm
Weight
807 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-85984-811-1 (9781859848111)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Clyde Woods (1957-2011) was associate professor and director of the Center for Black Studies Research at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He was the author of In the Wake of Katrina: New Paradigms and Social Visions, as well as Development Drowned and Reborn: The Blues and Bourbon Restorations in Post-Katrina New Orleans.
Ruth Wilson Gilmore is professor of geography and associate director of the Center for Place, Culture and Politics at the CUNY Graduate Center. She is the author of Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California.
Ruth Wilson Gilmore is professor of geography and associate director of the Center for Place, Culture and Politics at the CUNY Graduate Center. She is the author of Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California.