Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective

Philip McMichael

SAGE Publications, 2004 - Social Science - 359 pages

In this Third Edition of Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective, author Philip McMichael provides a narrative of how development came to be institutionalized as an international project, pursued by individual nation-states in the post-colonial era. This new edition has been updated and revised to incorporate the treatments of fundamentalism, terrorism, the AIDS crisis, and the commercialization of services via the World Trade Organization.

Development and Social Change is the first book to present students with a coherent explanation of how "globalization" took root in the public discourse and how "globalization" represents a shift away from development as a way to think about non-western societies. This is an ideal text for undergraduate and graduate students studying globalization, social development, and social change in Sociology, Political Science, Anthropology, and International Studies.

About the author

Philip McMichael grew up in Adelaide, South Australia, completing undergraduate degrees in economics and in political science at the University of Adelaide. After traveling in India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan and community work in Papua New Guinea, he pursued his doctorate in sociology at the State University of New York at Binghamton. He has taught at the University of New England (New South Wales), Swarthmore College, and the University of Georgia, and he is presently International Professor of Global Development at Cornell University. Other appointments include Visiting Senior Research Scholar in International Development at the University of Oxford (Wolfson College) and Visiting Scholar, School of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Queensland. Trained as a historical sociologist, his research examines capitalist modernity through the lens of agrarian questions, food regimes, agrarian and food sovereignty movements, and most recently the implications for food systems of agrofuels and land grabbing. In his work, he has studied and consulted with the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development,, the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty, the international peasant coalition, La Vía Campesina, and FoodFirst Information and Action Network (FIAN). He teaches courses on Political Sociology of Development; World-Historical Methods; Food, Ecology, and Agrarian Change; and International Development.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective; Volume 474 of Sociology for a New Century Series
• Author: Philip McMichael
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: SAGE Publications, 2004
• ISBN: 0761988106, 9780761988106
• Length: 359 pages
• Subjects: Social Science / Sociology / General