Subject: New intro text on development

Colleagues:

At various times, list members have inquired about texts for
undergraduate classes on development and social change. I just
received a copy of a new title that should work well in the courses
of  PSN/WSN members:

Philip McMichael, DEVELOPMENT AND SOCIAL CHANGE: A GLOBAL
PERSPECTIVE (Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press/Sage Publications,
1996, ppb., xxiv + 310pp).

It is in the "Sociology for a New Century" series that already
features texts by authors such as Saskia Sassen, Charles Ragin, and
Daniel Chirot.

McMichael (Rural & Development Sociology, Cornell University) has
organized the book around helping students "think about development
as a transnational project designed to integrate the world, and it
helps them to see how this project is currently undergoing dramatic
revision via economic globalization." He documents how the
"development project" formed between the late 1940s and early
1970s, and then began to unravel before being resurrected by "the
globalization project" in the 1980s. The book concludes
with reflections on rethinking understandings of development.
Throughout the book there are boxes that flesh out the argument in
the main text with case study material.

-- David Myhre
    UC-San Diego