Abstract

This important book places culture back at the centre of debates in development studies. It introduces new ways of conceptualizing culture in relation to development by linking development studies to cultural studies, studies of social movements, religion and the notion of 'social suffering'. The author expertly argues that in the current world crises it is necessary to recover a more holistic vision of development that creates a vocabulary linking more technical (and predominantly economic) aspects of development with more humanistic and ecological goals. Any conception of post-capitalist society, he argues, requires cultural, as well as economic and political, dimensions.
John Clammer is currently Visiting Professor of Development Sociology at the United Nations University, Tokyo, and is the author of numerous books.
'In an impressively wide-ranging study of fundamental existential issues, drawing on sources of critical thought from economic and philosophical anthropology, cultural studies and sociology, John Clammer provides a critically engaging analysis of pressing social, economic and environmental concerns which radically reconstitutes our understanding of development and simultaneously demonstrates the progressive political possibilities provided by a profoundly recast cultural turn. This is an important book and deserves to be widely read.' Barry Smart, University of Portsmouth 'Critically re-engages with culture and nature, and justice and development, towards an imaginative, existential, philosophical anthropology; a powerful, passionate and pellucid text.' Raymond Apthorpe, SOAS 'John Clammer's marvelous new book invites us to think again about the idea of development, to reject conventional top-down definitions in favour of the creative ideas carried in ordinary life and those social sciences that have remembered the importance of the idea of culture - urgent and timely advice for all those concerned with development in today's globalized world.' Peter Preston, University of Birmingham