Culture, Development and Social Theory

John Clammer is currently Visiting Professor of Development Sociology at the United Nations University, Tokyo, and is the author of numerous books.

• Part I: On culture and development1. Transforming the discourse of development: culture, suffering and human futures2. On cultural studies and the place of culture in development3. Aid, culture and context4. Liberating development from itself: the politics of indigenous knowledgePart II: Expanding the boundaries of development discourse: two illustrations5. Reframing social economics: economic anthropology, post-development and alternative economics6. Culture and climate justicePart III: Development, culture and human existence7. Narratives of suffering: human existence and medical models in development8. Towards a sociology of trauma: remembering, forgetting and the negotiation of memories of social violence9. The aesthetics of development10. Emotions of culture, social movements and social transformationReferencesIndex

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.