Stuart Corbridge is Professor of Geography at the London School of Economics and at the University of Miami. His recent publications include Reinventing India (with John Harriss, 2000). Glyn Williams is Lecturer in Geography at Keele University. He is the co-editor of a collection of essays on South Asia in a Globalising World (2002). Manoj Srivastava is a Research Associate in the Crisis State Programme, Development Studies Institute, London School of Economics. Rene Veron is Assistant Professor in Geography at the University of Guelph, Ontario. He is the author of Real Markets and Environmental Change in Kerala (1999).

• Part I. The State and the Poor: 1. Seeing the state; 2. Technologies of rule and the war on poverty; Part II. The Everyday State and Society: 3. Meeting the state; 4. Participation; 5. Governance; 6. Political society; Part III. The Poor and the State: 7. Protesting the state; 8. Postcolonialism, development studies and spaces of empowerment; 9. Postscript: development ethics and the ethics of critique.