Tony Spybey has previously worked at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, and was a Visiting Professor at the Copenhagen School of Economics, and at the University of Uppsala in Sweden.

• Introduction. Part I. Concepts of Social Change.1. Opposing Influences in Sociology:.Historical Materialism and Structural-Functionalism.2. Development and its Denial:.Modernization Theory versus Dependency Theory.3. Social Interaction and the Reproduction of Institutions through Time and Space: The Theory of Structuration and the Concept of Inter-Societal Systems.Part II. The Rise of Western Civilization.4. The Development of European Institutions as Western Culture.5. Western Societies as a State System:.The Development of the Nation-State.6. Colonial Episodes:.The Implanting of Western Institutions around the World.Part III. The Definition of Three 'Worlds' after the Second World War.7. Post-War Reconstruction and New Global Organizations:.The Confirmation of an Inter-Societal System.8. The Formation of the Soviet Union and the Second World:.State Socialism as an Alternative Pathway of Development.9. The Identification of the Third World and the Recognition of Dependency.Part IV. The World Towards the End of the Twentieth Century.10. Contemporary Western Development:.Liberal Democratic Capitalism through Crises but Re-Affirmed.11. Development in the East:.Japan and the Newly Industrializing Countries of East Asia.12. The Resurgence of Islamism:.An Alternative to Western Capitalism or State Socialism?.Conclusion.

'This is a brave attempt at a new kind of textbook on the sociology of development.' Political Studies