Unplanned Development

Jonathan Rigg is a development geographer at Durham University. He is also the author of An Everyday Geography of the Global South (2007), Living with Transition in Laos (2005), Southeast Asia: The human landscape of modernisation and development (2003) and, edited with Peter Vandergeest, Revisiting Rural Places: Pathways to poverty and prosperity in Southeast Asia (2012).

• Preface1. The hidden geometries of development2. From development plans to development planning3. State and market perfections and imperfections4. The teleology of development: history and technology5. The power of ordinary events in shaping development6. Fertility decline and its consequences in Asia7. Contingent developmentNotesBibliography

This is a book with a powerful and disruptive message. Above all, Jonathan Rigg's superbly crafted and thoroughly documented critique warns us against prediction and prescription in the study and practice of development. This is a celebration of human agency and diversity, and also a warning for all those inclined to take a one-size-fits-all approach to understanding or shaping social, economic, political and environmental change in Asia.