Revolutionizing Development

by Andrea Cornwall (editor), Ian Scoones (Editor)

This book tells the story of development studies in practice over the last fifty years through the work of one remarkable individual, Robert Chambers. His work has taken him from being a colonial officer in Kenya through training and managing large rural development projects to a fundamental critique of top-down development and the championing of participatory approaches. The contributors eloquently demonstrate how he has been at the centre of major shifts in development thinking and practice over this period, popularising terms that are now at the centre of the development lexicon such as vulnerability, multi-dimensional poverty, sustainable livelihoods and 'farmer first'. Robert Chambers played a major role in the massive growth in participatory approaches to development, and particularly the application of participatory methods in development research and appraisal. This has led to fundamental challenges to development practice, ranging from approaches to monitoring and evaluation to institutional learning and professional training. There is probably no-one who has had more influence on approaches to development in the past decades. Revolutionizing Development offers a unique overview of these contributions in thirty-two concise chapters from authors who have been intimately involved as collaborators, critics and colleagues of Robert Chambers.

336 pages, Hardcover

First published June 28, 2011

About the author

Andrea Cornwall is a Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, where she directs a multi-country research programme, Pathways of Women's Empowerment (www.pathways-of-empowerment.org). She has worked in the field of sexual and reproductive health and participatory methodologies for many years, and is co-editor of Realizing Rights: Transforming Approaches to Sexual and Reproductive Wellbeing (with Alice Welbourn, Zed Books, 2002) and Feminisms in Development: Contradictions, Contestations and Challenges (with Elizabeth Harrison and Ann Whitehead, Zed Books, 2006).

Reviews

[Marianna Ferreira-Aulu · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Revolutionizing Development Reflections on the Work of Robert Chambers" is a selection of articles that praise the work of one of the most well known scholars in the field of participatory approaches for development studies. Edited by Cornwall, Andrea & Scoones, Ian.

Knowing that a prominent scholar in his own field had similar struggles to get funding decades ago for the same issues I struggle now is definitely not comforting. But realizing that I am not doing anything wrong by choosing a side and standing my position of an academic activist, is empowering.