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Development Arrested: Race, Power and the Blues in the Mississippi Delta
Development Arrested is a major reinterpretation of the two-centuries-old conflict between the African Americans and planters in the Mississippi Delta. Woods traces the decline and resurrection of plantation ideology in national public policy debates, showing the ways in which African Americans in the Delta have continued to push forward their agenda for social and economic justice despite having suffered countless defeats under the planter regime. Woods interweaves the role of music in sustaining their efforts, surveying a musical tradition that embraced a radical vision of social change.
342 pages, Hardcover
First published December 1, 1998
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
November 20, 2020
Clyde Woods studies the hell out of the Mississippi Delta in this brilliant case study of racial capitalism and the Black Radical Tradition. To read again and again and again.
September 25, 2013
six stars, seven stars...
it took me far too long to finish this, or maybe just as long as needed, because it prompted numerous rad discussions while reading on the subway.
it took me far too long to finish this, or maybe just as long as needed, because it prompted numerous rad discussions while reading on the subway.
June 10, 2021
Somebody should send a copy to Bill Clinton.
October 4, 2021
review to come...
April 11, 2019
Incredible
May 12, 2024
I see Woods' intervention as two-fold. First, he dispels the mythology that the post-Civil War enclosure of the Mississippi Delta was a movement from feudalism to capitalism and instead propose that it was a movement, guided by the Delta Plantation bloc, from "capital-scarce, labor-intensive plantation production to capital-intensive, labor-surplus neo-plantantion production" (127) to permanently open the gates to "new forms of segregation and slavery" (288). Woods, then, emphasizes that the development of the Mississippi Delta by the Plantation Block -- from initial levy projects and genocidal expulsion through the Trail of Tears to current (in the 90s) federal/regional programs like the LMDCC's 10-year development strategy or Clinton and Fordice's "Work First" program in Mississippi -- as an explicitly racial project to reproduce Plantation monopolies by burning, gutting, lynching, over-working Black communities. Woods writes: "there was no development without terror" (86).
Second, he proposes a "blues epistemology" for development in response, which he describes as the "dialectical ability of working-class communities to revitalize themselves using their own cultural reservoirs to push their own historic development agenda forward, ever forward" (140). He talks through musicians like Ma Rainey, "Georgia Tom," Ike Turner, writers like Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison, and activists like Fannie Lou Hammer and MLK Jr (especially in his later, "Poor Peoples Campaign"-focused years) as essential figures who were able to verbalize and incorporate "blues as epistemology' (which itself is created communally through millions of working-class, Black "organic intellectuals" (289)) into their work.
These two interventions structure most of Woods's book: most chapters first dive into the (almost) hegemonic development paradigm of the Plantation block at a moment in time, before outlining the working-class response by focusing on the evolution of the blues, both as a musical form and a strategy of activist development. His structure here, and his emphasis on treating the Blues as a subject worthy of social scientific inquiry specifically, was pretty exhilarating to read and something I hope to think about in terms of taking working class scholarship -- whether that be through artistic intervention or otherwise -- serious in my own research. And what, exactly, does it mean to take this scholarship "seriously," when forms of cultural resistance like the Blues aren't considered worthy of scholarly approach in the first place? In my housing work, we talk about how tenants, and not developers or planners or landlords or politicians or academics, are experts on their own housing conditions. I guess I want to push this idea a bit further: what domestic interventions and modes of explicit cultural expression do tenants create -- both in their home and out -- to build an archive and agenda for housing justice scholarship? And I wonder if this form of "development" is as cohesive as a movement like "the Blues" or more disparate and localized?
Lastly, if teaching Woods, it might honestly be helpful to walk linearly through the 12 Mississippi Delta plans which structure the book and overview what that instance of the plan looked like, who was in charge, and how was it implemented. After, I would pair this exercise by giving student groups one of the songs/poems Woods mentions and then have them do a close reading of the song itself, while also them to contextualize the song in the musician's biography. Hopefully these two exercises would highlight the contradictions between these two very different modes of development, their origins, and their possibilities.
Second, he proposes a "blues epistemology" for development in response, which he describes as the "dialectical ability of working-class communities to revitalize themselves using their own cultural reservoirs to push their own historic development agenda forward, ever forward" (140). He talks through musicians like Ma Rainey, "Georgia Tom," Ike Turner, writers like Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison, and activists like Fannie Lou Hammer and MLK Jr (especially in his later, "Poor Peoples Campaign"-focused years) as essential figures who were able to verbalize and incorporate "blues as epistemology' (which itself is created communally through millions of working-class, Black "organic intellectuals" (289)) into their work.
These two interventions structure most of Woods's book: most chapters first dive into the (almost) hegemonic development paradigm of the Plantation block at a moment in time, before outlining the working-class response by focusing on the evolution of the blues, both as a musical form and a strategy of activist development. His structure here, and his emphasis on treating the Blues as a subject worthy of social scientific inquiry specifically, was pretty exhilarating to read and something I hope to think about in terms of taking working class scholarship -- whether that be through artistic intervention or otherwise -- serious in my own research. And what, exactly, does it mean to take this scholarship "seriously," when forms of cultural resistance like the Blues aren't considered worthy of scholarly approach in the first place? In my housing work, we talk about how tenants, and not developers or planners or landlords or politicians or academics, are experts on their own housing conditions. I guess I want to push this idea a bit further: what domestic interventions and modes of explicit cultural expression do tenants create -- both in their home and out -- to build an archive and agenda for housing justice scholarship? And I wonder if this form of "development" is as cohesive as a movement like "the Blues" or more disparate and localized?
Lastly, if teaching Woods, it might honestly be helpful to walk linearly through the 12 Mississippi Delta plans which structure the book and overview what that instance of the plan looked like, who was in charge, and how was it implemented. After, I would pair this exercise by giving student groups one of the songs/poems Woods mentions and then have them do a close reading of the song itself, while also them to contextualize the song in the musician's biography. Hopefully these two exercises would highlight the contradictions between these two very different modes of development, their origins, and their possibilities.
October 17, 2021
Though this felt a bit scattered at times---going back and forth between blues history and the economic development of the Delta from Reconstruction on---Woods lays out the case for putting a "Blues Epistemology" at the center of the black working people's struggle, in the face of the ever-morphing plantation bloc opposition, for self-determination and emancipation. Probably most fascinating was the "following up" on the civil rights movement throughout the 70s, 80s, and 90s, and how most of the policies just ultimately ended up entrenching white capital. Quite a harrowing look, and a worthy sequel of sorts to Black Reconstruction. Highly recommended.
June 10, 2025
In the era after World War Two, the federal government quickly recognized the international popularity and power of the blues and jazz. At the height of the civil rights movement, the Cold War and the Vietnam War, blues and jazz musicians were continually flown to Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East in order to promote American cultural hegemony. However, State Department officials soon realized that they were potentially assisting in spreading criticism of the country's ethnic, class, and cultural regime. For example, after a 1966 performance in East Berlin, Junior Wells was forced by the FBI to sign a statement promising that he would never perform his anti-war "Vietcong Blues" again. (210-11)
September 26, 2022
You must read this book if you want to understand the symbiotic relationship between the politics and economics of the Confederacy and our current federal government. The plantation bloc centered in the Lower Mississippi Delta continues to hold sway over our government's social and economic policies. The racially divisive politics of the Old South can be seen in every aspect of today's Republican Party--and even among many of the Democrats.
November 15, 2025
Amazing as everyone said it was. Immensely enjoyed the thorough history of the plantation bloc and their horrendous actions in MS and the continued and inspiring resistance of various working class black peoples (shout out hamer.) got kinda lost in the history sauce and need to figure out how to stitch this back to my own work in Texas. We shall see. Also like f yeah blues epistemology for the win.
March 20, 2022
If anyone wants read this book let me know, i would be VERY down to slowly reread~it is stellar
June 11, 2018
It pains me to give such a low rating, I so very much wanted this book to be better than it is. Woods dissects a blues epistemology in service of analyzing power & social history of the Mississippi delta. Unfortunately, neither the blues nor delta history is well elucidated. And too many premises were made without substantiation.
There is, however, a beauty to this book nonetheless.
There is, however, a beauty to this book nonetheless.
January 2, 2009
An extremely useful read for those interested in connecting seminal issues of race and power through the musical narrative of the blues. The author goes to great lengths unpacking the history of African descended people and their American experience in the "deep south". He is an eloquent writer and thoughtful storyteller who evokes rich imagery and a clearer understanding of the Black Experience. A must read for the public at large, historians, geographers and those interested in deep culture.
Currently reading
August 6, 2008so far this book is laying the foundation for a economico-geographical history of the plantation and it's legacies of maldevelopment. Blues narratives are interspersed like a living memory
July 8, 2020
mind boggling, brimming with knowledge
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews