Ideas for DevelopmentOur world seems entangled in systems increasingly dominated by power, greed, ignorance, self-deception and denial, with spiralling inequity and injustice. Against a backdrop of climate change, failing ecosystems, poverty, crushing debt and corporate exploitation, the future of our world looks dire and the solutions almost too monumental to consider. Yet all is not lost. Robert Chambers, one of the ?glass is half full? optimists of international development, suggests that the problems can be solved and everyone has the power at a personal level to take action, develop solutions and remake our world as it can and should be. Chambers peels apart and analyses aspects of development that have been neglected or misunderstood. In each chapter, he presents an earlier writing which he then reviews and reflects upon in a contemporary light before harvesting a wealth of powerful conclusions and practical implications for the future. The book draws on experiences from Africa, Asia and elsewhere, covering topics and concepts as wide and varied as irreversibility, continuity and commitment; administrative capacity as a scarce resource; procedures and principles; participation in the past, present and future; scaling up; behaviour and attitudes; responsible wellbeing; and concepts for development in the 21st century. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 49
... Lessons from the Past (1974) 54 Points of departure and directions 54 The context 55 Four diagnoses and a missing prescription 56 Shift of focus 60 Clusters of procedures 62 Part 2: Procedures and Principles to Empower (2004) 63 ...
... Lessons from Perkerra (1973) Many lessons could be culled from the Perkerra experience. Only some of the more obvious and important will be mentioned here. In the first place, the high costs and risks of hasty development with ...
... lesson emerges from the process of creeping commitment to the Scheme, starting with the first ideas of replacing the indigenous irrigation which had been destroyed [by a flood in 1919], leading to preliminary surveys and then to a ...
... lessons – the costs and risks ofhaste and ignorance; the compounding of problems in complex projects; the irreversibility of the creep of commitment; and the high true costs of poor projects – combine in a criterion applicable to ...
... lessons from pioneering participation would never have been learnt and national policies and practices would not have been influenced. The Sida-supported Mountain Rural Development Programme in Vietnam is another striking illustration ...
Contents
1 | |
2 Aid and Administrative Capacity | 30 |
3 Procedures Principles and Power | 54 |
Review Reflections and Future | 86 |
5 PRA Participation and Going to Scale | 119 |