Recommending Books for Purchase (Bulletin 75 - June 2020): Development and Post-Colonialism

This book brings together multiple critical assessments of the current state and future visions of global development studies. It examines how the field engages with new paradigms and narratives, methodologies and scientific impact, and perspectives from the Global South. The authors focus on social and democratic transformation, inclusive development and global environmental issues, and implications for research practices. Leading academics provide an excellent overview of recent insights for post-graduate students and scholars in these research areas.

This book explores the changing face of development assistance. China's One Belt, One Road development program is the largest international investment scheme in history, surpassing the Marshall Plan by an order of magnitude. In 2017, a group of top scholars from Fudan, the London School of Economics, and other institutions like the Institute of Development Studies, Australian National University, and World Bank gathered to share findings and ideas about the nature of New Development Assistance. A compilation of their findings, this book will be of interest to NGOs, policymakers, and academics.

This book explores narratives produced in the Maghreb in order to illustrate shortcomings of imagination in the discipline of international relations (IR). It focuses on the politics of narrating postcolonial Maghreb through a number of writers, including Abdelkebir Khatibi, Fatema Mernissi, Kateb Yacine and Jacques Derrida, who explicitly embraced the task of (re)imagining their respective societies after colonial independence and subsequent nation-building processes. Narratives are thus considered political acts speaking to the turbulent context in which postcolonial Maghrebian Francophone literature emerges as sites of resistance and contestation. Throughout the chapters, the author promotes an encounter between narratives from the Maghreb and IR and makes a case for the kinds of thinking and writing strategies that could be used to better approach international and global studies.

This book is an examination of post-colonial land reforms across various African states. One of the decisive contradictions of colonialism in Africa was the distortion of use, access to and ownership of land. Land related issues and the need for land reform have consistently occupied a unique position in public discourse in Africa. The post-colonial African states have had to embark on concerted efforts at redressing historical grounded land policies and addressing the growing needs of land by the poor. However, agitations for land continue, while evidence of policy gaps abound. In many cases, policy change in terms of land use, distribution and ownership has reinforced inequalities and affected power and social relations in respective post-colonial African countries.  Land has assumed major causes of structural violence and impediments to human and rural development in Africa; hence the need for holistic assessment of land reforms in post-colonial African states. The central objective of the text is to identify post-independence and current trends in land reform and to address the grievances in relation to land use, ownership and distribution. The book suggests practicable policy options towards addressing the land hunger and conflict, which could derail the 'moderate' socio-economic achievements and political stability recorded by post-colonial African nation-states. The book draws its strength and uniqueness from its adoption of country-specific case studies, which places the book in context, and utilizes field studies methodology which generate new knowledge on the continental land question. Taking a holistic approach to understanding Africa's land question, this book will be attractive to academicians and students interested in policy and development, African politics, post-colonial development and policy, and conflict studies as well as policy-makers working in relevant areas.