The Post-Development Reader

Edited by Victoria Bawtree, Majid Rahnema

Most scholars and practitioners are now agreed that the world is on the threshold of a completely new era in the history of development. This reader brings together in a powerfully diverse, but ultimately coherent, statement some of the very best thinking on the subject by scholars and activists around the world. The contributors provide a devastating critique of what the mainstream paradigm has in practice done to the peoples of the world, and to their richly diverse and sustainable ways of living. They also present some essential ideas to construct new, humane, and culturally and ecologically respectful modes of development.

About the Authors

 Majid Rahnema was born has Teheran in 1924. A long time ambassador, it represented Iran at the United Nations during twelve successive sessions, of 1957 with 1971. He was police chief of the United Nations in Rwanda and Burundi in 1959, for the elections and the referendum which led these countries to independence. He was also member of the Council of the university of the United Nations of 1974 to 1978, and also representative-resident of UNO in Mali.

Between 1967 and 1971, he is Minister for Sciences and higher education in Iran, under the mode of the Shah. in 1971, It creates an Institute of Studies of the Endogenous Development, inspired by the educational ideas of Paulo Freire, to start a basic development project with the peasants of Lorestan.

After its retirement in 1985, he teaches at the University of California to Berkeley (the USA) during six years, then, as from 1993, in Claremont Colleges of Pitzer. He is established then in France, where he teaches at the American University of Paris.
 

Excerpt

Download PDF