The mission, relevance and intellectual orientation of development studies is increasingly challenged from various fronts such as decoloniality, ‘global development’ and randomized control trials. The essays featured in this collection together argue for the need of the field to reclaim its critical political economy tradition. Building on the contributions of Ashwani Saith, the contributions touch upon many of the central questions of development studies centred around structural change, labour and inequality.

The mission, relevance and intellectual orientation of development studies is increasingly challenged from various fronts such as decoloniality, 'global development' and randomized control trials. The essays featured in this collection together argue for the need of the field to reclaim its critical political economy tradition. Building on the contributions of Ashwani Saith, the contributions touch upon many of the central questions of development studies centred around structural change, labour and inequality.

The reindeer herders of Aoluguya, China, are a group of former hunters who today see themselves as “keepers of reindeer” as they engage in ethnic tourism and exchange experiences with their Ewenki neighbors in Russian Siberia. Though to some their future seems problematic, this book focuses on the present, challenging the pessimistic outlook, reviewing current issues, and describing the efforts of the Ewenki to reclaim their forest lifestyle and develop new forest livelihoods. Both academic and literary contributions balance the volume written by authors who are either indigenous to the region or have carried out fieldwork among the Aoluguya Ewenki since the late 1990s.

Development has remained elusive in Africa. Through theoretical contributions and case studies focusing on Southern Africa’s former white settler states, South Africa and Zimbabwe, this volume responds to the current need to rethink (and unthink) development in the region. The authors explore how Africa can adapt Western development models suited to its political, economic, social and cultural circumstances, while rejecting development practices and discourses based on exploitative capitalist and colonial tendencies. Beyond the legacies of colonialism, the volume also explores other factors impacting development, including regional politics, corruption, poor policies on empowerment and indigenization, and socio-economic and cultural barriers.

In Reclaiming the Discarded Kathleen M. Millar offers an evocative ethnography of Jardim Gramacho, a sprawling garbage dump on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, where roughly two thousand self-employed workers known as catadores collect recyclable materials. While the figure of the scavenger sifting through garbage seems iconic of wageless life today, Millar shows how the work of reclaiming recyclables is more than a survival strategy or an informal labor practice. Rather, the stories of catadores show how this work is inseparable from conceptions of the good life and from human struggles to realize these visions within precarious conditions of urban poverty. By approaching the work of catadores as highly generative, Millar calls into question the category of informality, common conceptions of garbage, and the continued normativity of wage labor. In so doing, she illuminates how waste lies at the heart of relations of inequality and projects of social transformation.

This volume highlights women's work sustaining local economies and environments, particularly in response to the current food, fuel and climate crises. It includes women's role in the green entrepreneurship, women's reproductive and productive work in the care economy, and a further examination of eco feminist debates.

Breastfeeding and child feeding at the center of nurturing practices, yet the work of nurture has escaped the scrutiny of medical and social scientists. Anthropology offers a powerful biocultural approach that examines how custom and culture interact to support nurturing practices. Our framework shows how the unique constitutions of mothers and infants regulate each other. The Dance of Nurture integrates ethnography, biology and the political economy of infant feeding into a holistic framework guided by the metaphor of dance. It includes a critique of efforts to improve infant feeding practices globally by UN agencies and advocacy groups concerned with solving global nutrition and health problems.

Over the past decade India has witnessed a number of land wars that have centred crucially on the often forcible transfer of land from small farmers or indigenous groups to private companies. Among these, the land war that erupted in Singur, West Bengal, in 2006, went on to make national headlines and become paradigmatic of many of the challenges and social conflicts that arise when a state-led policy of swiftly transferring land to private sector companies encounters resistance on the ground. Land Dispossession and Everyday Politics in Rural Eastern India analyses the movement by Singur’s so-called unwilling farmers to retain and reclaim their farmland. By foregrounding the everyday politics of popular mobilization, the book sheds new light on the movement’s internal politics as well as on contentious issues rooted in everyday caste, class and gender relations.

During the 1990s, Naples' left-wing administration sought to tackle the city's infamous reputation of being poor, crime-ridden, chaotic and dirty by reclaiming the city's cultural and architectural heritage. This book examines the conflicts surrounding the reimaging and reordering of the city's historic centre through detailed case studies of two piazzas and a centro sociale, focusing on a series of issues that include heritage, decorum, security, pedestrianization, tourism, immigration and new forms of urban protest. This monograph is the first in-depth study of the complex transformations of one of Europe's most fascinating and misunderstood cities. It represents a new critical approach to the questions of public space, citizenship and urban regeneration as well as a broader methodological critique of how we write about contemporary cities.

Blogging has profoundly influenced not only the nature of the internet today, but also the nature of modern communication, despite being a genre invented less than a decade ago. This book-length study of a now everyday phenomenon provides a close look at blogging while placing it in a historical, theoretical and contemporary context. Scholars, students and bloggers will find a lively survey of blogging that contextualises blogs in terms of critical theory and the history of digital media. Authored by a scholar-blogger, the book is packed with examples that show how blogging and related genres are changing media and communication. It gives definitions and explains how blogs work, shows how blogs relate to the historical development of publishing and communication and looks at the ways blogs structure social networks and at how social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook incorporate blogging in their design. Specific kinds of blogs discussed include political blogs, citizen journalism, confessional blogs and commercial blogs.