Globalisation, Inequality and Poverty -- From Exclusive to Inclusive Development -- Collateral Damage or Calculated Default? The Millennium Development Goals and the Politics of Globalisation -- Can Improved Human Development Policies Break the Cycle of Poverty? -- Inequality, Poverty and Conflict in Transition Economies -- Globalisation, Marginalisation and Conflict -- The Slow Progress of International Financial Reform -- The Debt Crisis and the South in an Era of Globalisation -- Resource Degradation, Institutions and Conflict -- Multi-Level Governance and Resilience of Social-Ecological Systems -- In Conclusion -- Knowledge Sharing in Support of Human Development -- Disempowering new Democracies and the Persistence of Poverty -- Local Governance and Rural Poverty in Africa -- Local Governance Hybrids: Enabling Policies and Citizen Approaches to Poverty Reduction -- Civic Engagement, Social Accountability and The Governance Crisis -- Blurring The State-Private Divide: Flex Organisations and The Decline of Accountability -- The Limits of Institutions: Environmental Degradation and Knowledge Framing -- Beyond State-Community Polarisations and Bogus “Joint”Ness: Crafting Institutional Solutions for Resource Management.

Is ‘development’ passé? Is it merely a by-product or a ‘trickle down’ effect of economic growth, spurred by globalisation? Will poverty simply diminish with increased global markets? This state-of-the-art critical ‘development’ reader deals with these and related questions. Globalisation, Poverty and Conflict examines the inter-relationships between globalisation, poverty and conflict. It complements current debates in the field of development studies and, in an era in which development fatigue seems to have become more profound than ever before, it brings the importance of development once again to the forefront. Achieving the Millennium Development Goals by 2015 is a concrete target which many governments have agreed to work towards.Whether these goals can be realised is another issue. Nonetheless, the Millennium Development Goals have brought more focused attention to development in the past few years and renewed debate about the relationships between the process of globalisation and widespread poverty and the emergence of violent conflicts. The authors in this edited volume discuss these inter-related and highly controversial topical elements of development in a number of chapters organised around three sets of issues: (1) globalisation, inequality and poverty; (2) governance, civil society and poverty; and (3) resource degradation, institutions and conflict. The contributions represent current thinking on (and practice of) development policy, poverty reduction, the need for multi-level democratic institutions, and the containing and prevention of conflicts. The authors confront the predominant mainstream ideas on ‘development’ and propose alternatives. The chapters, written by a select group of scholars and development practitioners, will be of direct interest to those involved in this field of social sciences and in ‘development practice’, but they are composed in such a way as to remain accessible for the generally interested reader.