Welcome to the Companion Website

This site is intended to enhance your use of Development and Social Change, Sixth edition by Philip McMichael. The material on this site is geared toward increasing your effectiveness with this material and maximizing the potential for your students to learn.

In this new Sixth Edition of Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective, author Philip McMichael describes a world undergoing profound social, political, and economic transformations, from the post-World War II era through the present. He tells a story of development in four parts—colonialism, developmentalism, globalization, and sustainability—that shows how the global development “project” has  taken different forms from one historical period to the next. Throughout the text, the underlying conceptual framework is that development is a political construct, created by dominant actors (states, multilateral institutions, corporations and economic coalitions) and based on unequal power arrangements. While rooted in ideas about progress and prosperity, development also produces crises that threaten the health and well-being of millions of people, and sparks organized resistance to its goals and policies. Frequent case studies make the intricacies of globalization concrete, meaningful, and clear. Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective challenges us to see ourselves as global citizens even as we are global consumers.

Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge Philip McMichael for writing an excellent text and for reviewing the assets on this site. Special thanks are also due to Emmanuel Koku of Drexel University for creating the ancillaries on this site.