Development Betrayed: The End of Progress and a Coevolutionary Revisioning of the Future

Development Betrayed provides a lively and powerful critique of the ideas behind modern development. Richard B. Norgaard shows how development, rooted in the firm commitment to progress, has been betrayed by the major tenets of modernity: the control of nature through science, material abundance through technology, and effective government through rational and social organization. Arguing that these premises have led to environmental destruction and cultural implosion, Norgaard outlines a potent, co-evolutionary alternative.

The book addresses contemporary concerns for the sustainability of development, the rejection of the inevitability of progress, and the process of reculturization in the midst of global communication and economic interdependence. Norgaard argues that we must view development as a coevolution between cultural and ecological systems. His approach emphasizes the unpredictability of change and explains how values, knowledge, social organization and technology are tightly interlocked yet always transforming.

Rejecting the modernist principle that all peoples will merge into one best way of knowing, organizing and developing, Norgaard envisions a world made up of a patchwork quilt of cultures in which the possibility for harmony involves embracing both biological and cultural diversity. The book addresses the international discourse on sustainable development, and helps to explain global reculturization, the ineffectiveness of central governments and large bureaucratic agencies, and the dramatic rise of non-governmental organizations in the political processes and implementation of development. Development Betrayed provides a unique and valuable synthesis of ideas from the natural sciences with current work in development studies, economics, anthropology, and sociology.