"This book traces the history of the multi-disciplinary subject of development studies from the late colonial period all the way through to its contemporary concerns with poverty reduction. It presents a critical genealogy of development, looking at the contested evolution and roles of development institutions and exploring changes in development discourses. These personal and institutional recollections, by those who teach, research and practice development, challenge simplistic, unilinear periodizations of the evolution of the discipline, and draw attention to ongoing critiques, such as Marxism, feminism and postcolonialism. Key themes include gender and development, NGOs, and natural resource management. The book is radical in that it challenges orthodoxies of development theory and practice and highlights concealed, critical discourses that have been written out of conventional stories of development."--Publisher description.