In and against Development: the World Bank behind Looking Glass

This peer-reviewed book series offers insights into our current reality by exploring the content and consequences of power relationships under capitalism, and by considering the spaces of opposition and resistance to these changes that have been defining our new age. The second of two volumes written “in and against development” meticulously criticizes the World Bank’s scholarship and assesses alternative approaches to development studies. Long self-proclaimed as the “Knowledge Bank”, the World Bank is as active it is criticized for being in its endeavors to promote US interests in the the age of globalization, neoliberalism and financialization across its scholarship, ideology and policy in practice. Its analytical framing draws upon economics imperialism in general, and its evolution through three phases. Corresponding phases of new, newer and newest development economics are identified, with the World Bank taking a leading role in each, with implications for the expanding scope of development economics and its contestations with development studies.