Developing Hegemony - by Rita Abrahamsen & Michael C Williams (Paperback)

About the Book

"At a time of multiple challenges to the liberal international order, development has become one of the most contentious areas of world politics. Dominant powers have reduced their assistance and overtly fused development with national and security interests, while rising powers like China have become major donors promoting new models and norms. Advancing an innovative Bourdieusian-inspired analysis of global politics as interaction between transnational fields, this book places development in the context of contemporary transformations in world order. It traces the history of development as a field of struggle from 1945 to the present, and argues that development is central to the emergence, maintenance, and transformation of world order. The authors show how the global field of development is characterized by a specific form of interest--an interest in disinterest--that performs the social alchemy of converting economic and military power into the symbolic power that is crucial for international hegemony. In the current geopolitical context, the ability of development to produce this symbolic power is dissolving and transforming, making the field one of the crucial sites where attempts to build an alternative global order are emerging and will be historically tested"-- Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

At a time of multiple challenges to the liberal international order, development has become one of the most contentious areas of world politics. Dominant powers have reduced their assistance and overtly fused development with national and security interests, while rising powers like China have become major donors promoting new models and norms. Advancing an innovative Bourdieusian-inspired analysis of global politics as interaction between transnational fields, this book places development in the context of contemporary transformations in world order. It traces the history of development as a field of struggle from 1945 to the present, and argues that development is central to the emergence, maintenance, and transformation of world order. The authors show how the global field of development is characterized by a specific form of interest--an interest in disinterest--that performs the social alchemy of converting economic and military power into the symbolic power that is crucial for international hegemony. In the current geopolitical context, the ability of development to produce this symbolic power is dissolving and transforming, making the field one of the crucial sites where attempts to build an alternative global order are emerging and will be historically tested.

Review Quotes

"By analyzing development as a field of practices in the Bourdieusian sense, and not as a legitimation discourse or a result of state policies, Developing Hegemony is profoundly innovative. The sociohistorical perspective of development presented here is central to understanding why foreign aid is being rebuked in the present. An absolutely necessary book." --Didier Bigo, University of Liverpool

"Abrahamsen and Williams hand us a key to understanding world politics. Working with Bourdieu's thinking tools, this politically astute book opens a precise discussion about how the 'disinterested interest' at stake in development creates power politics, global militarism, and hegemonic (dis)ordering." --Anna Leander, Geneva Graduate Institute

"As China expands its influence in the Global South even as the US withdraws from the foreign aid system by shuttering USAID, Developing Hegemony's perfectly timed and vital dissection of the IR-Development nexus explains how this hinge moment is reshaping the liberal world order's ideational and symbolic dimensions." --Nils Gilman, Berggruen Institute

About the Author

Rita Abrahamsen is Professor of African Studies, University of Oxford. Michael C. Williams is Professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa.