This is a book with a powerful and disruptive message. Above all, Jonathan Rigg's superbly crafted and thoroughly documented critique warns us against prediction and prescription in the study and practice of development. This is a celebration of human agency and diversity, and also a warning for all those inclined to take a one-size-fits-all approach to understanding or shaping social, economic, political and environmental change in Asia.
Philip Hirsch, The University of Sydney
A critical book for our times. Intensifying global problems and development crises mark the failure of grand theories and models beloved by planners while calling for new thinking able to grasp the contingency and complexity of development. Based on extensive experience in South-East Asia, the author of this study breaks new ground by reframing development as an outcome of the unplanned, unseen and unexpected. This superb work provides new conceptual tools for a better understanding of the paradoxes of development even as it enables the reader to see how 'ordinary' events and people are more central to development processes than hitherto thought. Highly recommended!
Professor Raymond L. Bryant, King's College London
Rigg offers a trenchant critique of the hubris of grand theories that claim to know and predict the direction of historical change, showing how they are often misguided or completely wrong. He exposes the strangeness of our stubborn commitment to planned change, despite its remarkably poor track record. Through richly empirical accounts of what actually happened in Southeast Asia...he shows that the driving forces were context-specific and often surprising. His book is a manifesto for grounded scholarship and a more modest style of intervention, attentive to the what, where, how, and why of the little and big shifts through which history is made, and to the desires and practices of the people who make it. A stimulating read - highly recommended.
Tania Li, University of Toronto