Presenting both classic pieces and the most up-to-date arguments in the debates about issues of economic growth and inequality, this is a guide to understanding the causes and dynamics of persistent income gap between rich and poor countries, as well as rich and poor within the poor countries.

Examines the issues of development and underdevelopment in different countries around the world. Suggested level: senior secondary.

Initially published in 1987, this work deals with crucial aspects of development, including disparities in global patterns of production and consumption. John Cole examines the exhaustion of non-renewable resources and the destruction of the natural environment and, on the potentially positive side, the effects of international transactions both in the form of development aid and trade. Rather than offering clear and definite answers – of which there are none – the book is designed rather to serve as a basis for discussion and to provide guidelines to the further study of specific aspects of global development.

How critical is education in the development struggle of a third world country? Responding to popular demands for more accessible education, the Guyanese government instituted numerous educational reforms, hoping to promote economic growth in both the modern and the traditional sectors of the economy. Many in the traditional sector, however, saw education as a means of economic advancement, and sought increasingly to move into higher social strata through employment in the modern sector. Consequently, the civil service and private firms gained an oversupply of personnel, while agriculture and small business suffered, and unemployment increased. The author examines Guyana’s educational system from historical, political, social, and economic perspectives, and draws implications for other developing countries.

Originally published: Monthly Review Press, 1967.

Upon its publication in 1989, this was the first systematic and comprehensive analysis of the Latin American School of Development and an invaluable guide to the major Third World contribution to development theory. The four major strands in the work of Latin American Theorists are: structuralism, internal colonialism, marginality and dependency. Exploring all four in detail, and the interconnections between them, Cristobal Kay highlights the developed world’s over-reliance on, and partial knowledge of, dependency theory in its approach to development issues, and analyses the first major challenges to neo-classical and modernisation theories from the Third World.