(1963 [1961]), or they were spontaneous guer-
rilla or squatter movements critical of the fail-
ures of anti-colonial nationalists in power.
Latin American structuralists and dependency
theorists saw ‘peripheries’ revert tounder-
developmentand forced stagnation through
trade relations with ‘metropoles’ (seecore–
periphery modelanddependency theory).
Others turned topeasantsneglected by the sys-
tematic and global dumping of US grain sur-
pluses. A series of ‘Third Worldist’ schools of
development studies, along with journals such
asMonthly Reviewand theJournal of Peasant
Studies, represented this wider climate of what
Emannuel Wallerstein calls the ‘anti-systemic
movements’ of the 1960s (see Watts, 2001).
The 1970s saw the response from states and
multilateral institutions to the oppositional
movements of the 1960s, manifest in neopo-
pulist discourses of incorporation and partici-
pation within the development establishment.
The world bankspoke of ‘basic needs’.
green revolutiontransformations reshaped
agrarian geographies and associated liveli-
hoods and expectations. Research and policy
interest in theinformal sectorintensified,
while development institutions sought to inte-
grate women in development in areas of food
production and fertility. The 1970s was also a
period of deepening globalcrisisand trans-
formation in the US’s hegemonic role in rela-
tion to the geopolitics of finance, currencies
and energy. The OPEC oil-price hike and the
subsequent flood of Eurodollars into offshore
US banks led to reckless lending and borrow-
ing by increasingly indebted Third World
countries, and the Debt Crisis of the early
1980s was ‘resolved’ through geopolitical
realignments, allowing new forms of interven-
tion in sovereign states to ensure repayment
to metropolitan banks. Development theory
and practice shifted abruptly into a period of
forced austerity andstructural adjustment,
justified through a reinvention of liberal eco-
nomic doctrine, in what John Toye dubbed
‘the neo-liberal counterrevolution’. The onset
ofneo-liberalismcoincided with the demise
of the USSR – the massive experiment in state
socialism – whose birth and death marked
hopes and laments of many Leftist develop-
ment thinkers and Third Worldist nationalisms,
while making space to rethink anti-imperialist,
democratic socialist alternatives to Cold War
verities (Nove, 2005 [1983]).
By the 1990s, the focus of development had
shifted to East Asia, to economies that had
come through years of crisis, and to remarkable
transformations in China: a kind of capitalism
with Maoist characteristics, combining fast
growth with piling social and environmental
costs (see asian miracles / tigers). The
twenty-first century has in several senses borne
the continuing importance of development
questions after the highpoint of neo-liberal
and post-development critiques, as well
as the continued salience of its four long-
term themes ofliberalism,marxism, social
darwinism and anti-colonial radicalism.
Neo-liberalisms are now seen in relation to
state interventions, imperialmilitarismand
classprojects of regional elites as well as their
adversaries. A revival of interest in Polanyi
(2001 [1944]) comes at a time when the social
costs of market fundamentalism are clearer,
and a key task of development geography is
to track its local articulations, as Hart (2001)
demonstrates in South Africa. Hart’s work
exemplifies the importance of continuing to
trace development processes in their spatial
diversity, and in relation to development
models abstracted from elsewhere. Taking
the South African government’s arguments
about East Asia as exemplar, Hart argues that
Chinese capitalism has relied on histories of
land reform and state investment in a social
wage, precisely that which has been eroded
in the decade followingapartheid. This is a
powerful call to a development geography
engaged with concrete policy problems and
popular aspirations that is also careful about
tactics. scdevolution The transfer ofpoweror author-
ity from one person or body to another, and
specifically the transfer of governmental powers
from the central or federal government to
lower tiers. Devolution may involve the trans-
fer of functions to unelected regional or local
administrative bodies, but the term is more
commonly used to refer to the transfer of some
legislative powers to provincial elected assem-
blies, which are often established for the
purpose.
Devolution thus involves a division of powers
(administrative, judicial or legislative) between
the central government and sub-national insti-
tutions. Devolution is sometimes distinguished
fromfederalism in which the division of
powers is determined by the constitution,
whereas under devolution the powers are con-
ferred by the centre, which retains the capacity
to revoke them. However, the practical oper-
ations of federal and devolved systems are
often similar.
The extent of devolution varies between
countries, but sub-national institutions typicallyGregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_D Final Proof page 156 1.4.2009 3:15pmDEVOLUTION