Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 September 2025
Contemporary students and scholars of development studies should be forgiven for feeling increasingly disillusioned. Global challenges relating to inequality, poverty and the climate crisis are multiplying and becoming more intractable. And yet, the established institutions of aid that many look towards to tackle these issues, such as government aid budgets, international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) and multilateral agencies, have been subject to increasing and relentless critique. They have long been accused of inefficiency and ineffectiveness, paternalism, and mainly benefitting the Global North, further disenfranchising those in low-income countries and re-entrenching colonial hierarchies of knowledge and power. At the same time, through our own research, studying digital aid platforms in India, everyday humanitarianism in Cambodia and diaspora initiatives in Zimbabwe respectively, we gained glimpses into a multitude of other aid forms which fall outside the purview of development studies and its critics. They are only slowly being recognized in academic scholarship, let alone in development curricula. We have written this book to take these empirical insights and those of others seriously and to examine their significance for understandings, experiences and the practice of aid. Second, we aim to provide an answer to students, scholars and practitioners of international development when they ask, ‘what is the point of development studies?’, given that it appears to be such a flawed endeavour. Where should they put their efforts? We hope to achieve a radical widening and shifting of what is recognized as aid. This shift goes beyond the established institutions mentioned earlier and the critiques that have for so long been dominant in development discourse.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.