1st Edition
Gustavo Esteva A Critique of Development and other essays
Introduction
1. Re-thinking Everything — a Conversation with Theodor Shanin
2. Beyond Development
3. The Protagonists of Social Change
4. Reclaiming your own path
5. Back to the Table
6. The Radical Otherness of the Other
7. The Path Towards the Dialogue of Vivires (Lived Experiences)
8. The awakening: the art of rebelling
9. The Festival of Dignified Rage
10. The Oaxaca Commune
11. The Ongoing Insurrection
12. The Convivial Path
13. The Day After
14. Friendship, Hope and Surprise – The Keys for the New Era
Biography
Gustavo Esteva (1936–2022)† was a grassroots activist and "deprofessionalized intellectual". He was the founder of the Universidad de la Tierra in Oaxaca, Mexico. As one of the best-known advocates of post-development, he held that the whole concept and practice of development is a reflection of Western-Northern hegemony over the rest of the world.
Katy Dix is a Guatemalan-American translator and former external collaborator at the Universidad de la Tierra, Mexico.
“Critique of Development and Other Essays—a book that Gustavo personally oversaw at the very end of his life—is not only proof of Gustavo’s unwavering commitment to a pluriversal autonomous transformation beyond the state, market, and formal democracy, but also a testament to his relentless pursuit of the possibility of creating a radical plurality of conviviality between worlds. The book, which consists of a series of essays written by Esteva throughout his intellectual life, offers a body of work and intellectual path that is difficult to summarise in one volume, much less in a book review. However, the care that Gustavo and his editors (Jose Rafael Escobedo and Bernd Reiter) and translator (Kathryn Dix) invested into these texts—each one carefully selected and presented in a particular order (some of them translated into English for the first time), along with introductory notes by Esteva himself—provides a systematic and comprehensive view on his work expanding over five decades.”
Carlos Tornel, Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography
