Development Professionals in Northern Thailand: Hope, Politics and Practice

Katharine Mckinnon

Research output: Book/ReportBookpeer-review

Abstract

“Development” promises higher incomes, better livelihoods, social justice and emancipation, but decades of good intentions have left hill communities in Northern Thailand with high rates of drug addiction and poverty, and a loss of traditional knowledge and values. A former volunteer and development specialist who spent much of her childhood in the region, Katharine McKinnon set out to consider what has gone wrong by studying professionals involved in development work. How, she asks, did the highlands come to be seen as needing development? And why did the presence of well-intentioned developers still leave behind so much apparent misery and hardship?
This book is a critical history of development practice and professionalism in nothern Thailand, exploring how a postdevelopment perspective informed by the work of J.K. Gibson-Graham can shed new light on the nature of development practice and hope for the future.
Original languageEnglish
Place of PublicationSingapore
PublisherNUS Press
Number of pages280
ISBN (Print)9789971695224
Publication statusPublished - 2011

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