What difference does it make to add "culture into development thinking and projects on the ground? This collection of essays based on recent field research into specific local projects and development programs explores the multiple and contested ways in which culture comes into development paradigms and practice. Culture has gone from being a "background" factor in development paradigms and practice. Culture has gone from being a "background" factor in development thinking to becoming a new buzzword, seen to be central in the dynamics associated with development processes. Yet the evaluation of practical and theoretical of this cultural shift in development has often been done abstractly.
By contrast, this text offers a grounded engagement with culture as it enters into development paradigms, institutions and local dynamics. With case studies ranging from Africa through to Andean Latin America, the chapters provide a detailed empirical discussion of the possibilities of, and limits to, "adding culture" into development. The collection's strength lies in combining discussion of projects in the global south, with material about the Mormons and high tech industries in the United States, and Japanese consumption of Bolivian music to broaden our understanding of cultural issues in development.
Key scholars have combined broader theoretical discussions on the neo-liberal context for development's cultural turn and the concept of social capital with thorough, critical and original evaluations of specific development processes and projects. The chapters thus bring the culture and development debate up-to-date by using the latest theoretical approaches to socioeconomic change to criticallyevaluate current initiatives.

What difference does it make to add "culture into development thinking and projects on the ground? This collection of essays based on recent field research into specific local projects and development programs explores the multiple and contested ways in which culture comes into development paradigms and practice. Culture has gone from being a "background" factor in development paradigms and practice. Culture has gone from being a "background" factor in development thinking to becoming a new buzzword, seen to be central in the dynamics associated with development processes. Yet the evaluation of practical and theoretical of this cultural shift in development has often been done abstractly.
By contrast, this text offers a grounded engagement with culture as it enters into development paradigms, institutions and local dynamics. With case studies ranging from Africa through to Andean Latin America, the chapters provide a detailed empirical discussion of the possibilities of, and limits to, "adding culture" into development. The collection's strength lies in combining discussion of projects in the global south, with material about the Mormons and high tech industries in the United States, and Japanese consumption of Bolivian music to broaden our understanding of cultural issues in development.
Key scholars have combined broader theoretical discussions on the neo-liberal context for development's cultural turn and the concept of social capital with thorough, critical and original evaluations of specific development processes and projects. The chapters thus bring the culture and development debate up-to-date by using the latest theoretical approaches to socioeconomic change to criticallyevaluate current initiatives.

"Predictable postmodernist analysis of Ecuador's national identity. Examines gender, race, ethnicity, and religion. Case study of nation's development out of inchoate space"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 57.

"Predictable postmodernist analysis of Ecuador's national identity. Examines gender, race, ethnicity, and religion. Case study of nation's development out of inchoate space"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 57.

"Superb How refreshing to see a Handbook that eschews convention and explores the richness and diversity of the geographical imagination in such stimulating and challenging ways." - Peter Dicken, University of Manchester "Stands out as an innovative and exciting contribution that exceeds the genre." - Sallie A. Marston, University of Arizona "Captures wonderfully the richness and complexity of the worlds that human beings inhabit... This is a stand-out among handbooks " - Lily Kong, National University of Singapore "This wonderfully unconventional book demonstrates human geography's character and significance not by marching through traditional themes, but by presenting a set of geographical essays on basic ideas, practices, and concerns." - Alexander B. Murphy, University of Oregon "This SAGE Handbook stands out for its capacity to provoke the reader to think anew about human geography ... essays that offer some profoundly original insights into what it means to engage geographically with the world." - Eric Sheppard, UCLA Published in association with the journal Progress in Human Geography, edited and written by the principal scholars in the discipline, this Handbook demonstrates the difference that thinking about the world geographically makes. Each section considers how human geography shapes the world, interrogates it, and intervenes in it. It includes a major retrospective and prospective introductory essay, with three substantive sections on: Imagining Human Geographies Practising Human Geographies Living Human Geographies The Handbook also has an innovative multimedia component of conversations about key issues in human geography - as well as an overview of human geography from the Editors. A key reference for any scholar interested in questions about what difference it makes to think spatially or geographically about the world, this Handbook is a rich and textured statement about the geographical imagination.