Conceived as a response to the economic naïvety and implicit metropolitan bias of many 1950s and 60s studies of 'the sociology of development' , this volume, first published in 1975, provides actual field studies and theoretical reviews to indicate the directions which a conceptually more adequate study of developing societies should take.

Much of the book reflects strongly the influence of Andre Gunder Frank, but the contributors adopt a critical attitude to his ideas, applying them in empirical situations within such African and American countries as Kenya, Guyana, Tanzania and Peru. Others pursue the lines of enquiry opened up by Latin American theories of economic 'dependency' and by the new school of French economic anthropology.

David Booth, Ivar Oxaal, Tony Barnett

1. Editor's Introduction: Beyond the Sociology of Development 2. A Critique of Latin American Theories of Dependency 3. The Dependency Economist as Grassroots Politician in the Caribbean 4. Andre Gunder Frank: An Introduction and Appreciation 5. Imbalance Between the Centre and Periphery and the 'Employment Crisis' in Kenya 6. African Peasants and Resistance to Change: A Reconsideration of Sociological Approaches 7. Rice, Politics and Development in Guyana 8. Rural Social Differentiation and Political Goals in Tanzania 9. The Gezira Scheme: Production of Cotton and the Reproduction of Underdevelopment 10. Economic Anthropology and the Sociology of Underdevelopment: 'Liberal' Anthropology and its French Critics 11. The Theory of Internal Colonialism: The South African Case 12. Structural Dependency, Modes of Production and Economic Brokerage in Rural Peru