This book explains the origins of development and underdevelopment and offers a new vision for development, demystifying the statistics that international organizations use to measure development and introducing the alternative concept of buen vivir: the state of living well.

Gustavo Esteva is a grassroots activist and prolific author. He works in collaboration with Universidad de la Tierra, in Mexico, and many organizations and networks around the world. Salvatore Babones teaches sociology and social policy at the University of Sydney. He has published widely on globalization, inequality, and quantitative methodology. Philipp Babcicky is a PhD student at the University of Vienna. His research focuses on environmental sustainability and the sociology of consumption.