Development today is not a particularly nuanced affair. Its most visible protagonists are ‘aid celebrities’, such as musician Bono and economist Jeffrey Sachs, who believe that ‘ending poverty’ can be achieved through ‘compassionate consumption’ and ‘back-to-the-sixties’ bulk investments. This situation makes David Mosse’s Cultivating Development a valuable contribution to the literature, and I highly recommend it for development professionals and academics alike. An outstanding ethnographic account of the Indo-British Rainfed Farming project – a flagship British aid initiative in India – does a splendid job of highlighting contemporary issues surrounding development by contextualizing and critically reflecting on dominant interpretations and practices.   read more >>