Commodifying Development Experience: Deconstructing Development as Gift in the Development Blockbuster

This paper discusses the recent rise of popular ‘blockbuster’ books written by international development industry insiders and produced by commercial publishers. The paper explores a set of common stylistic devices found within this emerging genre. Though each book is different, a key trope is the story of an author's earlier professional life—the hard lessons and gritty insights that have supposedly emerged from it—that normally underpins each narrative. By living the challenges involved in development work at first hand, and by making mistakes and experiencing epiphanies along the way, these author-professionals want readers to know that they have found out the hard way that long-cherished beliefs about development now need to be questioned. Readers are invited to relive these lessons and epiphanies, and to think and act differently about development by upholding a highly pragmatic form of development professionalism. Combining elements of research monograph, self-help book and personal memoir, these development blockbuster books can be understood not only as commodities, but also as part of the development gift. The authors promise a gift of experience but, in reality, these books are mundane commodities enmeshed in capitalist exchange relations.     

Network Development in Biological Gels: Role in Lymphatic Vessel Development

In this paper, we present a model that explains the prepatterning of lymphatic vessel morphology in collagen gels. This model is derived using the theory of two phase rubber material due to Flory and coworkers and it consists of two coupled fourth order partial differential equations describing the evolution of the collagen volume fraction, and the evolution of the proton concentration in a collagen implant; as described in experiments of Boardman and Swartz (Circ. Res. 92, 801–808, 2003). Using linear stability analysis, we find that above a critical level of proton concentration, spatial patterns form due to small perturbations in the initially uniform steady state. Using a long wavelength reduction, we can reduce the two coupled partial differential equations to one fourth order equation that is very similar to the Cahn–Hilliard equation; however, it has more complex nonlinearities and degeneracies. We present the results of numerical simulations and discuss the biological implications of our model. This work was supported by the Royal Society (London) by the award of a University Research Fellowship.     

Biomass gasification: Development cooperation in Belgium

Development cooperation in the field of biomass gasification between Belgium and the Developing Countries, Indonesia and Zaire is discussed. Results from the fluidized-bed gasification of Eucalyptus deglupta wood in Indonesia and the testing of a moving-bed gasifier in a remote location in Zaire are presented. The impact of these technologies on the rural communities is analyzed.     

Adhesion in Development: An Historical Overview

My purpose here is to provide brief historical overviews of three related subjects conceptually fundamental to the broader subject of “cell adhesion in development.” These subjects are (1) the evolution of our present understanding of how animal cells cohere; (2) the question of what principles underlie the ability of embryonic cell populations to organize themselves into anatomically correct structures; and (3) the ongoing effort to understand the origins of the “recognition specificity” evinced in the latter phenomenon. Because this review must be brief, it is not possible to mention all of the significant advances, many of which will be referenced in a recent more detailed review of this subject (Grunwald, 1991). For the same reason, the important work on cell adhesion in nonvertebrate systems is not included.     

Meeting review: Epigenetics in Development and Disease

The 2002 Keystone symposia held in Taos, New Mexico (21-26 February) saw the convergence of two related fields; Epigenetics in Development and Disease, and RNA Interference, Cosuppression and Related Phenomena. The meeting highlights presented here concentrate upon the sessions within the Epigenetics in Development and Disease meeting, although there were joint sessions which will also be discussed. Of course epigenetic regulation is not restricted to the vertebrates but I have chosen, rightly or wrongly, to limit the highlights to those concerning vertebrates.     

Development Anthropology: Encounters in the Real World

Development Anthropology: Encounters in the Real World. Riall Nolan. Cambridge: Westview Press, 2002. 345 pp.