Measuring Development

The YHGD is centrally dedicated to the study of past developmental theories, policies and practices, including those with a direct bearing on present-day challenges, making historical insight into the challenges and opportunities of development work in the twenty-first century more readily available to practitioners interested in earlier experiences with development. Furthermore, the yearbook provides a forum for a variety of historical perspectives on and understandings of development. It integrates scholarship that conceives of development as a long-term process of different countries that determined their trajectories in world history; as a field of international and global political, economic, technological, cultural, and intellectual interaction; as an aspect of North-South and East-West relations in the context of imperialism, decolonization, the Cold War, and globalization; as a significant domain of international, non-governmental, and research organizations; and, most generally, as the study of the entire spectrum of concepts, discourses and policies related to ways in which countries or regions could and should evolve. This scholarship includes approaches as divergent as Marxism, capitalism, and liberalism, as well as alternative frameworks such as sustainable development, green growth or degrowth. While the central discipline is history, contributions from neighboring disciplines will also be relevant. These include sociology, anthropology, law, area studies, cultural studies, public health, science and technology studies, and economics.
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