Laos is a poor country in the world’s most economically vibrant region. I provide a historically embedded interpretation of Laos’ contemporary economic geography through three lenses: dualism, spatiality, and scale. I propose that, while the patterns of change in the country are familiar,...

Following 77 households over 25 years, the paper traces agrarian change in two settlements in Northeast Thailand. This is distilled into three processes: a delocalisation of living, a disembedding of households, and a dissociation of the village-community, seen in a geriatrification of farming,...

Using the experiences of first and second generation migrants from three villages in Thailand, we “personalize” the middle income trap, seeking to understand how and why migrants with growing levels of education and human capital remain rooted to their natal villages. Agrarian change is such...

In the second of two review papers on the World Bank’s series of World Development Reports (WDRs; 1978 to 2000/2001) we track some key themes and issues: North and South; state, market and civil society; and people, participation and values. Identifying clear trajectories in the series is...

This is the first of two surveys of the World Development Report series. Here we focus on the discursive strategies adopted by the Reports. We begin by setting the Reports within the wider milieu of development theory and practice. Behind the pragmatic, problem-solving image that the Reports aim...