In an impressively wide-ranging study of fundamental existential issues, drawing on sources of critical thought from economic and philosophical anthropology, cultural studies and sociology, John Clammer provides a critically engaging analysis of pressing social, economic and environmental concerns which radically reconstitutes our understanding of development and simultaneously demonstrates the progressive political possibilities provided by a profoundly recast cultural turn. This is an important book and deserves to be widely read.

Barry Smart, University of Portsmouth

John Clammer's marvelous new book invites us to think again about the idea of development, to reject conventional top-down definitions in favour of the creative ideas carried in ordinary life and those social sciences that have remembered the importance of the idea of culture - urgent and timely advice for all those concerned with development in today's globalized world.

Peter Preston, University of Birmingham

Critically re-engages with culture and nature, and justice and development, towards an imaginative, existential, philosophical anthropology; a powerful, passionate and pellucid text.

Raymond Apthorpe, SOAS