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Book Cover for: Can We Know Better?: Reflections for Development, Robert Chambers

Can We Know Better?: Reflections for Development

Robert Chambers

This book is intended for all who are committed to human wellbeing and who want to make our world fairer, safer and more fulfilling for everyone. It argues that to do better we need to know better and provides evidence that what we believe we know in international development is often distorted or unbalanced by errors, myths, and biases.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Practical Action Publishing
  • Publish Date: Aug 15th, 2017
  • Pages: 214
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 9.21in - 6.14in - 0.46in - 0.68lb
  • EAN: 9781853399459
  • Categories: Developing & Emerging CountriesDevelopment - Sustainable DevelopmentPublic Health

About the Author

Chambers, Robert: - Robert Chambers is widely recognized as one of the main driving forces behind the great surge of interest in the use of Participatory Rural Appraisal around the world. He has been a Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies since 1972 and is an author, co editor and contributor of many books.

More books by Robert Chambers

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Book Cover for: Chambers's Cyclopedia of English Literature Part 2, Robert Chambers
Book Cover for: Domestic Annals of Scotland: From the Reformation to the Rebellion of 1745, Robert Chambers
Book Cover for: Chambers's Pocket Miscellany, Volumes 19-20, William Chambers
Book Cover for: An Expository Outline Of The Vestiges Of The Natural History Of Creation (1846), Robert Chambers
Book Cover for: Chambers's Educational Course Classical Section. Advanced Latin Exercises with selections for reading and a vocabulary: New and greatly Improved Editi, Robert Chambers
Book Cover for: Chambers's Narrative Series of Standard Reading Books: Book 4. Adapted to Standard 4., Robert Chambers
Book Cover for: Domestic Annals of Scotland: Vol. I, Robert Chambers
Book Cover for: History of the Rebellion of 1745-6, Robert Chambers
Book Cover for: How to Write Parodies and Become Immortal, Robert Chambers
Book Cover for: Provocations for Development, Robert Chambers

Praise for this book

"T.S. Eliot famously asked, 'Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?' The answer: it is here, in this book, in the accumulated knowledge of Robert Chambers' six decades of experience and thinking about development, and in the great wisdom he brings to bear on the fantasies and foibles of practitioners, academics and funders. All of them should take time to read this important book and to think hard about what it means when they go back to their work."--Ian Smillie, author of The Alms Bazaar, Mastering the Machine and Diamonds, and President of the Canadian Association for the Study of International Development, 2015-17
"This book is a salvo against development smugness, much needed at a time when the Sustainable Development Goals are beginning to gain traction. Taking head-on the central question of how we know, and how that shapes what we do through development policy, Chambers employs his clear eye and gently acerbic tongue to show why development professionals need to be more humble, more self-reflexive, and more passionate about our mission."--Gita Sen, Distinguished Professor & Director, Ramalingaswami Centre on Equity & Social Determinants of Health, Public Health Foundation of India
"Always prescient and always wise, Robert Chambers has given development scholars and practitioners yet another gift with this provocative call for 'a revolution in development knowing, thinking, and practice.' But what a commentary on development in practice that the supposed beneficiaries of development continue to be marginalized and dispossessed. Weep for them and their needless suffering - but read Chambers's new book and get into action!"--Dr. Robin Broad, International Development Program, American University
"An indispensable book."--Duncan Green, Strategic Advisor, Oxfam, and author of How Change Happens (01/06/2018)