What happens when a vast multinational mining company operates a gas plant situated close to four densely populated villages in rural Bangladesh? How does its presence contribute to local processes of ‘development’? And what do corporate claims of ‘community engagement’ involve? Drawing from author Katy Gardner’s longstanding relationship with the area, Discordant Development reveals the complex and contradictory ways that local people attempt to connect to, and are disconnected by, foreign capital.

Everyone has a story to tell: whether of dispossession and scarcity, the success of Corporate Social Responsibility, or imperialist exploitation and corruption. Yet as Gardner argues, what really matters in the struggles over resources is which of these stories are heard, and the power of those who tell them.

Based around the discordant narratives of dispossessed land owners, urban activists, mining officials and the rural landless, Discordant Development touches on some of the most urgent economic and political questions of our time, including resource ownership and scarcity, and the impact of foreign investment and industrialisation on global development.

Katy Gardner is Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics and is the author of several books including Global Migrants, Local Lives: Travel and Transformation in Rural Bangladesh (1995) and Discordant Development (Pluto, 2012).

1. Discordant developments: an introduction
2. Histories of connection: colonialism, migration and multinationals
3. Material Connections: Resources and Livelihoods in Duniyapur
4. Our Own Poor: Social Connections, ‘Helping’ and Claims to Entitlement
5. Claims of Partnership and Ethical Connection : Chevron’s Programme of ‘Community Engagement’
6. Rumour and Activism: Politics Break Out
7. Blow Out! Stories of Disconnection and Loss
Bibliography
Index