Dams and Development

Big dams built for irrigation, power, water supply, and other purposes were among the most potent symbols of economic development for much of the twentieth century. Of late they have become a lightning rod for challenges to this vision of development as something planned by elites with scant regard for environmental and social consequences-especially for the populations that are displaced as their homelands are flooded. In this book, Sanjeev Khagram traces changes in our ideas of what constitutes appropriate development through the shifting transnational dynamics of big dam construction. Book jacket.

Sanjeev Khagram is a faculty member at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and currently a Visiting Professor at Stanford University's Institute for International Studies