Coping with Facts: A Skeptic's Guide to the Problem of Development

A key assumption in development literature, Adam Fforde argues, is that development is a predictable process with knowable solutions. As a result, the literature is characterized by a combination of great certainty and great differences of opinion.

It is no surprise then, that students and practitioners confronting the mass of competing assertions about development “truths” become confused and frustrated. Coping with Facts offers guidance for the perplexed through a penetrating critique of development studies literature. Rather than presenting a general examination of modern development practice, Fforde develops coping strategies that help readers evaluate the contending solutions to problems of development.

Fforde cements his analysis with detailed case studies of development projects in Southeast Asia, especially Vietnam where he spent over 10 years. Those eager to chart a constructive career in development theory and practice as well as students looking for an introduction to this vast field will want this book as a navigational aid for their journey.

Adam Fforde is currently Chairman, Adam Fforde and Associates p/l and Principal Fellow, the Asia Institute, University of Melbourne. He has spent about 2/3 of his career in development consultancy and the rest as an academic. He studied Engineering and Economics at Oxford and then worked as an economic consultant in London before taking Masters and Doctoral Degrees in Economics at Birkbeck College London and Cambridge respectively. His PhD (1982) was about agricultural cooperatives in north Vietnam and he was a student at Hanoi University in 1978-79. From 1983-87 he was a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow and since then he has combined academic and consulting work related to Vietnam and to development issues more generally. He worked for the Swedish-Vietnamese cooperation in 1987-92, and was a Senior Fellow at the SEA Studies Program, NUS, in 2000-2001. In Melbourne he has taught at Monash and the University of Melbourne. His most recent book on Vietnam is Vietnamese State Industry and the Political Economy of Commercial Renaissance: Dragon's tooth or curate's egg? Oxford: Chandos 2007.