Situating development as a world-historical project, this text traces its contours across three historical periods: colonialism, the development era, and the era of globalization. McMichael shows how the social transformations from colonial subjects, through national citizens, to global consumers have been inspired and managed through successive projects of development, ordering a changing and unequal world. This fourth edition accentuates ecological themes, the gendering of development, and alternative development visions. Updating showcases the paradox of the development lifestyle, ecological footprints, the war on poverty, social reproduction issues, the planet of slums phenomenon, outsourcing, African re-colonization, the Latin rebellion against neo-liberalism, the rise of China and India, and the ever-changing policy face of the development establishment as it seeks to retain or renew its legitimacy at a time when development is perhaps facing its greatest challenge in the ecologically, socially, and politically destabilizing impacts of climate change.