Routledge Research on Asian Development
About the Book Series
Welcoming contributions from new and established scholars worldwide, this series publishes high quality, interdisciplinary, original scholarship on development issues in Asia. Themes of the series include economic development, aid, migration and displacement, sustainability, globalization, gender, environment, social movements, climate change, political economy, health, education, human security, and urbanization.
Routledge Research on Asian Development will be of interest to scholars of Development Studies, Asian Studies, International Studies, Environmental Studies, Sociology, Politics, Geography, Economics, and Anthropology.
China's Economic Development: Decoding and Reframing its Rise
1st Edition
By Lee Pei May
December 26, 2025
Through a rigorous examination of “China’s rise”, Lee addresses an important question—Did China catch up? Or more specifically, can growth be automatically translated to catching up with the advanced industrialised countries or has it only allowed limited progress (if any) to be made? To answer ...
Chinese Development in Late-Socialist Laos: Negotiating Debt and Desire
1st Edition
By Phill Wilcox
October 16, 2025
This book uses the case of Chinese development in Laos to ask what development is and why it happens as it does. Development may seem self-evidently positive, but it is fraught with different agendas and seemingly competing visions of what so-called developing countries should become and how they ...
Rethinking World Bank Influence: Governance Reforms and the Ritual Aid Dance in Indonesia
1st Edition
By D. Brent Edwards Jr.
October 09, 2024
Why is it so hard for international development organizations—even ones as well-resourced and influential as the World Bank—to generate and sustain change in the way things are done in those countries where they work? Despite what, in many cases, is decades of investment and effort, why do partner ...
The 2006 Crisis in East Timor: Lessons for Contemporary Peacebuilding
1st Edition
By Rebecca E. Engel
May 31, 2023
This book argues that the international community must share responsibility for contributing to the conditions that resulted in violent conflict in Timor-Leste, four years after it declared independence from Indonesia. Its failure to tailor interventions to Timor-Leste’s specific political economy ...
Community Welfare Organisations in Rural Myanmar: Precarity and Parahita
1st Edition
By Michael P Griffiths
June 30, 2021
This book provides an in-depth study of the moral economies emerging from within conditions of precarity in rural communities in contemporary Myanmar. James C. Scott’s seminal work on ‘The Moral Economy of the Peasant’ argued that peasant notions of subsistence and expectations of reciprocity ...
Social Development and the Sustainable Development Goals in South Asia
1st Edition
Edited
By Nitya Mohan Khemka, Suraj Kumar
April 01, 2021
This book assesses the roadmap for the implementation of the SDGs in South Asia, focusing in particular on the areas of poverty reduction, inequality, health/well-being and water and sanitation. South Asia is amongst the fastest growing regions in the world, with an aggregate GDP in excess of ...
Modern Slavery and Bonded Labour in South Asia: A Human Rights-Based Approach
1st Edition
By Elena Samonova
December 18, 2020
This book investigates one of the most pervasive forms of modern slavery: bonded labour, whereby labour is linked with a credit agreement, leaving a debtor bound to repay their debt through long-term servitude. Drawing on cases from Nepal and India, the author adopts a human rights-based ...
Bangladesh's Graduation from the Least Developed Countries Group: Pitfalls and Promises
1st Edition
Edited
By Debapriya Bhattacharya
September 30, 2020
Since the group of least developed countries (LDCs) was identified in 1971, only five countries have graduated from the group, all of which are characterised by small size or population. The projections are that the next decade will see a rapid increase in the pace of graduation, with Bangladesh in...
Child and Youth Well-being in China
1st Edition
By Lijun Chen, Dali L. Yang, Di Zhou, Qiang Ren
September 30, 2020
The true measure of any society is how it treats its children, who are in turn that society’s future. Making use of data from the longitudinal Chinese Family Panel Studies survey, the authors of this timely study provide a multi-faceted description and analysis of China’s younger generations. They ...
Regional Cooperation for Peace and Development: Japan and South Korea in Southeast Asia
1st Edition
Edited
By Brendan Howe
September 30, 2020
Faced with significant security challenges, in recent years Japan and South Korea have both sought to raise their international profile through peacebuilding, development, humanitarian assistance, and human security. This book assesses the past, present, and future potential of these niche ...
Development and Gender Capital in India: Change, Continuity and Conflict in Kerala
1st Edition
By Shoba Arun
January 17, 2019
The Indian state of Kerala has invoked much attention within development and gender debates, specifically in relation to its female capital- an outcome of interrelated historical, cultural and social practices. On the one hand, Kerala has been romanticised, with its citizenry, particularly women, ...