Geographers’ interventions in these debates have often sought to challenge the very limited ideas of space mobilized in some theoretical and policy research. Where geographers have been much more engaged is in seeking to understand how particular development approaches have been operationalized in particular spaces, from modernization theories in the 1950s and 1960s, to dependency theories in the 1960s and 1970s, and to neoliberal forms of development from the late 1970s onward. A notable exception has been in Marxist-inspired theories of spatial inequalities. While development theories usually have a spatial element, in that they consider how and why levels of “development” vary between locations, geographers have often been at the margins of theory formulation. Policy formulation coming out of these theories fed particularly into post–World War II international development assistance and aid. Development theories seek to explain development processes and development inequalities based on particular definitions of development. However, what is to be improved, at what scale, for whom, where, and how are all contested. At the heart of the concept of “development” are notions of improvement or betterment.
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