Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective

Philip McMichael grew up in Adelaide, South Australia, completing undergraduate degrees in economics and in political science at the University of Adelaide. After traveling in India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan and community work in Papua New Guinea, he pursued his doctorate in sociology at the State University of New York at Binghamton. He has taught at the University of New England (New South Wales), Swarthmore College, and the University of Georgia, and he is presently International Professor of Global Development at Cornell University. Other appointments include Visiting Senior Research Scholar in International Development at the University of Oxford (Wolfson College) and Visiting Scholar, School of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Queensland. Trained as a historical sociologist, his research examines capitalist modernity through the lens of agrarian questions, food regimes, agrarian and food sovereignty movements, and most recently the implications for food systems of agrofuels and land grabbing. In his work, he has studied and consulted with the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development,, the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty, the international peasant coalition, La Vía Campesina, and FoodFirst Information and Action Network (FIAN). He teaches courses on Political Sociology of Development; World-Historical Methods; Food, Ecology, and Agrarian Change; and International Development.