Has development thinking become too narrow and specialised? Does it fail to draw on learning from outside the realm of development studies about how social change happens? This report presents an overview of approaches used to explain social change from a wide range of academic perspectives, from history, politics and economics to psychology and geography. These are summarised in a useful table, which presents a series of questions as a flexible tool for thinking about how change happens. The author argues that current development thinking uses only a narrow range of approaches to change and the result is that most development strategies are limited. They: are excessively reformist and insensitive to underlying power and inequalitylargely ignore environmental issuesoverlook the importance of personal relationships and promoting mutual understanding as a strategy for changefail to appreciate fully the contextual factors that limit changelack a multidisciplinary agility to draw on the broad range of approaches to change that exist outside the confines of development studies. There is a need for broader thinking about how change happens, so that we can be more creative in devising strategies and more adept at facing the huge challenges that confront our societies and planet.

Contents
Overview
Introduction
1. Disciplinary approaches to how change happens
History
Politics
Sociology
Social anthropology
Psychology
Economics
Management and organisational studies
International relations and globalisation
Geography
Legal studies
Technology and science
Philosopy
Ecology
Cross-disciplinary approaches to how change happens
2. The rough guide to how change happens
The rough guide to how change happens
The abolition of the slave trade and slavery in Britain
3. Approaches to change in contemporary development thinking
Market liberalisation
Managed markets
Corporate social responsibility
International aid
Empowerment
Grassroots participation and social organisation
Reforming the state
Land reform and securing private property
Changing attitudes and beliefs
Endnotes

Roman Krznaric
Roman Krznaric is a cultural thinker and founding faculty member of The School of Life. He advises organisations including Oxfam and the United Nations on using empathy and conversation to create social change, and has been named by The Observer as one of Britain's leading lifestyle philosophers.