This volume is the product of a conference on the theme 'Development -
the Next Twenty-five Years' which the Institute of Social Studies held
in Decem- ber 1977 to mark its own twenty-fifth anniversaryas a centre
of development studies. We felt it appropriate at that point in time to
caU together specialists from all over the world in an attempt to assess
the 'state of play' in our field as we move into the last quarter of the
twentieth century. 1 For several days, therefore, the Institute's new
building house d a remarkable concentration of knowledge and experience
concerning the problems of the so-calle d less- developed countries,
drawn from all over the world. Although it was inevitable that the
participants should represent the past (and it was several times re-
marked that, in that sense, there were too few women present), the
earnest and sometimes heated discussions looked to the future as much as
to what had happened in the last twenty-five years. As the discussions
proceeded, three things became apparent. Firstly, although the papers
submitted did not fully reveal it, the ongoing debate between radicals
and moderates, those who saw possibilities of change only basically
through a direct break with existing structures and those who felt
change possibIe within them, is by no means at an end.