Henry Veltmeyer

Research Professor, Development Studies Program, Autonomous University of Zacatecas, México

Dr. Veltmeyer lived and worked for six years in south America before coming to Canada to pursue a doctoral program in Political Science and subsequently (in 1976) beginning his academic career in the Sociology Department at St. Mary’s University. He has participated in the university’s Atlantic Canada Studies program and founded the program in International development in 1985. He also served for eight years as Coordinator of this program in addition to eight years as chair of the Sociology Department. Currently he has an academic appointment in the PhD program of Development Studies at the Autonomous University of Zacatecas, Mexico and annually engages in an extended program of research and public lectures across Latin America. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Journal of International Development Studies and serves on the editorial board of Studies in Political Economy and a number of international journals in his major field of research-the political economy of international development. Dr. Veltmeyer conducts research, writes and teaches about diverse issues related to the political economy and sociology of development, with a particular focus on issues of Latin American development, globalization processes, government policies, alternative models and approaches and social movements. Since 2000 he has authored/co-authored and edited 13 books and 25 scholarly refereed articles that have been published in Canada, the US, the UK, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil and Ecuador. Several of these books, written in English or Spanish, have received awards and have been translated into other languages - among them Portuguese, Italian, Tugalese and German. In addition to these scholarly books, several of which have achieved international recog-nition and/or special awards and distinctions, 25 of Dr. Veltmeyer’s scholarly articles since 2000 have been published in some of the most prestigious academic journals in his field or by the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development. Places of publication include Canada, the US, the UK, Australia, Argentina, Mexico, the Netherlands and Switzerland

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  • Critical Development Studies

    An Introduction

    By Henry Veltmeyer and Raúl Delgado Wise     September 2018

    The first book in the Critical Development Studies is a searing expose of the whole development industry. It is an introduction to the critical approach to development focusing on the needs of people rather than the pursuit of profit.

  • Migrant Workers and the City

    Generation Now

    By Huang Chuanhui  Foreword by Henry Veltmeyer  Translated by Anna Beare     September 2016

    In this refreshingly open and enlightening book we hear the stories and hopes for the future from the people who live in the basements of cities across China.

  • Agrarian Change, Migration and Development

    By Henry Veltmeyer and Raúl Delgado Wise     April 2016

    The focus and concern of Agrarian Change, Migration and Development is the problem of labour migration. Veltmeyer and Wise explore the dynamics and development implications of the migration processes set in motion by the capitalist mode of production. The dynamics of these processes are both international — in regard to the international or cross-border flows of labour migrants — and internal to countries that have undergone, or are undergoing, a process of agrarian change and social transformation.

  • Human Development

    Lessons from the Cuban Revolution

    By Henry Veltmeyer     September 2014

    Henry Veltmeyer examines the Cuban Revolution from the perspective of socialist human development, critiquing of the notion of human development used by the United Nations Development Programme to rescue capitalism from its fundamental contradictions and give a human face to an exploitative and destructive development process.

  • The Answer Is Still No

    Voices of Pipeline Resistance

    Edited by Paul Bowles and Henry Veltmeyer     March 2014

    The Answer Is Still No is an important, urgent book that compiles interviews with people who live along the route of the proposed Enbridge pipeline in Northern British Columbia. This edited collection takes the passionate words and voices of twelve citizens and activists and results in one powerful position when it comes to blind economic development at the expense of our environment and communities: The answer is still “no.”

  • 21st Century Socialism

    Reinventing the Project

    Edited by Henry Veltmeyer     September 2011

    The growing polarization between the rich and powerful and the poor and powerless, the yawning social and developmental divide and the multidimensional systemic crisis of capitalism have given rise to a fundamental problem of our times: barbarism or socialism? Will we continue on the path of capitalist barbarism or move to a more just socialist system? Bringing together a passionate group of socialists, 21st Century Socialism participates in the emerging and critical debate concerned with reinventing and rebuilding socialism. Revisiting concepts of class and capital, reinventing Marx, problematizing party politics, re-examining alternative forms of socialist politics and learning lessons from Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution, 21st Century Socialism explores how socialism needs to be re-imagined to make it relevant to 21st-century.

  • The Critical Development Studies Handbook

    Tools for Change

    Edited by Henry Veltmeyer     January 2011

    This handbook is a guide to ‘critical development studies’ (CDS)–the study of international development from the standpoint of social change, a critical perspective. As such the handbook provides a set of tools for entering and understanding the nature and scope of the interdisciplinary field of development studies. It is organized as a set of 50 short course modules. Each module is written by a well-known research specialist in the area; and each (a) identifies the six most critical questions or research theme in a particular area of CDS, (b) provides a succinct discussion of the central issues that surround these questions, and (c) makes substantive references to the most essential readings that explore these issues.

  • Technological Transformation and Development in the South

    By Krishna Ahoojapatel, Surendra J. Patel and Henry Veltmeyer     April 2008

    These essays cover approximately a half a century from approximately the 1960s to the end of the millennium. Patel begins with a broad review of changes in the world economy in the second half of the twentieth century and then summarizes its main features. “In all his work, Surendra Patel was purposeful in making the science of economics work for the betterment of the human race. He had the rare ability to make economic statistics talk to us, to chart the remarkable achievements of the third world in the four decades following decolonization…”–Kari Polanyi-Levitt, Honourary President of Karl Polanyi Institute of Political Economy, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada.

  • Illusion or Opportunity

    Civil Society and the Quest for Social Change

    By Henry Veltmeyer     January 2007

    The failure of development strategies in the past few decades has given rise to a worldwide movement in the direction of “another development.” This is a form of development that is social as well as economic, oriented towards people’s basic needs, people-centred and initiated from below. It is human in scale and form, equitable and socially more inclusive, capacitating and empowering of the poor, sustainable in terms of both the environment and livelihoods, participatory and community-based. This concern for another development is a major theme of this book, which includes a series of analytical probes into the dynamics of social change–its theory and practice.

  • Empire with Imperialism

    The Global Dynamics of Neoliberal Capitalism

    By Mauro Casadio, James Petras, Luciano Vasapollo and Henry Veltmeyer     January 2005

    This work calls into question the assertion that global capitalism functions as an autonomous empire ruled only by the market and multinational corporations. In contrast, it is argued, the role of the imperial state is central in regard to the form taken by capitalist development. Within the context of a broad discussion that takes us from Latin America to Russia and China, to Iraq and around the world, this work analyzes the economic base of imperial power and actions of the state in the maintenance and spread of empire. It also demonstrates the limits and costs of empire to the citizens of the United States.