Introduction

This chapter presents a theoretical exposition into the connection between social change and the political subject via c, and a critique of the current paradigm for development being marshalled in the World Development Report (WDR) for 2015. It argues that on closer inspection, the report is not such a radical departure from conventional development paradigms. The chapter examines the intellectual antecedents of education for personal, political or social change within a long tradition of liberal political thought that has its fomenting grounds in early modern humanism and the Enlightenment. It outlines rational choice theory (RCT) and its alignment with classical rational liberalism, the hegemonic place it has occupied in economics and political science, and its connections with neo-liberalism. The chapter focuses on the significance of framing the WDR as a departure from RCT while demonstrating that, in fact, it is not.