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This book questions the dominant approaches of the professions, disciplines and bureaucracies concerned with rural development, by examining and outlining a new paradigm: the professionalism of reversals. The challenge is to turn current thinking on its head. New frontiers can be opened up by breaking out of, and reversing many of the ideas, values, methods and behaviour normally dominant in disciplines and departments, by offsetting biases, decentralizing, encouraging diversity, and attempting to put people before things. These themes are explored through analysis of different topics: normal professionalism and new paradigms; modes of thought and procedures; poverty-focused projects and the project process; tropical seasonality; agricultural research and extension; NGOs' comparative competence with new participatory approaches and methods; and an ideology of reversals and practical pluralism …