The World Bank's World Development Report 2011 on conflict, security and development: a critique through five vignettes

This article considers the World Bank's World Development Report 2011 on Conflict, Security and Development. It offers critical analysis of some of the WDR's underlying premises through five ‘vignettes’ focusing respectively on the report's bibliography, the work of Charles Tilly, the way that gangs are considered in the report, the Urban Pacification Programme in Rio de Janiero, and the report's discussion of job creation. Although the WDR 2011 is unquestionably a welcome contribution to debates about violence and development, it is also in many ways fundamentally flawed, most notably promoting a limited vision of the linkages between conflict, security and development.