Introduction: Making economic growth socially sustainable?

�Growth first� approaches to development theory and practice have social consequences. These consequences may emerge in focal sites for project interventions that generate specific social costs that markets cannot necessarily resolve. Social practitioners in the development domain invoked sociological knowledge and approaches to show how project success often depends upon factors that are initially invisible, overlooked, unquantifiable. Despite contested terms of engagement in development discourse, social practitioners find growing convergence among flourishing ideas for poverty reduction, gender equity, rights, participation and empowerment. This introduction sets out some milestones in this trajectory as a basis for the following chapters.