Since at least the days of Francis Bacon, the dominant view in the western world has framed technological and economic development as progress and championed that same narrow vision of “progress” as inherently benevolent and inevitable. Multinational corporations, the IMF and World Bank, national governments, and humanitarian organizations regularly promote development as the only road to security—but those being “developed” know otherwise.Staying Alive makes clear why this development paradigm—implemented through enclosure, privatization, corporate piracy, marginalization, and violence—is more accurately characterized as maldevelopment, and how it is inexorably dragging the world down a path of self-destruction. Prescient and fiercely relevant, this pioneering work illuminates how women, more than surviving the crises brought on by development, are creating and safeguarding vital sources of knowledge and vision on not only how to stay alive, but why we should in the first place.