In Pursuit of Progress explores how meta-narratives of development become entangled in people’s identities and life trajectories; how they weave their way into people’s imaginings of their histories, their understandings of their place in the world, and their dreams for their future. The idea of development has been deconstructed and scrutinised as a “Western” metaphor ordering global difference and change, and as a banner under which diverse schemes for societal improvement find legitimacy and common purpose. Less attention has been given to the diverse ways the “subjects” of development interpret the concept. This monograph draws on a decade of ethnographic research on the Philippine island of Siquijor, to explore myths, meanings and practices of development and its counterparts, progress and modernization. It considers development not just as a collective project but recognises that, as a cognitive tool for organizing relationships between people, it is personal. Through this, In Pursuit of Progress offers fresh insights to debates in anthropology, sociology and development studies regarding the ways in which discourses of development act upon local and global power relations.