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This paper proposes a new way of looking at development theory. Its specific aim is to problematise post-development theories by thinking through an ecotourist development strategy put into practice in the Biosphere Reserve Ría Celestún (Yucatán, Mexico). Post-development studies have tended to rely on a narrow theoretical perspective in which development is understood as a global discourse resisted by local Others. A focus on discourse has abstracted the lived and conflictual experiences of development ethnographies. This article claims that moving between the study of discourses and the study of practices, ‘complex mobile connections’ and ‘multi-sited global ethnographies’, furthers considerably our understanding of development. This attention to both discourses and practices may enable new ways of thinking about how development is empirically, locally and materially performed. The complex practices through which Celestún is performed as an ecotourist destination, as a place undergoing development, and as a fishing community provides empirical evidence for the main theoretical points explored in the article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]