Rethinking development
Development Research Conference 2018
Gothenburg, 22-23 August
What kind of ‘development’ is wanted for today’s world? The idea, study, and policy field of ‘development’ emerged in the 1940s, in a time of decolonization, the Cold War, and Euro-centric high modernism. Seventy years later the scene is one of new emerging economies, migration crises, multiculturalism, climate change, and new patterns of infectious and chronic diseases. Given such profound transformations, do we need, again, to rethink ‘development’?
Development can be rethought in terms of concepts, issues, methods and policies. For example, does it still make sense to speak of a ‘North’ and a ‘South’? Do the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) go far enough in redefining the research and policy agenda? Do we need to redirect research attention to new and re-emerging issues such as diasporas, digitization, food security, religion, intellectual property, and health surveillance; or is an older agenda of trade, democracy and conflict resolution as vital as ever? Do we need to ‘rethink’ the migration-development nexus in global development research and policymaking? What place, if any, remains for ‘aid’ in today’s altered development landscape? What new relationships can be forged between developing country scientists and international research partners when setting local research priorities and government policies? Has the moment arrived to construct a truly transdisciplinary development studies – and what does such a methodology entail more precisely? How does development research handle the question of scale in the face of trends towards localization, regionalization and globalization, along with resurgent nationalism? Do we need renewed debate on ethics and positionality in global development research and practice? Indeed, are ecological and other critics right to question the very notion of ‘development’ – and, if so, what takes its place?
To engage these and other debates at the forefront of development studies, the School of Global Studies and the Centre on Global Migration at the University of Gothenburg invites your participation in the next biennial Development Research Conference, sponsored by the Swedish Research Council and Sida, on 22-23 August 2018. Proposals for panels and individual papers are sought on the various theoretical and substantive challenges of rethinking development, as well as on other pressing issues of development research. Welcome to Gothenburg and DevRes 2018!
https://globalstudies.gu.se/forskning/development-research-conference-2…