Short Abstract

Great expectations invites participants to think again about international development: its assumptions, practice, and expected results in a world marked by growing inequality.

Long Abstract

Social inequality is growing world wide at a rapid rate, and societies all across the Global South are no exception to this. In such an unequal world, one might think that there is an urgent role for development organisations to advocate overtly for fairer systems, and indeed some do. But in the main, development donors, and practitioners typically speak in the language of improving livelihoods, empowerment, or capacity building rather than systemic change. This is apparent when we look at the work of organisations such as the World Bank or GIZ. Elsewhere, drivers of development such as China talk of stimulating local economies. What is never emphasised by anyone involved in the development process is that any sort of development that embraces and promotes capitalist economics results – inevitably – in entrenching growing inequality between members of the same population and between global population groups.

None of this is entirely new, and scholars have paid attention increasingly to the negative or mixed aspects of development interventions across global South contexts (see, amongst others, De Boeck and Baloji 2016; Wilcox 2025) and within cultures of doing aid work (Koddenbrock 2016). But what has not yet been studied in sufficient depth is the overarching question around development of why so many people, both those who do development and who receive it, continue to believe in the promises of development in a glaringly unequal world.

Given that the theme of this year’s conference is “what moves us?”, it is timely and important to ask what what motivates people towards particular imaginaries but also what does not. In relation to development, it is enlightening to ask what moves people towards the promises of development, but also what keeps ideas in place of how to get there, even if the downsides are increasingly obvious.

Mosse (2005) has argued that anthropologists have a particularly important role in paying attention to local dynamics and giving voice to local life-worlds. Taking this as a starting point, this workshop explores ideas and expectations of development in 2027 and beyond, centring lived experience around the promises of development and how different people negotiate questions of development. Scholars engaging with these and similar questions empirically in any context and from the perspective of anyone involved in the development process, are most welcome to participate.