- Convenors:
-
Eyob Balcha Gebremariam
(University of Bristol)
Romain Chenet (University of Warwick)
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- Chairs:
-
Geci Karuri-Sebina
(University of Witwatersrand)
Emma Mawdsley (University of Cambridge)
- Discussants:
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Divine Fuh
(HUMA-Humanities in Africa Institute)
Lata Narayanaswamy (University of Leeds)
Peter Taylor (Institute of Development Studies)
Cecilia Milesi (ODI)
Sam Hickey (University of Manchester)
Maria Gavris (University of Warwick)
Aram Ziai (University of Kassel)
Kai Koddenbrock (Bard College Berlin)
- Format:
- Roundtable
- Stream:
- Reimagining development: From global cooperation to local agency
Short Abstract
The roundtable aims to facilitate two rounds of debate, critical, constructive and transformative reflections on the relevance of ‘the development episteme’ to address multiple layers of crises existing in the present and expected for the future.
Description
Key themes at DSA conferences since 2009 reflect the continued effort in development studies to address fundamental challenges. Framings such as ‘rethinking’, ‘reimagining’, ‘navigating’, ‘unsettling’, and 'opening-up’ development have been adopted to examine issues such as ‘crises’, 'global inequalities’, ‘ethics’, ‘opportunities’, ‘growth’, ‘scarcity’, ‘uncertainty’, ‘dependence’, ‘interdependence’, and ‘just and sustainable futures’. This recourse to contemporary, often self-contradictory buzzwords can put one in mind of repeatedly taking the same limited actions, expecting different outcomes. Doing so uncritically in a rapidly changing world could put our vibrant and committed epistemic communities at clear risk of devolving into an extraction-friendly ‘talking shop’.
Despite valuable reflections, historical and structural factors that sustain geographical, epistemic, racialised, and gendered inequalities and mutually reinforcing injustices remain as entrenched as ever. Ideologies, political and socio-economic policies, and practices that produced suffering, marginalisation, and existential threats are now similarly rearticulated as innovative, smart, and advanced solutions (whether in carbon markets, data management, sustainability mandates, etc). The ongoing 'polycrisis' involves debt crises in Africa, genocide in Gaza, deep social polarisations across the world, right-wing extremism in Europe, unconscionable yet celebrated wealth concentration amongst individuals and corporations, and the jettisoning of 'rules-based’ liberal world (dis)order.
We question:
1) Have ideas and critical practices associated with development run out of steam?
2) How many rounds of rethinking, reimagining and navigating do we need, and what else has to fill in the gaps left?
3) What might enable us to frame our thinking on ‘development’ differently, even if this means forsaking it altogether?