Global Development Institute Blog

Academics from the Global Development Institute are helping to convene a number of panels at the annual Development Studies Association conference taking place 27-29th June at The University of Manchester. This year’s theme will be Global Inequalities and will challenge the traditional geographies of development, and demand investigation of the power relations that generate wealth and poverty within and between countries and regions. Conference panels will also emphasise the many dimensions of inequality, including gender, class, climate, race and ethnicity, region, nationality, citizenship status, age, (dis)ability, sexuality, and religion and the ways these reinforce or counteract each other.

There is a call for papers for all panels at the DSA Conference; visit the DSA website for more information. The deadline for submitting papers is 9 March.

For full details of each session and to propose a paper, click on the title.

 

Unequal legacies? The politics of the Green Revolution and South-South technology transfers in Africa

Convenors: Lidia Cabral (Institute of Development Studies), Divya Sharma (University of Sussex), Tom Lavers (The University of Manchester)

The panel will consider attempts to promote a ‘new’ Green Revolution in Africa, focusing on: the transfer of transnational policy ideas—including South-South transfers; the adoption and adaptation of these ideas in particular national political economies; and their distributional impacts.

 

Development leadership, wicked problems and global inequalities

Convenor:  Kelechi Ekuma, (The University of Manchester), Rory Stanton (The University of Manchester)
This interdisciplinary panel will explore the nature and changing contexts of leadership in international development, highlighting the influence of ‘development leaders’ on policy reforms and the resolution of wicked and complex social problems including inequalities.

 

Digital Inequalities and Development

Convenor: Richard Heeks (The University of Manchester), Mark Graham (University of Oxford), Dorothea Kleine (University of Sheffield)
This panel will cover the relationship between digital technologies and global inequalities: ways in which ICTs may “level the playing field” via pro-equity digital innovations. It will also looks at amplifications and entrenchments of existing inequalities via digital exclusion, harm, asymmetric benefits and adverse incorporation.

 

Everyday practices of inequality

Convenors: Uma Kothari (The University of Manchester), Alex Arnall (University of Reading)
This panel will explore how global inequalities are created, reproduced and potentially transformed at the level of day-to-day, routine life. It will consider how studying people’s everyday social relations, experiences and practices can provide new insights into addressing inequality at different scales.

 

Synergies among social protection schemes for poverty and inequality reduction

Convenors: Francesco Burchi (German Development Institute (DIE), Daniele Malerba (The University of Manchester)
This panel focuses on the interactions among social protection schemes or between them and economic interventions. In particular, it aims to investigate the joint effects of these programs on different dimensions of poverty and on inequality in low- and mid-income countries.

 

Production networks and development in an era of polycentric trade

Convenors: Rory Horner, (The University of Manchester) Khalid Nadvi (The University of Manchester)
As end markets in the global South – and domestic and regional value chains – have grown, a pattern of polycentric trade has emerged. Building on earlier research on North-South value chains, this session explores prospects for development in the context of multiple, overlapping value chains.

 

The Political Economy of Industrial Policy and State-Business Relations in the 21st Century

Convenors: Nicolai Schulz (LSE), Pritish Behuria (The University of Manchester)
This panel will examine the politics of industrial policy and state-business relations in late developing countries in the 21st century.

 

Deindustrialisation in the Global South: Inequality, work and urban transformation

Convenors: Seth Schindler, Nicola Banks, Tom Gillespie (The University of Manchester)
This panel focuses on the drivers of deindustrialisation in cities in the global South, and its impacts at the urban scale on labourers, work and the built environment. Taken together, the papers will highlight emergent patterns of uneven development, inequality and income (re)distribution

 

Value chains and production networks: reducing or reproducing inequalities?

Convenor: Judith Krauss (The University of Manchester), Bimal Arora (Aston Business School), Stephanie Barrientos (The University of Manchester)
As global, regional and local value chains and production networks rise in importance in international trade, there is a need to analyse to what degree they reduce or reproduce inequalities in social, economic and environmental terms across stakeholders and space.

 

 

There are a number of panels being run by University of Manchester academics who aren’t from Global Development Institute. For full details of each session and to propose a paper, click on the title.

 

Many dimensions of Inequalities in China

Convenor: Xiaobing Wang (The University of Manchester)
This paper panel will examine the experiences and lessons from China in combating many dimentional of inequalities. It aims for a synergy of some high quality papers and will encourage the exchange of ideas among scholars

 

New perspectives on emerging donors: anxieties, intellectual histories, and hybrid identities [Rising Powers SG] (Paper)

Convenor: Jamie Doucette (University of Manchester) Soyeun Kim (Sogang University)

This session interrogates the ‘alternative’ nature of emerging donors and South-South development cooperation. We highlight new research from variety of inter-disciplinary perspectives, with a focus on intellectual histories, affective registers, conceptual interrogation, and networks of power.

 

Convenor: Shoba Arun (Manchester Metropolitan University), Wendy Olsen (University of Manchester)

This panel explores the social, economic and cultural basis of differences in the work experience of women. South Asian women’s labour supply may be declining in some industries: how is this differentiated? How do economic inequality and ethnic divisions affect women’s time-use?

 

Convenor: Jenna de Lopez (University of Manchester), Gemma Sou (University of Manchester)

This panel discusses the critiques of gender and development (GAD) to interrogate how gender is conceptualised and operationalised in disaster management, with the aim of avoiding similar errors in the new trend to include gender inequalities in disaster management contexts.

Digital entrepreneurship and global inequality (Roundtable)

Convenor: Brian Nicholson (University of Manchester), Boyi Li (University of Exeter), John Dobson (Clark University), Chrisanthi Avgerou (London School of Economics)

This roundtable panel will focus on digital entrepreneurship that inspires an optimistic expectation that rural poverty might be mitigated by a new digital economy. Cases from Mexico and China explore the limitations of overcoming inequality with digital infrastructure and policy measures needed.

 

Note: This article gives the views of the author/academic featured and does not represent the views of the Global Development Institute as a whole