Watch: 60 years of Development Studies at Manchester
For the last 60 years, The University of Manchester has been at the forefront of Development Studies. To mark the occasion, we’ve produced a short documentary telling the story of the Global Development Institute and its forebears.
Narrated by Professors Uma Kothari, David Hulme and Diana Mitlin, the documentary explores how the Institute has progressed from providing informal training for post-colonial administrators, to establishing Manchester as an influential centre post-graduate teaching and research.
The documentary also charts the recognition of Development Studies as a distinct academic discipline, which the establishment of the Development Studies Association (DSA) in 1978 helped to formalise.
It seems appropriate that with Manchester celebrating 60 years of Development Studies and the DSA its 40th anniversary, the annual Development Studies Conference begins in Manchester. The conference will reflect on some of the progress that’s been made over time, but more importantly, will address a major global challenge – rising inequalities.
The final plenary discussion session on Friday will focus on strategies for tackling global inequality, which is a public event, open to all. Tickets can be booked here.
The New Geography of Deindustrialisation and the Rise of the Right
Donald Trump seems intent on starting a global trade war. His recent imposition of tariffs on steel and aluminium is consistent with his rambling inaugural address about “American carnage.” Trump’s narrative of industrial decline is informed by the common sense notion that developing countries have experienced economic growth at the expense of American jobs and industry. This narrative has been deeply rooted in American politics, popular media and scholarship since the late-1970s. Furthermore, it fuels populist politics in European countries that have also witnessed declining manufacturing employment such as the UK, France and Italy. The problem with this narrative is that it ignores the simple fact that deindustrialization in Latin America and Sub-Sharan Africa has been more severe than it has been in the U.S. and Europe.
Deindustrialisation in developing countries differs in important ways from the pattern observed in the OECD. Dani Rodrik refers to it as “premature” because it takes place prior to an increase in productivity in the service sector and/or wage increases. Rather than an endogenous evolution of the economy from manufacturing to services, premature deindustrialisation represents stalled development. It is largely driven by external shocks and events that local policy makers are ill-equipped to address. read more…
DSA2018: Why global inequalities?
Global inequalities is the central theme of DSA2018 in Manchester, which marks the Development Studies Association’s 40th anniversary and 60 years of development studies at The University of Manchester.
Focusing on global inequalities challenges the traditional geographies of development, and demands investigation of the power relations that generate wealth and poverty within and between countries and regions. It also emphasises 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. read more…
DSA2018: Are Jordanian women transcending gender norms? A qualitative analysis of non-traditional work
By Lina Khraise
The Development Studies Association Annual Conference is being hosted by the Global Development Institute from 27-29th June. The conference will focus on inequalities. Ahead of the conference, we are running a series of blogs from attendees looking at the key issues and debates around inequalities.
Jordan has one of the lowest rates of female participation in the workforce, currently between 12 and 15 percent in the formal sector and 40 percent in the informal sector. There are many impediments to women’s economic participation. Issues of lack of childcare, transport and employer discrimination are often cited. Yet, despite improvements in social security and some labour laws, one of the most pervasive and underpinning issues is that of gender norms. While women are well educated, the societal perspective is that the main role is to become a wife and mother only, and their work is seen as temporary and even unnecessary.
DSA2018: The political economy of green revolutions, agrarian transformations and inequality
by Tom Lavers, Global Development Institute
The Development Studies Association Annual Conference is being hosted by the Global Development Institute from 27-29th June. The conference will focus on inequalities. Ahead of the conference, we are running a series of blogs from attendees looking at the key issues and debates around inequalities.
A recent workshop at The University of Manchester brought together participants with expertise in Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique and Tanzania to discuss recent efforts to promote green revolutions and the impacts these are having on agrarian transformation, industrialisation and patterns of inequality. Discussions highlighted the centrality of political economy to understanding processes of agrarian transformation, as well as the importance of broadening our analytical focus beyond agricultural productivity to the production linkages between agriculture, the rural non-farm economy and industry. A panel on Unequal legacies? The politics of the Green Revolution and South-South technology transfers in Africa at the Development Studies Association conference in Manchester from 27-29 June will pick up on some of these themes and many more.
Former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff visits Global Development Institute
The Global Development Institute hosted a visit from the former Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff yesterday (Thursday 21 June) as part of a study tour she is undertaking across the UK.
Rousseff is a Brazilian economist and politician who served as the 36th President of Brazil, holding the position from 2011. She was the first woman to become the president of Brazil. read more…
DSA2018: More educated, less mobile? Diverging trends in income and educational mobility in Chile and Peru
The Development Studies Association Annual Conference is being hosted by the Global Development Institute from 27-29th June. The conference will focus on inequalities. Ahead of the conference, we are running a series of blogs from attendees looking at the key issues and debates around inequalities.
Anja Gaentzsch and Gabriela Zapata Román
The fact that parents pass on their advantages in life to their children is almost a given truth. But how strong is such transmission actually, and does it differ between societies and countries? The concept of inter-generational mobility measures the degree to which the socio-economic status of individuals – their profession, income or education – can be explained by parental background. A more mobile society is one where own achievements depend less on those of one’s parents. Research suggests that societies with a high level of income inequality also tend to display lower social mobility. Reasons for this include limited possibilities for low income groups to invest in the education of their children and social capital that is passed on between generations among others. Low social mobility not only contradicts our notion of social justice because it points towards unequal opportunities. It is also a concern of socioeconomic progress if it hampers children from disadvantaged backgrounds in unfolding their full potentials in later life. Measuring just how strong the link between parents and children is consists, however, a challenging task – both conceptually (which dimension captures welfare best?) and statistically. The available evidence suggests that countries and regions differ widely in their level of social mobility.
DSA2018: Does structural transformation lead to higher inequality?
The Development Studies Association Annual Conference is being hosted by the Global Development Institute from 27-29th June. The conference will focus on inequalities. Ahead of the conference, we are running a series of blogs from attendees looking at the key issues and debates around inequalities.
By Kunal Sen, Global Development Institute, The University of Manchester
Structural transformation – the movement of workers from low productivity to high productivity activities and sectors – is an essential feature of rapid and sustained growth. The speed at which structural transformation occurs differentiates successful countries from unsuccessful ones. At the same time, it is widely believed that structural transformation can lead to higher inequality, at least initially. As workers move from low earnings jobs in the subsistence agricultural sector to better paid jobs in the more productive manufacturing sector, inequality can increase. Therefore, rapid structural transformation may entail a trade-off between growth and inequality, which may be called the developer’s dilemma. While inequality may increase at the early stages of structural transformation, beyond a certain level of structural transformation, inequality will decrease, giving rise to the famous inverted U-shaped relationship between income and inequality – the so-called Kuznets curve.
Refugee Week reflections: The end of Europe as a community of values – not caused by Brexit but the journey of the Aquarius?
Tanja R. Müller, Reader in Development Studies, Global Development Institute
Remember 2015? Then, a perceived unprecedented number of refugees and migrants entered Europe, more than one million people according to available data, while almost 4000 drowned on their journeys. We saw long queues of people stranded at the borders of mainly Eastern European countries, pictures that for many evoked scenes of refugee movements after WWII.
But the year 2015 also saw a courageous German chancellor, Angela Merkel, deciding against many in her own political party to open German borders and do the morally right thing: let those stranded in, to be welcomed and processed in Germany. Yes, initially the German asylum system as well as many of its welfare institutions were somehow overwhelmed, but the slogan ‘we will manage’ and a wave of bottom up solidarity by German citizens, NGOs and the business sector seemed to vindicate that optimism, and localised solutions were mostly found for those in peril. And in fact, Germany has managed pretty well, even if right-wing propaganda suggests otherwise. read more…
DSA2018: Land, ethnic inequality and conflict in Ethiopia’s emerging new political order
The Development Studies Association Annual Conference is being hosted by the Global Development Institute from 27-29th June. The conference will focus on inequalities. Ahead of the conference, we are running a series of blogs from attendees looking at the key issues and debates around inequalities.
Tom Lavers, Lecturer in Politics and Development
The last few years have seen large-scale conflict and major population displacements across Ethiopia, along the Oromiya-Somali border, within the contested Guji-Gedeo area, Amhara displaced from Benishangul-Gumuz, and Amhara and Tigrayans displaced from Oromiya, amongst others. These conflicts have often taken place along ‘ethnic’ lines and build on historical tensions, inequalities and grievances. They have also clearly been driven by the ongoing reconfiguration of power relations within Ethiopian politics, with mass mobilisation and conflict often a tool or byproduct of national and regional elites attempting to position themselves within the emerging political order in Ethiopia. A recent open access paper published in African Affairs argues that such conflicts reflect the ambiguity and contestation that is hard-wired into Ethiopian laws and popular discourse regarding the rights—in particular the right to land—of ethnic minorities living outside their ‘home’ region within Ethiopia’s ethnic federal system.