Critical re-thinking about development

This is a time of critical re-thinking about the nature and meaning of Development. Contemporary challenges such as climate change, global food crises, growing populations, widespread environmental degradation, geo-political instability and concerns over energy management have heightened uncertainty around – and contestation over – the future. In October 2015, the United Nations unveiled the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a set of ambitious, much-discussed goals that follow on the heels of the prior Millennium Development Goals (2005–2015). According to the website, the SDGs “converge with the post 2015 development agenda.” This raises the question: what is the post-2015 development agenda, who is included and how are the boundaries constructed? 

Notwithstanding the billions of dollars, thousands of consultants and considerable institutional infrastructure, development work raises as many questions as it answers. Thinking of development as a policy, a set of objectives, groups of people, or a national and international set of goals, raises old and new questions of inequality, social change, colonialism, war, rights, environmental degradation, distribution, and more. To address the questions of what is development, what or who is to be developed and why, Cornell University is hosting a conference on “Development in Question” to be held 6-8 October 2016 on the Cornell campus in Ithaca, New York. The conference features a series of keynote plenaries with leading academics and activists from around the world, and more than 150 paper presentations that think critically and creatively about contradictions, challenges and opportunities within the concept and practice of development. 

Call for Papers
The call for papers is now closed. 
Limited registration is available for those who are not presenting papers.  Please email [email protected] if you are not presenting a paper and would like to attend the conference. 
Organizing Committee
  • Wendy Wolford and Alice Beban, Cornell University, USA, Development Sociology
  • Elizabeth Harrison, University of Sussex, UK, School of Global Studies
  • Michael Watts, University of California, Berkeley, USA, Program in Development Studies
  • Sérgio Sauer, University of Brasília, Brazil, Program on Environment and Rural Development
  • Ye Jingzhong, China Agricultural University, China, Humanities and Development Studies
  • Carol Upadhya, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, India
  • Max Ajl, Middle East Political Economy Project, Arab Studies Institute
  • Yvonne Underhill-Sem, University of Auckland, New Zealand, Development Studies
  • Shalmali Guttal, Focus on the Global South, Bangkok, Thailand
  • Emmanuel Sulle, University of the Western Cape, South Africa, PLAAS
  • Jennifer Franco, Transnational Institute, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
  • Rae Lesser Blumberg, former President, ASA Section on the Sociology of Development, USA (rotating)
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