17/02/2016: GTD Colloquium “Critical Transformations and Global Development” by Jeffrey Henderson

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Date/Time
Date(s) - 17/02/16
3:30 pm - 5:30 pm

Location
Grote Gracht 80-82, Spiegelzaal (Soiron Building) Maastricht

Categories


Critical Transformations and Global Development 

by Prof. Jeffrey Henderson (University of Bristol, UK)

Globalisation, Transnationalism & Development (GTD) Colloquium organized in association with Maastricht Centre for Citizenship, Migration and Development (MACIMIDE)

Global development is in crisis. The dynamics of economic, social and political change, and the serious problems they are generating, are raising major questions about the adequacy of the policy-practices of development, in both ‘developing’ and ‘developed’ countries alike. Impacting these issues are explanatory inadequacies in the field of development science. This lecture argues that a way out of our intellectual problems may be to break with current discourses and re-theorize development on the basis of ‘transformation’, with attention to the circumstances under which periods of ‘critical transformation’ are likely to occur. Beginning with an account of the conceptual and epistemological issues associated with this approach, the lecture will illustrate the argument by reference to transformation dynamics in a number of countries at various levels of development. In so doing it will explore the utility of ‘transformation analysis’ for the construction of a development science more adequate to the exigencies of our contemporary epoch.