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RGS-IBG DARG pre-conference announcement and call for papers

Development Imaginaries and Contesting North-South Encounters

Monday 2nd July, 11 am - 5pm

Northumbria and Newcastle Universities, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

Organisers: Dr Matt Baillie Smith and Professor Nina Laurie


This workshop aims to explore how development imaginaries are constructed, negotiated and embodied across uneven economic fortunes and a new geopolitics of aid that is challenging established narratives of development, poverty and responsibility. Recession, UK policy transformation surrounding civic responsibility locally and globally, fast economic growth in the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China), and new articulations of citizenship forged by Southern social movements, have created a new context in which to locate understandings of development. Imaginaries of development are no longer only produced in academic or policy silos predominately in the 'North' but have wider origins, circulation and popular appeal. Increased recognition of the diversity of sites of knowledge production about development affects how it is understood and by whom, raising questions about who its mains actors and recipients are. 

In recent years specific understandings of development have played a key role in UK government attempts to construct new forms of citizenship premised on active engagement in civil society organisations. Thinking about the UK's relationship to distant others has become as much of a mantra as discourses of interdependent economic growth in recent years.  Rhetorics of collective social responsibility to development in a post-colonial world have been balanced with the need to engage profitably with the most rapidly growing economies in the world in order to promote UK competitiveness. As a result, controversially for some, the UK development budget has been largely protected from recent cuts. These changes have meant that topics which have not traditionally been seen as development orthodoxy or as outside the boundaries of development scholarship, have gained prominence. This has led policy makers and academics to engage with new topics such as international volunteering, development education and Diaspora agendas and activities. This workshop seeks to examine: What happens to understandings of development and responsibility in these changing contexts? What happens to ideas and practices of development when some 'distant others' live in countries experiencing high levels of economic growth? How robust are notions of responsibility to distant others in times of economic downturn?

The workshop has been scheduled to act as a pre-conference to the RGS-IBG Annual Conference to be held in Edinburgh this year. Travel connections to Edinburgh from Newcastle are excellent with a regular and fast east cost train service (approximately 1.5 hours), good road links and a coach service. Newcastle's international airport and metro links into the city make it an ideal venue for participants joining from outside the UK. 

Call for panel papers
Following the key note presentation, four themed sessions will comprise a lead speaker and a panel of up to three speakers. Short panel papers of ten minutes are sought for each of the sub themes outlined in the program below. The aim is to bring together a range of speakers and participants interested in different aspects of the changing imaginaries of development and contesting North South encounters. 

Keynote "The challenges of a changing development imaginaries and realities for (I)NGOs" Evelyn Rodrigues (Diaspora Volunteering Program director, VSO)

Theme 1: New postcolonial development visions?
*	Dr Pat Noxolo's work focuses on the political and cultural responses to traumatic and catastrophic change from slavery to present day forms of 	colonizing development imaginaries.
Theme 2: Volunteering and development
*	Professor Andrew Jones:' work examines transnational work in the commercial and voluntary sectors (confirmed). (EGRG Committee representative)
Theme 3: 'On the border' politics and the changing geographies of volunteering
*	Professor Nina Laurie's work explores the relationship between volunteering, activism and citizenship and currently focuses on southern activism 	and volunteering around anti-trafficking
Theme 4:  Care for the distant stranger and the social relations of development in the North
*	Dr Matt Baillie Smith's work explores the relationships between engagements with the distant stranger and development practice, social identities 	and cosmopolitan subjectivities, and currently focuses on NGOs, development education and international volunteering


We welcome abstracts of approximately 250 words, and these along with full contact details of all participating authors, should be emailed by Monday 23rd January 2012 to: Jess Scott: [log in to unmask]