Dear all,
We invite paper proposals for the Panel “Infrastructure and the political ordering of development” (Panel 5) for the Development Research Conference, Stockholm, 22-24 August 2016 (organized by the Swedish Research Council, Sida and Stockholm University).
Large technical systems and infrastructures have gained renewed attention in development policy and practice. Considerable attention has been paid, for example, to China’s resource-for-infrastructure approach in Africa, to the developing world’s “infrastructure gap” that is said to hamper economic growth, or to the mushrooming of special economic zones across the so-called global South. Participation in collective life, globally, increasingly hinges on access to infrastructures for transport, communications, water supply, etc.
Infrastructures, in other words, hold the promise to connect, and to facilitate the movement of information, goods and people. Likewise, parts of development discourse argue that the absence of infrastructure is an explanatory factor for poverty, social inequality and conflict. For instance, poor and absent connections to the Internet may constitute a major new exclusion from development. Development initiatives also increasingly concentrate on infrastructure measures as concrete outputs to address insecurity and preventing conflict.
However, development research rarely addresses assumptions, practices and effects related to how vital infrastructures are governed and secured. This panel builds on Keller Easterling’s claim that “some of the most radical changes to the globalizing world are being written, not in the language of law and diplomacy, but in … spatial, infrastructural technologies” (2014, 15). Papers are sought that explore the relations between infrastructure and forms of political order in the wider area of development studies. We thus conceptualize infrastructures as relational – as entangled with social processes – rather than merely as passive technical support systems.
The panel invites conceptual or empirical studies around themes such as (though not limited to) the following:
• Do roads lead to peace – infrastructure and peacebuilding?
• Governing global communication infrastructure
• Exclusionary and violent effects of infrastructures
• The role of expertise in infrastructure interventions
• Large infrastructures as development? The revival of the modernist dream
• Infrastructure and notions of common/public good
Panel conveners (Panel 5): Jan Bachmann, School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg; Jan Aart Scholte, School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg and Peer Schouten, Danish Institute of International Studies
Abstracts should be submitted by e-mail both to [log in to unmask] and to [log in to unmask] . Abstracts should have a maximum length of 250 words, in plain text, and be saved in Word format. Name the file by stating the number of the panel you are submitting to, followed by your surname, ex 12_Surname.docx. Please adhere to the following format:
- Name of the panel
- Title of the abstract (lowercase letters)
- Author’s name and e-mail
- Author’s institutional affiliation
- Body of the abstract
The selection of abstracts will be made by the panel convener/s and the organizing committee. Abstract authors will be notified during the second half of April and accepted abstracts will be published on the conference webpage. Panel Conveners will organize their sessions and coordinate the submission of full papers.
Some limited travel funding will be available for researchers from a selection of countries – list available at www.su.se/devres2016. It can be applied for in connection with the abstract submission, by stating this in the abstract and by enclosing your CV and a letter of motivation (including whether the applicant has other funding available). Successful applicants will be notified during the second half of April.
Further information: http://www.humangeo.su.se/english/development-research-conference-2016
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