SCOS Update, December
As the year is coming to an end, we have four items for you:
1) A call for papers to the 8th Annual Liverpool Symposium on Current Developments in Ethnographic Research in the Social and Management Sciences
2) A call for papers to the CMS subtheme “Extending critiques of ‘international development’: The limits of post-colonial and neo-liberal paradigms”
3) Graduate Teaching Assistantships at the University of Leicester School of Management for September 2013
4) Up to 20 Advanced Research Fellowships in Strategy, at the University of Exeter, UK
1) A call for papers to the 8th Annual Liverpool Symposium on Current Developments in Ethnographic Research in the Social and Management Sciences
2) A call for papers to the CMS subtheme “Extending critiques of ‘international development’: The limits of post-colonial and neo-liberal paradigms”
3) Graduate Teaching Assistantships at the University of Leicester School of Management for September 2013
4) Up to 20 Advanced Research Fellowships in Strategy, at the University of Exeter, UK
Item 1:
Call for papers – The 8th Annual Liverpool Symposium on Current Developments in Ethnographic Research in the Social and Management Sciences
“The Politics of Meaning-making / Meaning-breaking”
In association with the Journal of Organizational Ethnography and Ethnography
Hosted at VU University Amsterdam, 28th – 30th August 2013
The Annual Liverpool Symposium on Current Developments in Ethnographic Research in the Social and Management Sciences is a leading international forum for debate and dialogue on the theory, practice and form of ethnographic work in the social and management fields. Having travelled within the UK so far, the symposium now makes a symbolic move towards Europe’s mainland, confirming its ambitions to build a distinctly international community of ethnographic researchers. The 8th Symposium will be hosted by the department of Organization Sciences at VU University Amsterdam, where ethnography has firmly established itself as a methodology for organizational research and, more generally, as an analytical orientation towards meaning and meaning-making processes. The title of this year’s symposium hence is The Politics of Meaning-making/ Meaning-breaking.
Meaning-making or sensemaking is a prime focus in ethnographic studies. Scholars often conceptualise sensemaking as an exercise of mental ordering. Arguably, social actors’ meaning-making involves a cognitive mapping of the world. Yet, meaning-making is also a social, politicized, power-sensitive act of worldmaking in which actors try to grasp meaning for themselves, as well as attempt to make meaning for others. Instead of making sense, they may then be out to make nonsense; to remake, unmake or ‘break’ meanings of others; to deprive something of its meaning and talk nonsense; to raise commotion or to deceive by spreading misleading meanings. We may ask such questions as: do social actors search for understanding to create order or are they rather out to ‘break’ meaning? The ethnographer is trained to always surmise meaning, to interpret symbolism, to find ‘depth’ underneath surface impressions. So, could meaninglessness be the ethnographer’s blind spot? The ‘hole in a doughnut’ or, to remain loyal to our Dutch roots, in a ‘holey cheese’? This year’s symposium therefore encourages papers that explore both meaning-making and meaning-breaking efforts in the organizational world and in our explorations of it.
In keeping with past symposia, the theme for the 8th Symposium deliberately constitutes a broad canvas. We expect the precise conference themes and streams to emerge from the papers themselves. We anticipate papers that will organize themselves within and around the following illustrative topics: culture and collaboration; identity and distinction-drawing; time, space and materiality; stories and narrative; crisis and transformation; power and organizational politics; senses and ethnographic sensibility; or everyday doings and sayings. We welcome papers contributing to ethnography theoretically, empirically, and/or methodologically. We seek to encourage a diverse range of submissions, across disciplines, and particularly welcome work-in-progress from emerging scholars.
Conference Chairs
Dr. Jason Ferdinand
j.m.ferdinand@liverpool.ac.uk
Dr. Frans Kamsteeg
f.h.kamsteeg@vu.nl
Dr. Ida Sabelis
i.sabelis@vu.nl
Organising Committee
Dr. Matthew Brannan, Keele University
Dr. Manuela Nocker, University of Essex Business School
Dr. Geoff Pearson, University of Liverpool Management School
Dr. Mike Rowe, University of Liverpool Management School
Dr. Harry Wels, VU University Amsterdam, Organization Sciences
Dr. Sierk Ybema, VU University Amsterdam, Organization Sciences
Keynote Speakers
Barbara Czarniawska, Gothenburg Research Institute, University of Gothenburg
Mark de Rond, The Judge Institute, University of Cambridge
Tim Pachirat, The New School for Social Research, New York (TBC)
Galit Ailon, Social Sciences, Bar-Ilan University, Tel Aviv
Submission Details
Abstracts (up to 750-words), should be submitted to ethnog@liverpool.ac.uk in PDF format, saved as the authors surname followed by the paper title by Friday 8 February 2013.
Full paper submission: Friday 26th July 2013.
Best Paper Award
This year the symposium will be running a 'best paper' award co-sponsored by Emerald Publishing, the publisher of the Journal of Organizational Ethnography with which this conference is affiliated.
Complete CfP, registration information, and conference website: http://www.liv.ac.uk/ethnography (the website is currently being updated. Thank you for your patience).
Item 2:
Call for papers – Extending critiques of ‘international development’: The limits of post-colonial and neo-liberal paradigms
Subtheme at the Critical Management Studies Conference, University of Manchester, July 10-12, 2013.
Fabian Frenzel, University of Leicester
Peter Case, James Cook University [1]
Mitchell W Sedgwick, Oxford Brookes University
Call for Papers
Given the centrality of the international development agenda to geopolitics in the post-war period, it is remarkable and perhaps even suspicious that ‘development’ has attracted conspicuously little attention from scholars working in the fields of management and organisation studies. Clegg has accused management and organization studies (MOS) of failing to pay sufficient regard to the ‘big issues’, and in the case of the politics and organization of ‘development’ we find a particularly cogent example of such an oversight. Moreover, there is an extraordinary paucity of critical assessment of the principles and practices pursued in the name of ‘development’. While anthropologists and development scholars have pursued a range of critical approaches to development and often touched upon MOS related issues, MOS has had next to nothing to say by way of critique of international development theories, ideologies/discourses and practices. It is also silent about the impact interventions have on those subjected to ‘development’ and the perspectives of these ‘subjects’. This sub-theme aims to promote engagement on the part of MOS scholars and researchers with international development. This includes a call for engagement in cross-disciplinarily scholarship to benefit from and develop further critical approaches to development pursued in anthropology and development studies, inter alia. The critical repertoires and methodologies employed in MOS have the potential to contribute to the advancement of critiques of international development.
Following the period of decolonisation, international development has emerged as a central field of policy governing relationships between the so-called developed and developing world[2]. Rhetorically aimed at advancing the plight of ‘poorer’ and ‘underdeveloped’ countries, development aid and assistance was never a charitable affair. Following the establishment of the Marshall Plan institutions - assisting European post-Second World War reconstruction - ‘development’ principles and practices rapidly morphed into a Cold War competition, where East and West used aid and assistance as the carrot (with the stick never far off) to lure so called ‘third world’ countries into their respective zones of influence.
In the 1970s a new form of international assistance emerged with the development of international credit. As interest rates were low, developing countries were ‘advised’ to take out cheap loans to finance large infrastructure projects which, built under the auspices of multinational corporations, especially construction firms, effectively recycled finance within the developed world’s economies. When interest rates soared in the 1980s the developing world was confronted with what has now become a ubiquitous economic malady: massive debt crises. Debt created new dependencies for developing countries and legitimized wide-scale interventions on the part of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) under the rubric ‘structural adjustment'. That is, in exchange for an increasing number of emergency loans these international agencies implemented what has become known as the Washington Consensus: a set of neo-liberal policy recipes intended to restructure underdeveloped economies. In practice, World Bank and IMF intervention has become synonymous with both the cutting of public expenditure and privatisation of state assets. Developing countries are forced to open their markets to foreign direct investment, including, in the more viable ‘developing’ economies, private credit. (This well-rehearsed pattern is, of course, increasingly familiar in ‘developed’ European countries today, many of which are similarly guided by IMF policies.) Integrated into the global financial system, having been obliged to pursue a ‘development’ pathway, the developing world’s natural resources - oil and gas fields, precious metals, rivers, forests and pristine beaches - have to a significant extent been handed over to multinational corporations which exploit them for private gain. Under this scenario, moreover, insufficient regard is given to local socio-economic benefit, let alone long term sustainability or ecological welfare in the countries affected.
Unsurprisingly, this led in some corners to resistance, e.g., the anti-globalization movement and the more recent manifestations of the ‘Occupy’ movements, as well as the intellectual critique of development discourses and policies pursued by neo-liberal-centric public agencies (Dinerstein and Deneulin, 2012; Fforde, 2009). Combining Marxist perspectives with a Foucauldian understanding of power, in a contemporary extension of Wallerstein’s ‘world systems theory’ - where development is understood as little more than a foil for the implementation of neo-colonial policies aimed at exploiting peripheral countries - a ‘post-development’ paradigm has emerged (Escobar, 1996). Two distinct empirical consequences have followed the post-development critique. Firstly, the classical development discourse has shifted from development to poverty eradication, highlighted perhaps most significantly in the formulation and adoption of the Millennium Development Goals by the UN. Secondly, ‘development’ is now understood both by practitioners and intellectuals as the pursuit of a broad range of actors beyond the State, including various boundary-busting South/South, e.g., developing world, and North/South alliances. Civil society as well as social movements, both at local and global levels, have emerged which contest both classical development models and its similarly large-scale alternatives, such as the role of philanthropists (e.g., the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) in pushing particular solutions to developing world problems (Frenzel et al., 2011).
In short, in recent years development assistance and aid has come to a new crossroads. Conflicts arise as sustainable development goals clash with growth based poverty eradication. Moreover, in light of the economic success of some of the past receivers of western aid, and stagnation and recession in western countries, development assistance is increasingly criticised as unaffordable and no longer necessary. At the same time, some countries, like the UK, pursue an expansion of their overseas aid spending. This comes with an increasing financialisation of such aid, where the Commonwealth Development Corporation (CDC) group arguably plays a dubious role.[3]
Needless to say, the post-development paradigm has attracted its own critics, often in the form of practitioners pointing to the ideological character of post-development ideas themselves (Piertse, 2000), while others predictably highlight the need for pragmatic compromises (Matthews, 2008). Meanwhile, the irony of the development situation is not lost on observers in pointing out that the possible decline of the State in controlling ‘development’, as well as global economic affairs tout court, fits the contemporary neo-liberal agenda. Closer to the ground, e.g., in projects, many researchers have questioned the efficacy of development aid because of its tendency to create cultures of ‘project-dependency’; that is, the effects of development interventions are often contained within spatial, temporal and socio-political envelopes determined by a logic of ‘projects’ and ‘project management’ (Dowie, 2008; Foale, 2001; Igoe and Brockington, 2007). Meanwhile, contradictions in the culture(s) of development ideologies and the prerogatives of the institutionalization of development practices have been noted in some very substantive, ethnographic research projects (Mosse, 2005, 2011; Mosse and Lewis, 2005, 2006).
Seen as a complex network, the plethora of perspectives now in play in unpacking ‘development’ puts a premium on making explicit the ‘positionality’ of the analyst, both practically and in terms of ideological stance, as well as precision as to the level(s) of discussion used in any particular research project. By way of example, within Development Studies itself, there is a stimulating division between those who ‘study’ development and those training themselves for careers as development ‘practitioners’. Across the board, the latter have the very best of intentions and are aware, and critical, of the neo-colonial taint of ‘assistance’. Especially in the context of anthropological training in development, there has been a rich and instructive intellectual and emotional convergence of interests driven by anthropology’s long-term ideological, e.g., (neo-) colonial, concerns with the moral conundrums of doing and accounting for fieldwork. In the case of ethnographic research, for instance, the anthropologist-informant relationship rarely plays out on a level playing field. Self-awareness and explicit discussion of the problems of positionality is de rigeur in anthropological texts, including those that engage ‘development’ issues. We feel that management scholars taking on ‘development’ from whatever angle would do well to consider such problems of methodology and personal engagement.
Finally, then, while ‘post-development’ theorizing has provided important energy in what had become, perhaps, a standardized/classic discussion – much of it driven by economics discourse - it is clear that ‘development’ is here to stay as, however riddled with contradiction, it is necessary to understand and assist those living under very difficult conditions at the ‘back-end’ of our global systems.
Given this broad overview, we invite critical historical and contemporary perspectives on issues that address the management and organization of international development. Indicative topics might include:
- ‘Development’ and its alternatives; what are the implications for MOS?
- Cooperation and cultures of dominance.
- Poverty eradication and its discourses.
- Targets, scales, and goals: measures of development and poverty.
- Development and sustainability: conflicts and convergence.
- The financialization of international development.
- Development policy and global governance (G8, G20, UN, IMF, World Bank)
- Corruption: cultural difference and forms of accountability.
- Critical analyses of international development discourse(s).
- Non-state actors in development and post-development: NGOs, social movements, philanthropists.
- Critical and ‘practical’ development anthropology.
- International development and critical project management studies.
- Subaltern studies and post-colonial critique of international development.
- Development from the perspective of those impacted.
The convenors would also welcome creative interpretations which challenge the boundaries set by this call for papers.
Abstracts
Abstracts of no more than 500 words (A4, single spaced, 12 point font) should be submitted as e-mail attachments (all common formats accepted) by Thursday 31st January 2013 to peter.case@jcu.edu.au
Abstracts should include:
· Title
· The focus, aims and objectives of the paper
· The research evidence base underpinning the paper
· How the paper will contribute to the theme
Authors will be notified by 22nd February 2013 as to whether their abstracts have been accepted.
The deadline for full papers is Wednesday 1st May 2013. Details of submission procedure will be posted on the conference website.
We look forward to hearing from you. Any questions you may have should be addressed to peter.case@jcu.edu.au
References
Dinerstein, A. and Deneulin, S. (2012) ‘Hope Movements: Naming Mobilization in a Post-development World’, Development and Change 43(2): 585-602.
Dowie, M. (2008) ‘The Wrong Path to Conservation’, The Nation [http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080929/dowie/print, accessed 14.02.12].
Escobar, A (1996) ‘Imagining a Post-development Era’, in: J Crush (ed.), The Power of Development, pp. 211-227. London: Routledge.
Foale, S. (2001) ‘Where’s’ Our Development: Landowner Aspirations and Environmentalist Agendas in Western Solomon Islands’, The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 2(2): 44-67.
Fforde, A. (2009) Coping With Facts: A Skeptic’s Guide to the Problem of Development. Danvers, MA: Kumarian Press.
Frenzel F, Böhm S, Quinton P, Spicer A, Sullivan S, Young Z, 2011, ‘Comparing alternative media in North and South: the cases of IFIWatchnet and Indymedia in Africa’, Environment and Planning 43(5) 1173 – 1189.
Igoe, J. and Brockington, D. (2007) ‘Neo-liberal Conservation: A Brief Introduction’, Conservation and Society 5(4): 432-449.
Matthews, S. (2008) ‘The Role of the Privileged in Responding to Poverty: perspectives emerging from the post-development debate’, Third World Quarterly 29 (6): 1035-1049.
Mosse, D. (2005) Cultivating Development: An Ethnography of Aid Policy and Practice. London; Ann Arbor, MI.: Pluto Press.
Mosse, D., ed. (2011) Adventures in Aidland: The Anthropology of Professionals in International Development. New York; Oxford: Berghahn Press. (Volume 6, Studies in Public and Applied Anthropology)
Mosse, D. and Lewis, D., eds. (2005) The Aid Effect: Giving and Governing in International Development. London: Pluto Press.
Mosse, D. and Lewis , D., eds. (2006) Development Brokers and Translators. The Ethnography of Aid and Agencies. Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press.
Pieterse, N. (2000) ‘After Post-Development’, Third World Quarterly 21(2): 175-191.
[1] Author for correspondence: School of Business, James Cook University, Townsville Campus, QLD 4811, Australia. Email: peter.case@jcu.edu.au, tel: +61 747815674.
[2] The convenors reject the implicit ideologies and agendas connoted by the terms ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ as they reproduce a 'civilized/uncivilized', ‘advanced/backward’, ‘modern/non-modern’ dualities which this sub-theme is eager to challenge. Nonetheless, these concepts do form part of common parlance and it is important to acknowledge how, at a minimum, they align with the economics-language driven, neo-liberal discourse that drives international development in the contemporary world.
[3] See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDC_Group
Item 3:
Graduate Teaching Assistantships September 2013
Following similar competitions during previous academic sessions, the School of Management is delighted to be able to offer four new PhD Graduate Teaching Assistantships (GTAships), worth approximately £18,600 per year over four years. These studentships are for full-time study only and will commence in September 2013. They will cover tuition fees at the UK/EU rate only and include a stipend of £9,959 each year as well as a salary of £3,971. The successful applicants are, further, entitled to a Research Training Support Grant of £750 per annum to finance their research activities as appropriate.
We welcome Graduate Teaching Assistantship applications from those interested in the critical rethinking of either global work, organizations, employment, business, management, labour markets and the labour process, training and development and/ or industrial relations. The proposal can be based in organization studies; marketing; the sociology of work and HRM; finance and accounting; political economy; management of science, technology and knowledge; or related fields.
Suitable applications are encouraged from both UK/EU students and from international students (outside the EU). However, please note that the award covers the UK/EU tuition fee rate only: an international student would need to pay the difference between this and the international tuition fee rate themselves. The entry requirements for this GTAship are identical to those for any other entrant on to the School’s PhD programme, but the process requires an additional personal statement.
The closing date is 15th February 2013.
GTAship applications will be considered for September 2013 entry ONLY. We cannot consider late applications. All applicants should allow a minimum of four weeks for an application to be considered; and we expect to interview for these awards in March 2013.
For further information about the awards and the application, shortlisting and selection process, please visit the School's PhD website at: http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/management/postgraduate/research
Contact for queries not covered by the above URL: Teresa Bowdrey, ULSM PhD administrator, ulsmphdinfo@le.ac.uk
Item 4:
Up to 20 Advanced Research Fellowships, HASS Strategy, University of Exeter, UK
Job reference: P00077Application closing date: 30/01/2013
Salary: £31,948 - £39,257 per annum
Package: Generous holiday allowances, flexible working, pension scheme, car lease scheme and relocation package (if applicable)
At the University of Exeter we're renowned for ground-breaking and inspiring research in Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, with 17 of our departments ranked in the UK's top 15 for world-leading activity. It's part of the reason why we've recently been named The Sunday Times University of the Year 2012-13.
We're delighted to offer up to 20 new Advanced Research Fellowships (3 year fellowship term leading to Lectureship), to support the University's Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS) Research Strategy in the following thematic areas:
* Environment and Sustainability
* Global Uncertainties
* Identities and Beliefs
* Medical Humanities
* Science, Technology and Culture
* Societal and Lifestyle Shifts
Successful candidates will be research scholars of first class achievement and / or potential and expected to have completed a PhD or be of postdoctoral standing.
Candidates should ideally have published (or be in an advanced stage in preparing for publication) substantial high-quality research.
The Fellowship is intended to develop researchers towards permanent Lectureships within the relevant discipline on successful completion of the fellowship award.
To discuss these opportunities please contact the relevant Theme Leader in the first instance. Their contact details are available within the job description or on the website below.
For more information about the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Research Strategy at the University, please visit http://www.exeter.ac.uk/research/excellence/keythemes/hass/
To view the Job Description and Person Specification document please click here.
The University of Exeter is an equal opportunity employer which is 'Positive about Disabled People'.
Whilst all applicants will be judged on merit alone, we particularly welcome applications from groups currently underrepresented in the workforce.
How to apply for a position:
Please send your CV, covering letter and the details of three referees, along with a completed application and equal opportunities form to humanities-deans-office@exeter.ac.uk quoting the reference number P00077 in any correspondence.
To download the application and equal opportunities form please follow the below links;
http://www.admin.ex.ac.uk/personnel/jobs/ app_form.rtf
http://www.admin.ex.ac.uk/personnel/jobs/EO_form.rtf
Call for papers – The 8th Annual Liverpool Symposium on Current Developments in Ethnographic Research in the Social and Management Sciences
“The Politics of Meaning-making / Meaning-breaking”
In association with the Journal of Organizational Ethnography and Ethnography
Hosted at VU University Amsterdam, 28th – 30th August 2013
The Annual Liverpool Symposium on Current Developments in Ethnographic Research in the Social and Management Sciences is a leading international forum for debate and dialogue on the theory, practice and form of ethnographic work in the social and management fields. Having travelled within the UK so far, the symposium now makes a symbolic move towards Europe’s mainland, confirming its ambitions to build a distinctly international community of ethnographic researchers. The 8th Symposium will be hosted by the department of Organization Sciences at VU University Amsterdam, where ethnography has firmly established itself as a methodology for organizational research and, more generally, as an analytical orientation towards meaning and meaning-making processes. The title of this year’s symposium hence is The Politics of Meaning-making/ Meaning-breaking.
Meaning-making or sensemaking is a prime focus in ethnographic studies. Scholars often conceptualise sensemaking as an exercise of mental ordering. Arguably, social actors’ meaning-making involves a cognitive mapping of the world. Yet, meaning-making is also a social, politicized, power-sensitive act of worldmaking in which actors try to grasp meaning for themselves, as well as attempt to make meaning for others. Instead of making sense, they may then be out to make nonsense; to remake, unmake or ‘break’ meanings of others; to deprive something of its meaning and talk nonsense; to raise commotion or to deceive by spreading misleading meanings. We may ask such questions as: do social actors search for understanding to create order or are they rather out to ‘break’ meaning? The ethnographer is trained to always surmise meaning, to interpret symbolism, to find ‘depth’ underneath surface impressions. So, could meaninglessness be the ethnographer’s blind spot? The ‘hole in a doughnut’ or, to remain loyal to our Dutch roots, in a ‘holey cheese’? This year’s symposium therefore encourages papers that explore both meaning-making and meaning-breaking efforts in the organizational world and in our explorations of it.
In keeping with past symposia, the theme for the 8th Symposium deliberately constitutes a broad canvas. We expect the precise conference themes and streams to emerge from the papers themselves. We anticipate papers that will organize themselves within and around the following illustrative topics: culture and collaboration; identity and distinction-drawing; time, space and materiality; stories and narrative; crisis and transformation; power and organizational politics; senses and ethnographic sensibility; or everyday doings and sayings. We welcome papers contributing to ethnography theoretically, empirically, and/or methodologically. We seek to encourage a diverse range of submissions, across disciplines, and particularly welcome work-in-progress from emerging scholars.
Conference Chairs
Dr. Jason Ferdinand
j.m.ferdinand@liverpool.ac.uk
Dr. Frans Kamsteeg
f.h.kamsteeg@vu.nl
Dr. Ida Sabelis
i.sabelis@vu.nl
Organising Committee
Dr. Matthew Brannan, Keele University
Dr. Manuela Nocker, University of Essex Business School
Dr. Geoff Pearson, University of Liverpool Management School
Dr. Mike Rowe, University of Liverpool Management School
Dr. Harry Wels, VU University Amsterdam, Organization Sciences
Dr. Sierk Ybema, VU University Amsterdam, Organization Sciences
Keynote Speakers
Barbara Czarniawska, Gothenburg Research Institute, University of Gothenburg
Mark de Rond, The Judge Institute, University of Cambridge
Tim Pachirat, The New School for Social Research, New York (TBC)
Galit Ailon, Social Sciences, Bar-Ilan University, Tel Aviv
Submission Details
Abstracts (up to 750-words), should be submitted to ethnog@liverpool.ac.uk in PDF format, saved as the authors surname followed by the paper title by Friday 8 February 2013.
Full paper submission: Friday 26th July 2013.
Best Paper Award
This year the symposium will be running a 'best paper' award co-sponsored by Emerald Publishing, the publisher of the Journal of Organizational Ethnography with which this conference is affiliated.
Complete CfP, registration information, and conference website: http://www.liv.ac.uk/ethnography (the website is currently being updated. Thank you for your patience).
Item 2:
Call for papers – Extending critiques of ‘international development’: The limits of post-colonial and neo-liberal paradigms
Subtheme at the Critical Management Studies Conference, University of Manchester, July 10-12, 2013.
Fabian Frenzel, University of Leicester
Peter Case, James Cook University [1]
Mitchell W Sedgwick, Oxford Brookes University
Call for Papers
Given the centrality of the international development agenda to geopolitics in the post-war period, it is remarkable and perhaps even suspicious that ‘development’ has attracted conspicuously little attention from scholars working in the fields of management and organisation studies. Clegg has accused management and organization studies (MOS) of failing to pay sufficient regard to the ‘big issues’, and in the case of the politics and organization of ‘development’ we find a particularly cogent example of such an oversight. Moreover, there is an extraordinary paucity of critical assessment of the principles and practices pursued in the name of ‘development’. While anthropologists and development scholars have pursued a range of critical approaches to development and often touched upon MOS related issues, MOS has had next to nothing to say by way of critique of international development theories, ideologies/discourses and practices. It is also silent about the impact interventions have on those subjected to ‘development’ and the perspectives of these ‘subjects’. This sub-theme aims to promote engagement on the part of MOS scholars and researchers with international development. This includes a call for engagement in cross-disciplinarily scholarship to benefit from and develop further critical approaches to development pursued in anthropology and development studies, inter alia. The critical repertoires and methodologies employed in MOS have the potential to contribute to the advancement of critiques of international development.
Following the period of decolonisation, international development has emerged as a central field of policy governing relationships between the so-called developed and developing world[2]. Rhetorically aimed at advancing the plight of ‘poorer’ and ‘underdeveloped’ countries, development aid and assistance was never a charitable affair. Following the establishment of the Marshall Plan institutions - assisting European post-Second World War reconstruction - ‘development’ principles and practices rapidly morphed into a Cold War competition, where East and West used aid and assistance as the carrot (with the stick never far off) to lure so called ‘third world’ countries into their respective zones of influence.
In the 1970s a new form of international assistance emerged with the development of international credit. As interest rates were low, developing countries were ‘advised’ to take out cheap loans to finance large infrastructure projects which, built under the auspices of multinational corporations, especially construction firms, effectively recycled finance within the developed world’s economies. When interest rates soared in the 1980s the developing world was confronted with what has now become a ubiquitous economic malady: massive debt crises. Debt created new dependencies for developing countries and legitimized wide-scale interventions on the part of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) under the rubric ‘structural adjustment'. That is, in exchange for an increasing number of emergency loans these international agencies implemented what has become known as the Washington Consensus: a set of neo-liberal policy recipes intended to restructure underdeveloped economies. In practice, World Bank and IMF intervention has become synonymous with both the cutting of public expenditure and privatisation of state assets. Developing countries are forced to open their markets to foreign direct investment, including, in the more viable ‘developing’ economies, private credit. (This well-rehearsed pattern is, of course, increasingly familiar in ‘developed’ European countries today, many of which are similarly guided by IMF policies.) Integrated into the global financial system, having been obliged to pursue a ‘development’ pathway, the developing world’s natural resources - oil and gas fields, precious metals, rivers, forests and pristine beaches - have to a significant extent been handed over to multinational corporations which exploit them for private gain. Under this scenario, moreover, insufficient regard is given to local socio-economic benefit, let alone long term sustainability or ecological welfare in the countries affected.
Unsurprisingly, this led in some corners to resistance, e.g., the anti-globalization movement and the more recent manifestations of the ‘Occupy’ movements, as well as the intellectual critique of development discourses and policies pursued by neo-liberal-centric public agencies (Dinerstein and Deneulin, 2012; Fforde, 2009). Combining Marxist perspectives with a Foucauldian understanding of power, in a contemporary extension of Wallerstein’s ‘world systems theory’ - where development is understood as little more than a foil for the implementation of neo-colonial policies aimed at exploiting peripheral countries - a ‘post-development’ paradigm has emerged (Escobar, 1996). Two distinct empirical consequences have followed the post-development critique. Firstly, the classical development discourse has shifted from development to poverty eradication, highlighted perhaps most significantly in the formulation and adoption of the Millennium Development Goals by the UN. Secondly, ‘development’ is now understood both by practitioners and intellectuals as the pursuit of a broad range of actors beyond the State, including various boundary-busting South/South, e.g., developing world, and North/South alliances. Civil society as well as social movements, both at local and global levels, have emerged which contest both classical development models and its similarly large-scale alternatives, such as the role of philanthropists (e.g., the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) in pushing particular solutions to developing world problems (Frenzel et al., 2011).
In short, in recent years development assistance and aid has come to a new crossroads. Conflicts arise as sustainable development goals clash with growth based poverty eradication. Moreover, in light of the economic success of some of the past receivers of western aid, and stagnation and recession in western countries, development assistance is increasingly criticised as unaffordable and no longer necessary. At the same time, some countries, like the UK, pursue an expansion of their overseas aid spending. This comes with an increasing financialisation of such aid, where the Commonwealth Development Corporation (CDC) group arguably plays a dubious role.[3]
Needless to say, the post-development paradigm has attracted its own critics, often in the form of practitioners pointing to the ideological character of post-development ideas themselves (Piertse, 2000), while others predictably highlight the need for pragmatic compromises (Matthews, 2008). Meanwhile, the irony of the development situation is not lost on observers in pointing out that the possible decline of the State in controlling ‘development’, as well as global economic affairs tout court, fits the contemporary neo-liberal agenda. Closer to the ground, e.g., in projects, many researchers have questioned the efficacy of development aid because of its tendency to create cultures of ‘project-dependency’; that is, the effects of development interventions are often contained within spatial, temporal and socio-political envelopes determined by a logic of ‘projects’ and ‘project management’ (Dowie, 2008; Foale, 2001; Igoe and Brockington, 2007). Meanwhile, contradictions in the culture(s) of development ideologies and the prerogatives of the institutionalization of development practices have been noted in some very substantive, ethnographic research projects (Mosse, 2005, 2011; Mosse and Lewis, 2005, 2006).
Seen as a complex network, the plethora of perspectives now in play in unpacking ‘development’ puts a premium on making explicit the ‘positionality’ of the analyst, both practically and in terms of ideological stance, as well as precision as to the level(s) of discussion used in any particular research project. By way of example, within Development Studies itself, there is a stimulating division between those who ‘study’ development and those training themselves for careers as development ‘practitioners’. Across the board, the latter have the very best of intentions and are aware, and critical, of the neo-colonial taint of ‘assistance’. Especially in the context of anthropological training in development, there has been a rich and instructive intellectual and emotional convergence of interests driven by anthropology’s long-term ideological, e.g., (neo-) colonial, concerns with the moral conundrums of doing and accounting for fieldwork. In the case of ethnographic research, for instance, the anthropologist-informant relationship rarely plays out on a level playing field. Self-awareness and explicit discussion of the problems of positionality is de rigeur in anthropological texts, including those that engage ‘development’ issues. We feel that management scholars taking on ‘development’ from whatever angle would do well to consider such problems of methodology and personal engagement.
Finally, then, while ‘post-development’ theorizing has provided important energy in what had become, perhaps, a standardized/classic discussion – much of it driven by economics discourse - it is clear that ‘development’ is here to stay as, however riddled with contradiction, it is necessary to understand and assist those living under very difficult conditions at the ‘back-end’ of our global systems.
Given this broad overview, we invite critical historical and contemporary perspectives on issues that address the management and organization of international development. Indicative topics might include:
- ‘Development’ and its alternatives; what are the implications for MOS?
- Cooperation and cultures of dominance.
- Poverty eradication and its discourses.
- Targets, scales, and goals: measures of development and poverty.
- Development and sustainability: conflicts and convergence.
- The financialization of international development.
- Development policy and global governance (G8, G20, UN, IMF, World Bank)
- Corruption: cultural difference and forms of accountability.
- Critical analyses of international development discourse(s).
- Non-state actors in development and post-development: NGOs, social movements, philanthropists.
- Critical and ‘practical’ development anthropology.
- International development and critical project management studies.
- Subaltern studies and post-colonial critique of international development.
- Development from the perspective of those impacted.
The convenors would also welcome creative interpretations which challenge the boundaries set by this call for papers.
Abstracts
Abstracts of no more than 500 words (A4, single spaced, 12 point font) should be submitted as e-mail attachments (all common formats accepted) by Thursday 31st January 2013 to peter.case@jcu.edu.au
Abstracts should include:
· Title
· The focus, aims and objectives of the paper
· The research evidence base underpinning the paper
· How the paper will contribute to the theme
Authors will be notified by 22nd February 2013 as to whether their abstracts have been accepted.
The deadline for full papers is Wednesday 1st May 2013. Details of submission procedure will be posted on the conference website.
We look forward to hearing from you. Any questions you may have should be addressed to peter.case@jcu.edu.au
References
Dinerstein, A. and Deneulin, S. (2012) ‘Hope Movements: Naming Mobilization in a Post-development World’, Development and Change 43(2): 585-602.
Dowie, M. (2008) ‘The Wrong Path to Conservation’, The Nation [http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080929/dowie/print, accessed 14.02.12].
Escobar, A (1996) ‘Imagining a Post-development Era’, in: J Crush (ed.), The Power of Development, pp. 211-227. London: Routledge.
Foale, S. (2001) ‘Where’s’ Our Development: Landowner Aspirations and Environmentalist Agendas in Western Solomon Islands’, The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 2(2): 44-67.
Fforde, A. (2009) Coping With Facts: A Skeptic’s Guide to the Problem of Development. Danvers, MA: Kumarian Press.
Frenzel F, Böhm S, Quinton P, Spicer A, Sullivan S, Young Z, 2011, ‘Comparing alternative media in North and South: the cases of IFIWatchnet and Indymedia in Africa’, Environment and Planning 43(5) 1173 – 1189.
Igoe, J. and Brockington, D. (2007) ‘Neo-liberal Conservation: A Brief Introduction’, Conservation and Society 5(4): 432-449.
Matthews, S. (2008) ‘The Role of the Privileged in Responding to Poverty: perspectives emerging from the post-development debate’, Third World Quarterly 29 (6): 1035-1049.
Mosse, D. (2005) Cultivating Development: An Ethnography of Aid Policy and Practice. London; Ann Arbor, MI.: Pluto Press.
Mosse, D., ed. (2011) Adventures in Aidland: The Anthropology of Professionals in International Development. New York; Oxford: Berghahn Press. (Volume 6, Studies in Public and Applied Anthropology)
Mosse, D. and Lewis, D., eds. (2005) The Aid Effect: Giving and Governing in International Development. London: Pluto Press.
Mosse, D. and Lewis , D., eds. (2006) Development Brokers and Translators. The Ethnography of Aid and Agencies. Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press.
Pieterse, N. (2000) ‘After Post-Development’, Third World Quarterly 21(2): 175-191.
[1] Author for correspondence: School of Business, James Cook University, Townsville Campus, QLD 4811, Australia. Email: peter.case@jcu.edu.au, tel: +61 747815674.
[2] The convenors reject the implicit ideologies and agendas connoted by the terms ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ as they reproduce a 'civilized/uncivilized', ‘advanced/backward’, ‘modern/non-modern’ dualities which this sub-theme is eager to challenge. Nonetheless, these concepts do form part of common parlance and it is important to acknowledge how, at a minimum, they align with the economics-language driven, neo-liberal discourse that drives international development in the contemporary world.
[3] See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDC_Group
Item 3:
Graduate Teaching Assistantships September 2013
Following similar competitions during previous academic sessions, the School of Management is delighted to be able to offer four new PhD Graduate Teaching Assistantships (GTAships), worth approximately £18,600 per year over four years. These studentships are for full-time study only and will commence in September 2013. They will cover tuition fees at the UK/EU rate only and include a stipend of £9,959 each year as well as a salary of £3,971. The successful applicants are, further, entitled to a Research Training Support Grant of £750 per annum to finance their research activities as appropriate.
We welcome Graduate Teaching Assistantship applications from those interested in the critical rethinking of either global work, organizations, employment, business, management, labour markets and the labour process, training and development and/ or industrial relations. The proposal can be based in organization studies; marketing; the sociology of work and HRM; finance and accounting; political economy; management of science, technology and knowledge; or related fields.
Suitable applications are encouraged from both UK/EU students and from international students (outside the EU). However, please note that the award covers the UK/EU tuition fee rate only: an international student would need to pay the difference between this and the international tuition fee rate themselves. The entry requirements for this GTAship are identical to those for any other entrant on to the School’s PhD programme, but the process requires an additional personal statement.
The closing date is 15th February 2013.
GTAship applications will be considered for September 2013 entry ONLY. We cannot consider late applications. All applicants should allow a minimum of four weeks for an application to be considered; and we expect to interview for these awards in March 2013.
For further information about the awards and the application, shortlisting and selection process, please visit the School's PhD website at: http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/management/postgraduate/research
Contact for queries not covered by the above URL: Teresa Bowdrey, ULSM PhD administrator, ulsmphdinfo@le.ac.uk
Item 4:
Up to 20 Advanced Research Fellowships, HASS Strategy, University of Exeter, UK
Job reference: P00077Application closing date: 30/01/2013
Salary: £31,948 - £39,257 per annum
Package: Generous holiday allowances, flexible working, pension scheme, car lease scheme and relocation package (if applicable)
At the University of Exeter we're renowned for ground-breaking and inspiring research in Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, with 17 of our departments ranked in the UK's top 15 for world-leading activity. It's part of the reason why we've recently been named The Sunday Times University of the Year 2012-13.
We're delighted to offer up to 20 new Advanced Research Fellowships (3 year fellowship term leading to Lectureship), to support the University's Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS) Research Strategy in the following thematic areas:
* Environment and Sustainability
* Global Uncertainties
* Identities and Beliefs
* Medical Humanities
* Science, Technology and Culture
* Societal and Lifestyle Shifts
Successful candidates will be research scholars of first class achievement and / or potential and expected to have completed a PhD or be of postdoctoral standing.
Candidates should ideally have published (or be in an advanced stage in preparing for publication) substantial high-quality research.
The Fellowship is intended to develop researchers towards permanent Lectureships within the relevant discipline on successful completion of the fellowship award.
To discuss these opportunities please contact the relevant Theme Leader in the first instance. Their contact details are available within the job description or on the website below.
For more information about the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Research Strategy at the University, please visit http://www.exeter.ac.uk/research/excellence/keythemes/hass/
To view the Job Description and Person Specification document please click here.
The University of Exeter is an equal opportunity employer which is 'Positive about Disabled People'.
Whilst all applicants will be judged on merit alone, we particularly welcome applications from groups currently underrepresented in the workforce.
How to apply for a position:
Please send your CV, covering letter and the details of three referees, along with a completed application and equal opportunities form to humanities-deans-office@exeter.ac.uk quoting the reference number P00077 in any correspondence.
To download the application and equal opportunities form please follow the below links;
http://www.admin.ex.ac.uk/personnel/jobs/ app_form.rtf
http://www.admin.ex.ac.uk/personnel/jobs/EO_form.rtf