Reimagining development 3.0 for a changing planet
Professor Jon Morris
24 July 2013 at 13.00 – 14.30
Room 221, Institute of Development Studies

About the seminar:

The need to ‘re-imagine’ development studies in today’s world arises because of sweeping changes which invalidate the earlier globalization emphasis which has guided social science involvement in applied policy.  Business analysts tell us we work now in World 3.0, with a rise of emerging markets and a digital world, where also unexpected events occur frequently.  Drawing on this business literature by Ghemawat and Ramo (and others), this seminar explores implications of these changed circumstances, which suggest we craft Development 3.0 to address planetary needs.  Such an emphasis would privilege sustainability over efficiency, would look at all nations, would anticipate urban problems and populations, and would try to cope more effectively with ‘mashups’: unexpected, major changes (such as we faced in 2008 and now again in the Arab Spring).  The aim here will be to explore better narratives and changed metrics, to break out of the earlier assumptions (taken as facts) which guided Development 2.0, looking to globalization to yield a better world. 

About the speaker:

Professor Jon Morris is based in southeast Utah, where he teaches courses in his retirement on Southwest Indian Nations for Utah State University.  His career began in East Africa in the mid-1960s, on topics related to land settlement, rural development, extension, and education, finishing as Professor in what is now Sokoine University of Agriculture, Tanzania.  In the 1980s he worked on pastoralism for ODI, London, and on Tanzanian development for Uma Lele in the Bank. In the 1990s, his focus became African Irrigation and livestock policies, under USAID funded projects.  For this occasion he looks back on a half century’s development efforts, tracking how emphases and assumptions change but persistent problems remain.

All welcome