Past, Present and Future of International Aid –Reflections on Aid Agencies and the Development SystemTuesday, 20 March 2012, 13.00-15.30Danish Institute for International StudiesMain AuditoriumStrandgade 71, ground floor, 1401 Copenhagen K

Background

While ‘development’ is often discussed in technical terms, based on an underlying understandingof the concept as neutral and universally applicable, it can be argued that it is in many ways highlynormative, shaped by a particular historical context and based on specific moral and ideologicalassumptions. In his presentation,Beyond Development: In Search of New Forms of Engagementin International Relations,Philip Quarles van Ufford will speak about the idea of development,tracing its trajectory from its birth after the 2nd World War until today. He will discuss threediscourses of development – hope, politics and management – identifying contradictions,strengths and weaknesses inherent in each. Quarles van Ufford will present ideas for a new visionof international relations, centring on three insights: the need to confront contradictions inbetween the ‘here and the there’; the ‘uses of pessimism’ in the shaping of new political views ininternational relations; and finally, the re-writing of religious and political histories of compassion.Focusing more specifically on the role of aid agencies in the contemporary development system,David Lewis will give a lecture titledReconnecting Development Policy, People and History.Usingexperiences in the history of flood control in Bangladesh as an example, his lecture seeks toexamine some of what anthropologist Paul Connerton (2009) terms the ‘types of structuralforgetting which are specific to the culture of modernity’. Development agencies are trapped in theahistorical ‘'perpetual present’ of policy worlds, and face a consequent inability to learn lessonsfrom past experiences. Previous policy experience is only poorly remembered by agency staff, if atall. Why is this? Lewis argues that an ideology of managerialism pushes a relentless emphasis onnovelty and change in the development system. Organizational pressures result in what may becalled ‘a continuity of discontinuity’ as expatriate staff come and go, and agencies ‘escape into thefuture’, losing their capacity to retain their own past.

Speakers

Philip Quarles van Ufford,Professor Emeritus, Free University, AmsterdamDavid Lewis,Professor, LSE, LondonMarie Juul Petersen,Project Researcher, DIISSigne Marie Cold-Ravnkilde,PhD Candidate, DIIS

Programme

More details about the seminar are available on ourwebsite.

Practical Information

The seminar will be held inEnglish.Participation isfree of charge,butregistration is required.Please use ouronline registration formno later than

Monday, 19 March 2012 at 12.00 noon.

Please await confirmation by e-mail from DIIS for participation.Sincerely,

Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)

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