A conference on "Rethinking Development and Environment," will be held Friday-Sunday, Feb. 27-March 1, in Rm. 202 of Luce Hall, 34 Hillhouse Ave. The event is being presented by the Working Groups on Development and Environment as part of the Yale Crossing Borders Initiative.
Conference participants will re-examine global processes such as economic development and environmental protection in the context of local and regional peculiarities.
While the concept of development has driven many of the social and economic transformations that have occurred in the non-Western world in the past half-century, some scholars have recently begun to explore the contradictions inherent in the global models of development and to question the role of institutions such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the United States Agency for International Development. Yet these critics, like their predecessors, have been accused of failing to take sufficient account of local and regional variations.
This conference will explore these issues and will focus on the processes of conflict, cooperation, and resistance by which development takes place, and it will examine the ways that these processes reshape the landscape on which they are played out.
The conference is divided into three distinct parts. The Friday afternoon sessions (1-4 p.m. and 4:30-6:30 p.m.) and the Saturday morning session (9:45-11:45 a.m.) will address "Globalization, Locality, and Modernity in Stories of Development," where the results of recent research on India will be presented. The Saturday afternoon sessions (1-3 p.m. and 3:30-5:30 p.m.) will be roundtable discussions of senior scholars discussing the relationship between global issues and local issues in development. The final session, on Sunday (9-11 a.m.), will bring together a discussion of the issues of development, environment and democracy.
The conference is sponsored by the Yale Center for International and Area Studies, the Ford Foundation, The Kempf Fund, the YCIAS Agrarian Studies Program, and the Aspen Institute. For further information, call 432-5596 or send email to: barbara.papcoda@qm.yale.edu.