Institute of Development Studies

Reimagining Development

Do recent crises in food, finance, fuel and climate - and the way that people are responding to them - present us with an opportunity to rethink or 'reimagine' what international development means and how it needs to change?

Aims

The Reimagining Development initiative brings together 34 research projects exploring crises and responses to crises. The initiative aims to identify new thoughts and ideas on international development from across the globe and to bring them together to build a new consensus on the conduct and performance of international development in the 21st century.

Key questions

• What is the evidence of the impacts of the multiple crises (financial, energy, food, confidence) on lives and livelihoods?
• What is the evidence that significant shifts in values, relationships, ideas, methods, and behaviours are taking place?
• What are some alternatives to the status quo that a particular place/space proposes in terms of ideas, values, relationships, methods, behaviours and knowledge?
• Based on accumulated knowledge in the place/space what specifically has to change (or not) to support any alternatives emerging? And what are best strategies and tactics for effecting change?

Reimagining Development News

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28 Sep 11 New IDS Bulletin reveals the impact of global crises on international development



‘Time to Reimagine Development?’ challenges widespread development assumptions in the context of financial, fuel, food and climate crises.





04 Mar 11 What the global recession means for poverty in the UK



New research in to the impacts of global commodities price rises on the UK's poorest show parallels with developing countries





24 Mar 10 Complex Crises: The challenge of finding and sharing evidence



For the world’s poorest people the repercussions of 2008’s global financial crisis are just one of a recent series of severe and sustained shocks.






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Spaces and places

At the heart of current practice and policy in international development in the last century were the Bretton Woods institutions such as the World Bank and IMF. The mandate for these institutions was generated at the Bretton Woods meetings which lasted for 22 days in 1944 in the American state of New Hampshire. For the purposes of this initiative, we decided to identify 22 sites - physical places or virtual spaces - where we could explore the impacts of multiple crises, whether and how they are shifting values and whether they are generating new ideas and behaviour.

The quality of ideas and enthusiasm for the initiative were so high that 34 sites were selected. These include social movements (from women's groups across the world to sexual rights campaigners in China), the security community (including the Kabul 'Green Zone'), the business sector (including banks and hedge funds and wind farms), faith organisations and media houses.

IDS key contacts: The project spans across IDS, led by IDS Director Lawrence Haddad with a core team of Allister McGregor, Hubert Schmitz, Isabel Vogel, Lyla Mehta, Naomi Hossain and Sara J. Wolcott. For all enquiries contact Sarah Nelson.

Project dates: November 2009 - November 2010

Project status: Open