Cutting Edge Issues in Development Thinking & Practice: Recent Episodes
LSE Department of International Development
These podcasts are recordings from the Cutting Edge Issues in Development Thinking & Practice lecture series 2021/22 and 2020/21, a visiting lecture series coordinated by Professor in Practice in the Department, Duncan Green and Professor of Development Studies, Professor James Putzel.
The Cutting Edge series provides students and guests with fascinating insights into the practical world of international development. Renowned guest lecturers share their expertise and invite discussion on an exciting range of issues, from responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, to climate change policy, to pressing humanitarian crises.
Since 2020, the series has taken place online, enabling us to host fantastic speakers from around the world and to stream the lectures on YouTube, opening them up to a global audience.
National and global approaches to climate change alleviation are very inadequate because they ignore the important role played by wealth, income and consumption inequalities. Reducing these will be essential for humanity to meet the climate change — and there are feasible ways to do this.
Speaker
Jayati Ghosh taught economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi for nearly 35 years, and since January 2021 is Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA. She has authored and/or edited 20 books and more than 200 scholarly articles. Recent books include the forthcoming co-authored book Earth For All: A survival guide for humanity; The making of a catastrophe: Covid-19 and the Indian economy, Aleph Books 2022; When governments fail: Covid-19 and the economy, Tulika Books and Columbia Univerity Press 2021 (co-edited); and Women workers in the informal economy, Routledge 2021 (edited). She has advised governments in India and other countries, including as Chairperson of the Andhra Pradesh Commission on Farmers’ Welfare in 2004, and Member of the National Knowledge Commission of India (2005-09). She is currently a Member of the UN Advisory Board on Economic and Social Affairs, the WHO Council on the Economics of Health for All and the UN Secretary General’s High-Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism, mandated to provide a vision for international cooperation to deal with current and future challenges.
Discussant
Kathryn Hochstetler is Professor and Head of the Department of International Development at the LSE. She teaches and researches at the intersection of environment and development issues, including teaching DV415, Global Environmental Governance. Her publications include many on topics including the participation of emerging powers in climate negotiations, the relationship of environmental issues with trade and finance, and environmental politics and policy in developing countries, especially in South America. Her most recent book is Political Economies of Energy Transition: Wind and Solar Power in Brazil and South Africa (Cambridge 2021). Before that, she published the prize-winning Greening Brazil: Environmental Activism in State and Society (Duke 2007), with Margaret Keck. Before joining LSE, she was a professor in Canada (University of Waterloo, Balsillie School of International Affairs) and the United States (University of New Mexico, Colorado State University). She is on the editorial boards of several climate and development series at Cambridge University Press, as well as multiple academic journals. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.
Chair
Laura Mann is a sociologist whose research focuses on the political economy of development, knowledge and technology. Her regional focus is East Africa (Sudan, Kenya and Rwanda) but she has also worked on collaborative research on ICTs and BPO in Asia and has conducted fieldwork in North America as part of a project on digitisation within global agriculture.
This talk is part of the Cutting Edge Issues in Development Thinking & Practice 2022 series, a high-profile lecture series run by the Department of International Development at LSE and organised by Dr Laura Mann and Professor in Practice Duncan Green.
The Department of International Development promotes int
Development studies frames food and fuel riots as the crowd response to the stimulus of price changes, as indicators of impact of economic shocks or policy reforms. In this dashboard view of the world, the masses respond automatically to spikes in the price of gas or bread, sending signals to governments and the international community that inflation is out of control, and Something Must Be Done.
Food and fuel price protests evidently indicate a problem with pricing, but that is not all they say. They are more accurately read as commentaries on the politics that have left them in that position. People do not protest out of anger about prices: most people face daily struggles and juggles to feed, house, transport and care for their families, and most just cope, depleting their personal and social resources in the process. So food and fuel riots are not merely the angry response of hungry bodies. They are political statements, often highly effective and memorable, of shared outrage about elite corruption that breeds policies that enrich the powerful at the expense of the rest. Food and fuel rioters seek to assert the moral parameters of public policy, and to blame and shame political leaders that transgress them. This lecture will look at the political diagnoses articulated in recent food and fuel riot episodes, exploring how these moments share a commentary on the fused failures of economic and political governance across otherwise distinctively different settings. It is in these surprisingly broad areas of agreement between food and fuel rioters that a distinct and vocal popular politics has emerged, critical of collusion between political and economic elites and of actually-existing capitalism, yet without immediate political alternatives.
Speaker
Naomi Hossain is a political sociologist and Research Professor at the Accountability Research Center at the School of International Service at American University. She researches the politics of inclusive development and how people get the public services they need, and has written about elite perceptions of poverty, food and fuel riots, disaster (including pandemic) politics, workers’ rights, women’s empowerment and the role of civil society in development, among other issues.
Discussant
Raj Patel is an award-winning author, film-maker and academic. He is a Research Professor in the Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin.
Chair
Duncan Green is Senior Strategic Adviser at Oxfam GB, Professor in Practice in International Development at the London School of Economics, honorary Professor of International Development at Cardiff University and a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Development Studies. He is author of How Change Happens (OUP, October 2016) and From Poverty to Power: How Active Citizens and Effective States can Change the World (Oxfam International, 2008, second edition 2012).
This talk is part of the Cutting Edge Issues in Development Thinking & Practice 2022 series, a high-profile lecture series run by the Department of International Development at LSE and organised by Dr Laura Mann and Professor in Practice Duncan Green.
The Department of International Development promotes interdisciplinary postgraduate teaching and research on processes of social, political and economic development and change.
This presentation explores the impact of the pandemic on workers across four key sectors of the Palestinian economy: health, education, agriculture, and construction. As with elsewhere around the world, Palestinian workers have experienced multiple challenges due to the Covid-19 pandemic and its associated mitigation measures. In the occupied Palestinian territories however, it unfolded in the context of a captive, fragmented, and de-developed economy that has endured decades of Israeli military occupation.
Speaker: Rafeef Ziadah, King's College London | Discussant: Dr Tiziana Leone, LSE | Chair Dr Laura Mann, LSE
Economics and science fiction share many interrelations that are rarely recognised.
Firstly, a lot of economics is science fiction. Many economists believe in the fiction that they are practising ‘science’, while many also believe in the fiction that progress in ‘science’ (and thus technology) is the solution to virtually all economic problems. Saying that much of economics is science fiction doesn’t mean that science fiction itself is not useful for economics. It has been a powerful way to imagine alternative realities in which very different technologies have changed our institutions and even individuals, making us re-think our assumptions about economy and society. Extending this logic, we can say history is a dystopian science fiction even without memories of advanced technologies. Moreover, if studying history helps us to imagine other realities, so do comparative studies. In trying to understand the world, we can be immensely helped by science fiction, history, and comparative studies, because they allow us to see that the existing economic and social order is not a ‘natural’ one, that it can be changed, and, most importantly, that it has been brought about only because some people dared to imagine a different world and fought for it.
Speaker: Ha-Joon Chang, SOAS | Discussant: Sinéad Murphy, SRHE | Chair Dr Duncan Green, LSE
Isabella Weber on How China Escaped Shock Therapy: The Market Reform Debate. The lecture is part of the LSE ID Cutting Edge Issues in Development Thinking & Practice series.
Lise Grande on Reflections on Peacebuilding in Today's World. The lecture is part of the LSE ID Cutting Edge Issues in Development Thinking & Practice series.
Irungu Houghton on Human rights organising in Africa during a global pandemic: Trends and Insights. The lecture is part of the LSE ID Cutting Edge Issues in Development Thinking & Practice series.
Tasneem Essop on Outcomes of COP26 and where next on Climate? The lecture is part of the LSE ID Cutting Edge Issues in Development Thinking & Practice series.
Terhas Clark and Mosharraf Hossain on Disability, Development, Rights and Inclusion. The lecture is part of the LSE ID Cutting Edge Issues in Development Thinking & Practice series.
Ingrid Srinath on COVID-19, Corporatisation and Closing Space: The Triple Threat to Civil Society in India. The lecture is part of the LSE ID Cutting Edge Issues in Development Thinking & Practice series.
Agnes Kalibata on Paradigm shifts in food systems. The lecture is part of the LSE ID Cutting Edge Issues in Development Thinking & Practice series.
Jayati Ghosh on Access to vaccines and the limiting role of intellectual property rights and pharma monopolies. The lecture is part of the LSE ID Cutting Edge Issues in Development Thinking & Practice series.
Mushtaq Khan on Making Anti-Corruption Effective: A New Approach. The lecture is part of the LSE ID Cutting Edge Issues in Development Thinking & Practice series.
Clare Short on What's wrong with Aid? The lecture is part of the LSE ID Cutting Edge Issues in Development Thinking & Practice series.
Guest lecturer, Gabriel Palma joins us to talk to us about "Why the Rich Stay Rich (no matter what)". The lecture is part of the LSE ID Cutting Edge Issues in Development Thinking & Practice series.
Ha-Joon Chang on The Political Economy of Parasite (the movie). The lecture is part of the LSE ID Cutting Edge Issues in Development Thinking & Practice series.
Antonio Giustozzi, Deniz Kandiyoti, Graeme Smith, Pashtana Durrani and Dr. Orzala Nemat guest lecture panel on The implosion of the Afghan State: what next for women and the nation? The lecture is part of the LSE ID Cutting Edge Issues in Development Thinking & Practice series.
Guest lecturer, Mariana Mazzucato joins us from London to talk to us about "A Mission Oriented Approach to Stakeholder Value". The lecture is part of the LSE ID Cutting Edge Issues in Development Thinking & Practice series.
Guest lecturer, Kate Raworth joins us from Oxford to talk to us about "Doughnut Economics: turning a radical idea into irresistible practice.". The lecture is part of the LSE ID Cutting Edge Issues in Development Thinking & Practice series.
Guest lecturer, Yuen Yuen Ang joins us from Michigan to talk to us about "Unbundling Corruption: Why it Matters and How to Do It". The lecture is part of the LSE ID Cutting Edge Issues in Development Thinking & Practice series.
Guest lecturer, Akosua Adomako Ampofo joins us from Accra to talk to us about "Decolonising Academia". The lecture is part of the LSE ID Cutting Edge Issues in Development Thinking & Practice series.
Guest lecturer, Ha-Joon Chang joins us from Cambridge to talk to us about "Building Pro-Developmental Multilateralism – Towards a ‘New’ New International Economic Order". The lecture is part of the LSE ID Cutting Edge Issues in Development Thinking & Practice series.
Guest lecturer, Danny Quah joins us from Singapore to talk to us about "Global Power Shift to Asia: Great Power Competition in the Marketplace for World Order". The lecture is part of the LSE ID Cutting Edge Issues in Development Thinking & Practice series.
Guest lecturer, Clare Short joins us to speak to us about "Reflecting on the demise of DfID". The lecture part of the LSE ID Cutting Edge Issues in Development Thinking & Practice series.
Guest lecturer, Nora Lustig joins us from Washington DC to talk to us about "Inequality in Latin America: Markets, Covid-19 and Policies". The lecture is part of the LSE ID Cutting Edge Issues in Development Thinking & Practice series.
Guest lecturer, Jimi Adesina joins us from Pretoria to talk to us about "Why Development and Transformative Social Policy Matter: Lessons of COVID-19 in Africa". The lecture is in honour of Prof Thandika Mkandawire and is part of the LSE ID Cutting Edge Issues in Development.
Guest lecturer, Branko Milanovic joins us from New York to talk to us about "The Future of the System that Rules the World". The lecture is part of the LSE ID Cutting Edge Issues in Development Thinking & Practice series.
Guest lecturers, Deborah Brautigam; Folashade Soule-Kohndou and Shirley Ze Yu talk to us about "China in Africa". The lecture is part of the LSE ID Cutting Edge Issues in Development Thinking & Practice series.
Guest lecturer, Saleemul Huq joins us from Dhaka to talk to us about "Human Induced Climate Change: Dealing with loss and damage". The lecture is part of the LSE ID Cutting Edge Issues in Development Thinking & Practice series.
Guest lecturer, Jayati Ghosh joins us from New Delhi to talk to us about "The Pandemic and the Indian government’s response". The lecture is part of the LSE ID Cutting Edge Issues in Development Thinking & Practice series.