States, Markets and Society - IDS 50th Anniversary Conference, July 2016
Venue
Join IDS for a high profile, two day conference in July that will bring cutting-edge thinking, experience and reflection on ‘States, markets and society in a reconfigured world: Defining a new era for development’.
The Institute of Development Studies, based at Sussex University in the UK, turns 50 years old this year. As development moves into a new era, leading scholars, policymakers and practitioners are invited to join in a serious intellectual debate about the challenges and implications of development in the future.
Development has always involved states, markets and societies interacting to define and shape progressive change. The period since IDS was founded in 1966 has seen the rise and fall of state-led, market-led and society-focused approaches, accompanied by critique and counter-critique, and shifts in development's meanings and practices.
But today, the categories and axes of power that have been central to development appear more unsettled than ever. Intensifying global interconnections and multi-polar politics are fundamentally challenging old north-south distinctions. A growing array of political-economic, social and environmental shocks and stresses is emerging, demanding novel forms of action and response. Instead of a simple state-market-society triad, we are seeing hybrids of many kinds, in different parts of the world.