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The Canadian Undergraduate Journal of Development Studies Volume V, Issue III: Fall/Winter 2008
An undercurrent, by definition, is the unseen movement of water beneath the surface; its tug and motion are only perceptible upon submersion. It is an apt metaphor both for international development studies and its undergraduates. The intriguing tensions and debates within the field of IDS flow beneath a popularized veneer of humanitarian charity. And we, its undergraduates, study at the margins of the arena of the academy -much of our vitality and dynamism hidden from view. Undercurrent is a publication that immerses its readers in the ebbs and flows of development studies through the perspective of Canadian undergraduates.
About the International Development Research Centre
Private Sector and Enterprise Development, 2010
Authors are responsible for the choice and the presentation of the facts contained in signed articles and for the opinions expressed therein, which are not necessarily those of UNESCO and do not commit the Organization. The designations employed and the presentation of the. material in this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of UNES-CO concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries.
This paper examines the introduction of "new" contextual issues and analytical concepts within international development studies that has shaped the current penchant for the "development and other" focus. Contextual issues (e.g. poverty, aid, health, education, HIV/AIDS, new ICTs, peacekeeping and conflict resolution) and highly contested analytical concepts (e.g. gender, environment or sustainability, civil society, globalisation, good governance, social capital, capacity building, participation, empowerment, and security) have been wedded to core development questions since the 1970s. This paper examines how this “development and …” focus has shaped development studies and provided the foundations for a new and invigorated generation of development theories. It analyses how the introduction of “new” contextual issues and analytical concepts has challenged, or failed to challenge, our conceptual understanding of development issues. It provides a chronology of how and when such issues and concepts are introduced, and how and why they are taken on and off the development policy agenda set by multilateral and bilateral agencies.
International Journal: Canada's Journal of Global Policy Analysis, 2019
Full disclosure: I don't like textbooks. The benefits of comprehensive survey coverage seem almost impossible to combine with engaging writing, while the uniformity of organization and writing style fails to expose students to different forms of writing for different audiences and purposes. I can also never seem to find textbooks that perfectly fit my particular ways of organizing courses, so I prefer to create my own reading packages that include academic articles, book chapters, NGO and government reports, media articles, op-eds, short stories, video clips, and films. With so much online material easily available, and copyright regulations that make it possible to provide most of this material at no extra cost to students, I find it hard to advocate for textbooks. My personal biases aside, the new textbook edited by Mahmoud Masaeli and Lauchlan Munro, Canada and the Challenges of International Development and Globalization, offers an important alternative to previously published texts. International development is often taught in Canada and other ''developed'' countries as something that happens ''over there''-in Africa, Asia, and Latin America-that has little to do with the daily lives of Canadian students. This approach typically focuses on the key issues of international development, such as gender, health, poverty, inequality, rural development, urbanization, et cetera, but not on the ways in which these issues are connected to students' daily lives. Conceptually, international development remains far away, and students are cast as innocent bystanders. An alternative approach is to connect the challenges of international development to the daily lives of students so that the key issues are framed around connections to students through their roles as consumers, citizens, taxpayers, and investors. For example, through use of a mobile phone, students are connected to conflicts over the extraction of natural resources, often involving Canadian companies; to worker suicides in tech factories in China; and to e-waste dumping and its impacts on human health around the world. Similarly, a cotton T-shirt connects them to the global water crisis, child labour in cotton harvesting in Uzbekistan, dangerous working conditions in garment factories in Bangladesh, and the dumping of used clothes into textile markets throughout Africa. Any student who has ever received a paycheque has made contributions to the Canada Pension Plan, which connects them to the global investment industry and debates about responsible investing. From this perspective, international development and poverty are not issues that happen ''over there''; they are intimately connected to almost every aspect of our existence. Moreover, students are not innocent bystanders, but are rather potentially implicated-if only indirectly-in patterns of global
Pearsonian Internationalism in Practice: The International Development Research Centre
1995
The thesis concerns the origins, creation and progress of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). Most scholars believe that development assistance is largely motivated by self-interest. At first glance, the Centre appears to be an anomaly in Canadian foreign aid. The IDRC's disbursements are not formally tied; has an international board of governors; and its structure was specifically designed with autonomy in mind. This Canadian federal organisation has spent one and a half billion dollars and funded over 5,500 projects since its founding in 1970. During this time, the Centre has disbursed between 70-95% of its programme funds overseas, mostly to developing country university researchers. These researchers have designed and executed research intended to help developing countries alleviate poverty, social decay and more recently, environmental challenges. A detailed archeology is conducted of Pearson's own internationalism regarding science and technology, foreign policy, development assistance, environment and culture. Our analysis shows how Pearson's thinking, and that of colleagues who were to have key influences on the Centre, Barbara Ward and Maurice Strong, were embedded in deeply held beliefs and values. We identify a tension between an internationalist impulses and Canadian-centred or parochial preoccupations common in most of the federal public service, especially central agencies. Central agents, responding to pressures from academics, and the internal values and beliefs that tend to form in these secretaria, have sought to make the IDRC conform to their own expectations. The author concludes that the Centre has survived and prospered, despite these pressures, partly because of the skill of its top officers, but principally because of the IDRC's capacity to lay claim to being an expression of internationalism. 1978-80, had the effect of an epiphany as regards the nature of fact and value in history and politics. I would like to thank Professor Frank Kunz whose insight and kindness I have had the good fortune to experience. Professor Kunz was one of my first professors at McGill in 1978, and it is fitting that he should see me out by being generous enough to sit on my Thesis Committee with Warwick Armstrong, to whom I am also grateful. Enrico Del Castello must be acknowledged for his kind encouragement and advice. Hugh Nangle must be thanked for the same, but moreover for the vast amount of time he spent editing and data scanning. I very deeply appreciate those and other kindnesses, Hugh. Greg Donaghy was willing to have his ear bent by me and would comment on my periodic ahistorical neo-Pearsonian rantings. Bryan Hawley and I exchanged mutually therapeutic remedies to doctoral ills. Thank you all. The scores of people in and around the International Development Research Centre that helped me gain some understanding of the Centre and its context are too numerous to mention. I shall name no favourites, they all helped in their own way. I will thank Geoff Oldham for his willingness to re-enact Bob and Ray's sketch "The Komodo Dragon." The many and varied present and former staff of CIDA, Foreign Affairs, Finance, Treasury Board, the Privy Council Office and the Office of the Auditor-General must also be congratulated for their forbearance of my queries. I am very grateful to Iain