About the lecture

In this lecture, we think about what development is, focusing in particular on: (i) defining the age of development as beginning with Harry S. Truman’s inaugural address on 20 January 1949, within which he described the Southern Hemisphere as “underdeveloped”; (ii) the focus in the 1950s and 60s being on the connection between development and economic growth; (iii) the shift in the late 1970s to recognising development as being connected to poverty reduction and achieving a minimum standard of living for citizens; (iv) the 1970s as a time when it was viewed that institutions had a greater responsibility to employ poverty reducing measures, rather than simply relying on the market; (v) the employment of structural adjustment programs and other neoliberal economic policies in the 1980s and 90s; (vi) a focus in the 1990s on good government and democracy as a key factor in development; (vii) the focus in the 2000s on sustainable development; (viii) one critique of global development being the dependency of some more agriculturally focused states on more technologically developed states; (ix) Arturo Escobar’s critique of unequal development and Dambisa Moyo’s declaration that aid is dead; (x) the Millenium Development Goals and Sustainable Development Goals adopted through the 21st century; (xi) understanding gender, from a scholarly perspective, to reflect the societal constructs surrounding the roles and relationships of the sexes; (xii) the four ways of thinking about gender being that it is plural and situational, it is relational, it represents intersexual power relations and it intersects with other social identities; (xiii) work by activists and scholars like Kimberlé Crenshaw on intersectionality; (xiv) queer theory, which promotes the sociological separation of sex and gender; (xv) the two key links between gender and development being that development can have different consequences for people of different genders, and that the global differences in viewpoints on gender question the efficacy of a global development strategy.

About the lecturer

Dr Fanny Froehlich is a senior research associate in gender and development in the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies at the University of Bristol. Dr Froehlich’s research interests are in lived experiences and feminist voices in the Global South. Some of Dr Froehlich’s recent publications include ‘Gender and social transformation’ (2024) and ‘Young people’s involvement in migration research: Opportunities for reshaping priorities and practices’ (2023).