A New Generation of Heterodox Development Scholars

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Acknowledgments

The Annual Conference for Development and Change (2007) provides a forum for an emerging global network of young economists whose work challenges mainstream economic analysis of global development. Organized around the theme of promoting development in a globalised world, ACDC anchors policy analysis in empirical evidence and solid theoretical bases, and provides a platform for intellectual debate and exchange.

Kwame Akonor, Edsel L. Beja, Jr., Mario Biggeri, Tenkir Bonger, Aldo Caliari, Wen Chen, Esther Dweck, Paulo Gala, Fatma Gul Unal, Zahra Karimi, Julius Kiiza, Likani Lebani, Partha‐pratim Pal, Codrina Rada von Arnim, Fiona Tregenna, Maureen Were

December 9–11, 2007, Cape Town, South Africa

Notes

1. The six‐person steering committee agreed on the name ACDC as a counter to the Annual Bank Conference on Development and Change (ABCDE) organised by the World Bank.

2. Topical concerns that African scholars are researching in the 21st century as well as how (theory and method) they examine their subject matter remain highly context specific. A recent CODESRIA volume, celebrating its 30th anniversary, edited by Thandika Mkandawire (2005) traced the contours of the intellectual spaces within which modern African thinkers operate and how this has altered over the last three decades.

3. This phenomenon Ben Fine (1999) has aptly termed as ‘economic imperialism’.

4. See Lawson (2006) for a debate on heterodox economics as a movement currently defined in terms of its opposition to neo‐classical thinking. Lee (2006) edited a special volume of the Review of Radical Political Economics which specifically illustrates its pluralist and trans‐disciplinary essence.

5. Financial support for the first three years of ACDC was obtained through a Ford Foundation Grant and administered by the Carnegie Council on International Affairs and Ethics based in New York. A funding proposal to continue this project to expand the heterodox knowledgecommunity among younger scholars has been submitted to a several donors.