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Nick Jepson talks to Ilias Alami and Adam Dixon about their recent talk at the Global Development Institute. The talk blurb is below: The talk contributes to the development of state capitalism as a reflexively critical project focusing on the morphology of present-day capitalism, and particularly on the changing role of the state. We bring analytical clarity to state capitalism studies by offering a rigorous definition of its object of investigation, and by demonstrating how the category state capitalism can be productively construed as a means of problematising the current aggregate expansion of the state’s role as promoter, supervisor, and owner of capital across the world economy. Noting some of the geographical shortcomings of the field, we outline an alternative research agenda – uneven and combined state capitalist development – which aims at spatialising the study of state capitalism and revitalising systemic explanations of the phenomenon. We then offer a geographic reconstruction of the current advent of state capitalism. We identify the determinate historical-geographical capitalist transformations which underpin contemporary state capitalism. Such processes include: the accelerating unfolding of the new international division of labour; technological modernization and industrial upgrading culminating in the Fourth Industrial Revolution; an unprecedented concentration and centralisation of capital; and a secular shift in the centre of gravity of the global economy from the North Atlantic to the Pacific rim. The political mediation of these processes results in new geographies of intervention, which develop in combinatorial and cumulative forms, producing further state capitalist modalities. This is a particularly potent dynamic in contemporary state capitalism, and its tendency to develop in a spiral that both shapes and is shaped by world capitalist development.

Inequality is the crisis of our time. The growing gap between a few at the top and the rest of society damages us all. No longer able to deny the crisis, every government in the world is now pledged to fix it – and yet it keeps on getting worse. This talk focuses on his new book, and Ben Phillips has shown why, in looking for answers, we need to move the spotlight away from the famous faces; how every time inequality has been successfully tackled it has been because of people pushing from below. Most books on inequality are about what other people ought to do about it – this book is about why winning the fight needs you. Sometimes students can feel like they are “preparing” for helping bring change when appointed to a role later. But can they in fact play a transformative role now? Phillips says yes - and explains how. This is not just a bold new historical and sociological study about the politics of inequality - it is a practical action guide for people working for a more equal world. Ben Phillips is co-founder of the Fight Inequality Alliance, civil society activist, and writer. He is the author of the book How to Fight Inequality: (and Why That Fight Needs You) published by Wiley press.

How did Western imperialism shape the developing world? In Imperialism and the Developing World, Atul Kohli tackles this question by analyzing British and American influence on Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America from the age of the British East India Company to the most recent U.S. war in Iraq. He argues that both Britain and the U.S. expanded to enhance their national economic prosperity, and shows how Anglo-American expansionism hurt economic development in poor parts of the world. Atul Kohli is the David K.E. Bruce Professor of International Affairs at Princeton University. His principal research interests are in the area of political economy of developing countries. He is the author of Imperialism and the Developing World: How Britain and the U.S. Shaped the Global Periphery; Poverty amid Plenty in the New India; State-Directed Development: Political Power and Industrialization in the Global Periphery; Democracy and Discontent: India's Growing Crisis of Governability and The State and Poverty in India. He has also edited or co-edited ten volumes and published some sixty articles. Through much of his scholarship, he has emphasized the role of sovereign and effective states in the promotion of inclusive development.

Using case studies from research conducted in Nepal, Bangladesh and Uganda, this webinar will reveal how powerful women are critical actors in securing policy change and consolidating policy gains. The webinar explores the different strategies women’s movement actors and women inside the state use behind the scenes to bypass the political gatekeepers and overcome resistance in policy spaces. In all of the case study countries, there is a push-back against women’s rights and the civic space is shrinking. How does the rise of conservative forces also offer insights into how women leaders may continue to matter? Dr Sohela Nazneen is a Research Fellow at IDS and a Principal Investigator for ESID on women’s empowerment. She has 17 years of experience in working on gender and development issues.

Catch up with our webinar which introduced the African Cities Research Consortium (ACRC) and outlined how the ACRC and its international partners is planning to tackle complex, political and systemic problems in some of Africa’s fastest-growing urban areas. ACRC has been awarded a contract of £32 million from the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) over the next 6 years. Building on the political settlements analysis established by the Effective States and Inclusive Development research centre, ARCR will adopt a city as systems approach to addressing complex urban problems. Through engaged action research, we aim to catalyse progress for disadvantaged communities in a number of focus cities and beyond. Speakers Professor Diana Mitlin, The University of Manchester Professor Sam Hickey, The University of Manchester Dr Martin Atela Partnership for African Social and Governance Research, Nairobi Chaired by Dr Admos Chimhowu

India and China have responded very differently to the lives and livelihoods threats created by Covid-19 and they have experienced very different outcomes. This webinar explores the different ways in which political factors have shaped policy responses to Covid-19 in China and India and the relationships between scientific/technical analysis of the ‘crisis’ and political forces. Can the different policy choices and outcomes be explained by broad-brush concepts, such as democracy and autocracy, or are the explanatory factors more nuanced and more deeply rooted in the specificities of domestic politics? Prof Prerna Singh, Mahatma Gandhi Associate Professor of Political Science & International Studies at Brown University, USA Professor Yanzhong Huang, Director, Center for Global Health Studies at Seton Hall, & Senior Fellow at the Council for Foreign Relations, USA

What kind of politics help to secure inclusive development? After 9 years of research across 26 countries, summing up ESID findings hasn’t been simple. But Three Cs kept cropping up: Context, Capacity, Coalitions. Watch the first in the ESID webinar series on the Three C’s with ESID’s Research Director Professor Sam Hickey

In this special podcast we sat down for a chat with Chrissie Wellington OBE, who was the 2020 recipient of The University of Manchester Outstanding Alumni Award. The four-time World Ironman Champion and current Global Head of Health and Wellbeing at Parkrun, talked about her time at Manchester, what attracted her to International Development, her remarkable sporting career and why her current work is, even more so since Covid-19, so important. Chrissie Wellington graduated in 2001 with an MA in International Development. She is now the Global Head of Health and Wellbeing at Parkrun.

Mark Anner will share findings from his survey data on the impact of March 2020 order cancellations by major apparel brands and retailers with global supplier factories (USD 40 billion), which left millions of low-income workers (mostly young women) without income. A subsequent campaign to pressure these corporations to ‘#payup” was largely successful. Dr. Anner will then draw on his October 2020 research report to examine how, in the context of new lockdowns, current orders are drying up, factories are being squeezed by buyers on price and payment terms, and more than 10 million garment workers could face dismissals or layoffs. The talk will emphasize how this crisis did not begin with Covid-19, but rather that the Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated dramatic, GVC structural power imbalances that have had deleterious consequences for workers, the environment, and social protection for decades.

Wind power has expanded quickly in Brazil, while solar power lags there and both wind and solar power have struggled to take off in South Africa. Professor Kathryn Hochstetler argues that four different political economies - climate change, industrial policy, consumption and distribution, and siting - help account for energy transition. However, coalitions are being built on each of these at the same time, potentially interlocking to reinforce or counter-balance each other. Professor Kathryn Hochstetler, LSE, examines how these processes work in Brazil and South Africa to create distinct national political economies of energy transition.

Dr Amani Abou-Zeid of the African Union discusses Africa: 75 years after the Manchester Pan-African Congress. Her talk was part of a symposium to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the 5th Pan-African Congress which was held in Manchester. Dr Amani Abou-Zeid is currently the African Union Commissioner for Infrastructure, Energy, ICT and Tourism. She is an international development expert with more than 30 years’ experience and has a held roles at the United Nations Development Programme and African Development Bank. She has received the Order of Ouissam Alaouite from HM King Mohamed VI of Morocco, been selected as one of the 50 Most Influential Women in Africa, identified as a World Young Leader by the European Union, and recently named Commissioner by the prestigious top global influencers group ‘ICT for Sustainable Development’. Amani is an alumna of The University of Manchester having studied for her PhD at the Global Development Institute

The Covid-19 pandemic created a major shock to the global economy. The ramifications of this shock are reverberating through global value chains to reach workers and sites of production throughout the world. These ramifications are both short and long term. In the short term, the crisis was a major shock for developing economies particularly those who rely on exports through GVCs as global lead firms cancelled orders and workers were terminated often with very little protection. This webinar aims to examine the future of global value chains in a post-Covid world and how could a restructuring of the global economy shape the position of suppliers and workers in developing countries. Stephanie Barrientos (University of Manchester), Dev Nathan (Institute for Human Development, New Delhi). Rory Horner (University of Manchester), Raphael Kaplinsky (University of Sussex), Chair: Shamel Azmeh (University of Manchester).

Charity Mumbi and Jack Makau work for Muungano wa Wanavijiji, a social movement of 'slum' residents and urban poor people in Kenya, affiliated to SDI International. In this podcast they describe the last few months of working through the initial outbreak of Covid-19, outlining how communities and their organisations have been responding. Their agile initial approaches, alongside a longstanding ability to accurately map dense informal settlements has led to new partnerships with the Kenyan Ministry of Health, as part of its coronavirus task force. This work is also being supported by an action research project to track coronavirus responses with GDI’s Professor Diana Mitlin.

In this special podcast, we are lucky to be joined by the editors of the newly published Routledge Handbook of Migration and Development, Tanja Bastia and Ronald Skeldon. In this episode they talk about their long-term collaboration in the fields of migration and development and their wish to build on long-standing research by bringing together established thinkers and new areas of research – an approach which has culminated in this handbook. In addition to their own explanation of why this work is so timely and important, they are joined by four of the contributors to the handbook who give them insights into their particular areas of expertise and the chapters they contributed. Loren B. Landau - The Informalisation of Migration Governance across Africa’s Urban Archipelagos (08:22) Oliver Bakewell - Undocumented Migration and Development (14:15) Gioconda Herrera - Care, Social Reproduction, and Migration (23:08) Melissa Siegel - Migration and Health (32:38) Tanja Bastia is Reader at the Global Development Institute at the University of Manchester. Her research focuses on transnational migration for work, particularly on the relationship between power relations, mobility, and space. She has conducted multi-sited ethnographic research with Bolivian migrants in Bolivia, Argentina, and Spain since the year 2000 and currently holds a Leverhulme Research Fellowship to develop her research into ageing and migration. Ronald Skeldon is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Sussex and an Honorary Professor at Maastricht University. Following a PhD on Peru at the University of Toronto in 1974, he moved to the Asia-Pacific region for over 25 years, where he pursued both academic careers and positions with the United Nations before returning to the United Kingdom in 2000. He has published widely on issues of migration, including his 1997 book Migration and Development: A Global Perspective (Longman). Loren B. Landau is Professor of Migration & Development at Oxford University’s Department of International Development and a Researcher with the University of the Witwatersrand’s African Centre for Migration and Society. His interdisciplinary scholarship explores mobility, multi-scale governance, and the transformation of socio-political community across the global South. Oliver Bakewell is a Senior Lecturer at the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester. His work focuses on the intersections between migration and mobility and processes of development and change, with an empirical focus on migration within Africa. Gioconda Herrera is an Ecuadorian Sociologist and a Professor at the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) in Quito. Her research interests concern the effects of globalisation on social inequalities in Latin America. Her work focuses on international migrations from the Andean countries to Europe and the United States from a gender perspective. She has done research on transnational families and care, return migration and deportation. Her current research deals with the Venezuelan exodus in South America. Melissa Siegel is a Professor of Migration Studies and Head of Migration at the Maastricht Graduate School of Governance at Maastricht University and UNU-MERIT. Her research focuses on the causes and consequences of migration with a focus on migration and development and migration policy and programming.

In the latest episode of our ‘In Conversation’ podcast we caught up with Shamima and Alicya; two Manchester Alumni whose fashion business was recently highly commended for social innovation at the Manchester Making A Difference Awards 2020. Listen here to find out how they came up with the idea, what empowerment and sustainability means to them, their goals for the future and how studying at the GDI, in particular the Poverty, Inequality and Development pathway, helped to shape their business approach.

Seth Schindler & Tom Gillespie discuss their new research on deindustrialisation in the Global South. Seth and Tom have recently published an article on 'Deindustrialization in cities of the Global South' with Nicola Banks, Mustafa Kemal Bayırbağ, Himanshu Burte, J. Miguel Kanai & Neha Sami.

In this episode Dr Rory Horner talked to Dr Siobhán McGrath about her research into forced labour and the marketising anti-slavery. Siobhán McGrath is Assistant Professor in Human Geography at Durham University Rory Horner, Senior Lecturer in Globalisation and Political Economy in the Global Development Institute.

In this episode, GDI's Nicola Banks talks to Jelmer Kamstra and Zoe Abrahamson about the political role of NGOs and how donor funding can support those. Jelmer Kamstra has been Senior Policy Officer at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands in the Civil Society Division since 2015. Starting January 2020, Jelmer has taken up a new position as Senior Researcher at the Policy and Operations Evaluation Department (IOB) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Zoe Abrahamson is Bond’s senior funding adviser. She coordinates Bond’s funding stream, acting as conduit between funders and NGOs. Nicola Banks is a Senior Lecturer in Urban Development and Deputiy Managing Director of the Global Development Institute.

In this episode, Nicholas Jepson talks to Seth Schindler about his new book ‘In China’s wake: how the commodity boom transformed development strategies in the global south. In China’s Wake reveals the surprising connections among these three phenomena. Nicholas Jepson shows how Chinese demand not only transformed commodity markets but also provided resource-rich states with the financial leeway to set their own policy agendas, insulated from the constraints and pressures of capital markets and multilateral creditors such as the International Monetary Fund. Nicholas Jepson is a Hallsworth Research Fellow in Chinese Political Economy at the Global Development Institute. Seth Schindler is a Senior Lecturer in Urban Development & Transformation at the Global Development Institute.

Luis Eduardo Perez Murcia, University of Trento, recently visited the GDI to give a talk entitled 'I am afraid of dying without seeing my daughter again': Looking at the Aging-Home-Migration Nexus Scholarly research exploring the aging-migration nexus has significantly increased in the last decade. The role of home in this nexus, however, has received considerably less academic attention. Against this background, this paper explores whether and how migration shapes the experiences of home of those on the move and the elderly members of their families left behind in their countries of origin. Drawing on ethnographic research with transnational Ecuadorian and Peruvian migrants in Manchester, London and Madrid and the elder members of their families back in Ecuador and Peru, the paper argues that migration mutually shapes ideas and attitudes towards home of those who migrate and those who are left behind. An in-depth analysis of the empirical material reveals that many of those elderly left behind struggle to feel at home largely because they experience isolation and even abandonment. Their struggles for home tend to be accentuated when they perceived that the end of their lives is approaching. On the side of those who are on the move, attitudes towards home are often shaped by the sense of not being able to look after the elder members of their families left behind or even visiting them. In some cases, especially for those who work caring after the elderly in their transnational settings, a sense of regret becomes part of their everyday experiences of home because strangers or nobody looks after their own parents and grandparents in their countries of origin. Those who could not attend their parents and grandparents’ funerals tend to see their sense of home irreversibly affected. The presentation ends by discussing how a material and symbolic notion of home may help to advance contemporary debates on ageing and migration.