International Society of Markets and Development

ISMD - Research Groups

RESEARCH GROUP 1:

International Business Education and Research Cooperative

Cliff Shultz, Loyola University, Chicago, is organizing the International Business Education and Research Cooperative (IBERC). The purpose of the Cooperative is to create a network of scholars and interested institutions to collaborate on research projects, to engage outreach and value-added endeavors with businesses, governments and NGOs (such endeavors would include, for example, seminars and consultancies), and to conduct international study-tours.

Suggestions for other endeavors, projects, missions are most welcome. ISMD members and other scholars and practitioners interested to join or to participate in the cooperative should contact Cliff at cjs2@luc.edu.

RESEARCH GROUP 2:

Development, Globalization, and Markets: A Critical Perspective

Detlev Zwick (Schulich School of Business, Toronto, Canada) and Alan Bradshaw (Royal Holloway, London, England), are organizing the Development, Globalization, and Markets (DGaM) research group. The purpose of the group is to create a network of scholars and interested institutions to collaborate on research projects, to engage outreach and value-added endeavors with businesses, governments and NGOs (such endeavors would include, for example, seminars and consultancies), and to conduct international study-tours.

Intellectual Approach:

Of all the 20th century ideas, few have generated the kind of passionate and drawn-out controversy as that of Western ‘development’. Since Arturo Escobar’s book Encountering Development (1995), which made him the iconic face of the post-development movement, many theorists have built upon the monograph’s main ideas and looked at Western development as a pervasive cultural discourse with profound consequences for the production of social reality in the so-called Third World. Critical of the actions of states, markets and international aid organizations, some scholars, including Escobar, have since begun to examine possibilities for social change that is led by new and often local social movements and progressive non-governmental organizations. Nevertheless, for many critical scholars today, (post)development studies have reached an impasse and Escobar’s charge that the ideas and ideals of Western mainstream development, recast as a project of modernization, have failed reverberates through the field. But do the answers to a more socially just, ecologically sustainable and economically self-determined development lie with place-based social movements and new aid formats? And is the failure of Western development not one of capitalism, rather than modernity? In the final analysis, critical development work is the work of imagining alternatives to the mainstream discourse of Western developmentalism and, moreover, of imagining a role for markets that is overdetermined neither by self-interested capitalist states nor by the neoliberal ideologies of supra-national organizations such as the IMF, the World Bank and others. To this research group, we invite everyone interested in both theoretical and empirical work that looks critically at how markets, marketing, and capitalism more generally close down or perhaps open up spaces for alternative paths of development.

Working Paper Series

ISMD would like to initiate a working paper series on the role of markets and marketing in development. The tentative title of the series is "Working Papers on Markets and Development." Those who would like to contribute to these series should consider sending a detailed proposal identifying the topics they would like to cover and how they intend to treat these. A selection committee will give feedback to authors and indicate if a full-length manuscript should be submitted to ISMD. We invite your input on this initiative and your feedback on specific selection criteria for manuscripts. Please contact Fuat Firat at aff@sam.sdu.dk.

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