XI World Congress of Rural Sociology

Trondheim, Norway
July 25-30, 2004

The Congress is over.
Information provided here is for reference.

Symposia

Symposium on New Directions in Rural Sociology and Development

One of the featured symposia at the XI World Congress for Rural Sociology will be devoted to the theme of "New Directions in Rural Sociology and Development." The overall objective of the symposium is to take stock of recent trends in the sociology of development and to think through new directions for research and scholarship on social change and development in the global South. The symposium will have a theoretical emphasis. Among the topics to be addressed by the symposium participants are globalization, global regimes, global governmentality, and the "globalization project"; environment, extraction, and town-country relations; agrofood commodity chains, development, and underdevelopment; informalization and the informal sector; and peasantries, depeasantization, and the dynamics of agrarian structures. The symposium participants will also reflect on the theoretical trends and controversies of the past two decades: the impasse over neo-Marxist theories of development; actor-oriented and actor-network theories; controversies over globalization and "globaloney," debates over "anti-development" and post-developmentalism perspectives; debates over neo-institutionalism; debates over the roles of national-states in the new global economy; and the disconnects between development theories and development policy and strategy.

The symposium will take place on the afternoon of Monday, 26 July 2004 at the Trondheim World Congress of the International Rural Sociological Association (IRSA). The papers prepared by the participants will be divided into two sessions. These papers, plus several additional commissioned papers (see below), will be published as Volume 11 of Research in Rural Sociology and Development in a volume tentatively entitled New Directions in the Sociology of Development.

Symposium Chair:

Frederick Buttel (Department of Rural Sociology, University of Wisconsin; Madison, WI 53706, U.S.A., 608-262-7156, fhbuttel@facstaff.wisc.edu; http://www.drs.wisc.edu/personnel/faculty/buttel/buttel.htm)

Symposium Speakers:

Reconfiguring Research in a Neo-Liberal Era: Latin American Scenarios
Norman Long, Wageningen University
Bryan Roberts, University of Texas

How Resource Extraction Impoverishes Regional Economies
Stephen G. Bunker, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Power and its subjects: development dilemmas, postcolonial re-structuring of rural spaces/ places/identities and state reconfigurations in contemporary globalization processes.
Michaeline Crichlow, University of Iowa
Patricia Northover

New Directions in Commodity Chain Analysis of Global Development Processes
Jane Collins, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Regimes and "Projects"" in Macroinstitutional Development Research: The Struggle over Doha and Beyond
Philip McMichael, Cornell University

Remembering Livelihood: Why Agriculture is Key to the Future of the World System
Harriet Friedmann, University of Toronto

The Supermarket Behemoth in the Global South: Myth and Reality in New Patterns of Agribusiness Development
Tim Lang, City University of London