Past Conferences

→ For a more complete list and description of past conferences of IDEA, please see the History of IDEA under the About tab.

IDEA-GRETHA 2018 Congress: A World United

A World United: Allies and Ethical Action in International Ethical Development — the eleventh IDEA Congress, jointly produced with GREThA — took place 25-27 June 2018.

FINAL version IDEA Bordeaux program

See also the site for Groupe de Recherche en Économie Théorique et Appliquée (GREThA):

http://gretha.u-bordeaux.fr/fr/colloques/7%C3%A8mes-journ%C3%A9es-du-d%C3%A9veloppement-gretha-idea

***Historic conference information lies below***

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS
The International Development Ethics Association, and
GRETHA, University of Bordeaux

 Invite scholars, practitioners, government policy makers, and other interested parties to submit proposals for presentations at a conference with the theme

A World United: Allies in Ethical Development
Bordeaux, France June 25 – 27, 2018

 Organized by
International Development Ethics Association and
Groupe de Recherche en Économie Théorique et Appliquée
GRETHA UMR CNRS 5113 University of Bordeaux
Unité Mixte Internationale Résilience (IRD), and
with support from FREE (Fonds pour la recherche en éthique économique)

Conference Theme
The conference theme “A World United: Allies in Development” was chosen with the hope of inspiring thoughtful conversations about the important relationships that can both frustrate and facilitate development. Although we are primarily concerned with questions of personal relationships in which individuals and groups of people ally themselves with one another to bring about ethical development, this theme is also meant to capture alliances at every level of development, including alliances between and across nation states, corporations, multinational groups, NGOs, etc. Thus, we are interested in considerations on the following dimensions of the theme as they apply to ethical development:

• Foundational issues of alliances: What does it mean to be allied with another? What makes for a good ally? How might we respond to harmful alliances? Does privilege itself create a particular responsibility to ally with those less privileged?
• Alliances within and across social categories and identities, including religion, gender, race, ability, economic status, caste, tribe, etc.
• Alliances within and across professional roles including aid workers and stakeholders, agricultural economists and farmers, health care providers and patients, scholars and practitioners, political leaders and citizens, corporations and consumers, shareholders and stakeholders, etc.
• Allies across borders: private citizens, refugees, immigrants, trade agreements, issues of fair trade, development aid, and international political agreements such as the Paris Accord on Climate Change, etc.
• Allies beyond humanity: allies with non-human animals, allies with the environment, etc.

Presentations should examine these issues from diverse theoretical and conceptual perspectives including philosophical argument, empirical analysis, examinations of policy, and action strategies.  The conference will engage scholars and practitioners from around the world and from a wide variety of disciplines and activities (including philosophy and other humanities, social sciences, policy studies, development, social work, NGOs, local and global agencies and organizations, government officials and policy makers). IDEA particularly welcomes submissions from scholars and practitioners in the global south.

IDEA’s A World United conference will be held conjointly with GREThA’s Collective Action and Development conference: The 7th Conference on Development, “Collective action and Development” of GREThA (Groupe de Recherche en Économie Théorique et Appliquée) will run in conjunction with IDEA. All participants will be welcome to attend both conference sessions. The two conferences will take place in the same venue (Pole Juridique et Judiciaire, downtown historical Bordeaux). For further details concerning Collective Action And Development, see:

http://gretha.u-bordeaux.fr/fr/colloques/7%C3%A8mes-journ%C3%A9es-du-d%C3%A9veloppement-gretha-idea

Joint conference keynote addresses:
The International Development Ethics Association’s Second David Crocker lecture will be delivered by Christine Koggel, Department of Philosophy, Carleton University, Canada,
and GREThA is pleased to invite
Vijayendra Rao, Lead Economist, World Bank Development Research Group

Further plenary sessions: to be announced.

Conference language: English. All paper submissions and presentations should be in English.

Field Visit
An optional field visit to DARWIN is planned for June 27. DARWIN is an alternative space shared by 100 companies and 30 associations united around common goals including the reduction of their companies’ environmental footprints, creating new economic synergies and promoting urban cultures.

Marginalized Peoples, Human Rights, and Development Ethics


17-18 May, 2018 Chişinău, Moldova

Conference program:  ROMANA   ENGLISH  RUSSIAN

17-18 May, 2018 Chişinău, Moldova
Hosted by:
 Universitatea de Stat din Moldova (The State University of Moldova)

Organized by: The International Development Ethics Association
The State University of Moldova, Department of Anthropology and Philosophy
The Ombudsman Office of the Republic of Moldova
The Moldova School of Public Health and Management
The Department of Philosophy & Anthropology of Moldova State University

In partnership with the Moldovan Minority Youth Platform

Development Ethics: Contributions for a Socially Sustainable Future

San José, Costa Rica, July 21-24*, 2014

Organized by The International Development Ethics Association (IDEA) with Vicerrectoría de Investigación, Universidad de Costa Rica (UCR), Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas (UCR), Escuela de Filosofía(UCR) and Maestría en Desarrollo Sostenible (UCR).

Links to the conference program and to other documents relating to this conference can be found at http://www.inif.ucr.ac.cr/congreso_inif .  The full text of the Proceedings (“Memoria”) of the conference can be found more particularly at www.inif.ucr.ac.cr/congreso_inif/docs/MEMORIA.pdf

[The following text reproduces the “Call for Abstracts”, followed by Calls for Abstracts and announcements of earlier conferences.]

Development ethics considers the ethical and value questions posed by development theory, planning and practice. The mission of this interdisciplinary field is to identify the value conflicts posed by development and to evaluate alternatives according to normative parameters. IDEA’s mission for the past 30 years has been to maintain an international, intercultural, and interdisciplinary dialogue that brings together intellectuals, grassroots organizations, and decision-making groups with the purpose of understanding and promoting well-grounded ethics and their application in different “development” situations and alternatives.

There is widespread agreement on the need for changing development patterns towards sustainable and equitable models. But there are no overarching approaches that draw sufficient support from large sectors of societies across the world. Indeed, traditional development (i.e. quantitative economic expansion) is happening to a considerable extent, and successfully so – especially in many parts of Latin America, Africa and Asia. But such development is part of the problem in so far as it is typically neither equitable nor sustainable. At times of global financial and economic crisis and after the Rio+20 debate, centered around concepts such as the green economy, green growth, smart agriculture, smart cities, sustainable development goals etc., the requirement is to conceptualize and operationalize the ideas of progress and sustainability in ways that are truly compatible, but that also have an ethical dimension.

Development Ethics is thus a fundamental area of work required in order to achieve the goals of socially and environmentally sustainable development. In 1984 the University of Costa Rica, UCR, served as host of the first international conference on development ethics, jointly organized by Dr. David A. Crocker and Dr. Luis Camacho. The topic of the conference was Ethics and Third World Development. One major consequence of the event was the creation of the International Development Ethics Association (IDEA). Both the conference and the foundation of IDEA were major events in the scientific study of the ethical implications of development programs and policies implemented around the globe. The fact that those two events took place in Costa Rica is not arbitrary. On the contrary, thirty years ago Costa Rica was already being studied as an exemplary case of high human development achieved despite low income, through the deployment of strong and effective social institutions. At the time, however, the particular conception of development that Costa Rica had achieved by the late 1970s was a special case, and the category of human development, and its measure, was not yet clearly conceived. The international debate of which the 1984 conference formed a part contributed to the conceptualization and operationalization of human development thinking and it highlight the need to monitor the ethical design and implementation of development policies.

The goals of the 10^th IDEA conference and 30^th Anniversary of its foundation are in line with the history of IDEA and its vision of development ethics and ethical development.  The conference aims to

• revisit the fundamental importance of development ethics in light of the current demands for new development models that recognize that progress must be both socially and environmentally sustainable; and to acknowledge and celebrate the contributions of IDEA to the field of development ethics in the past 30 years.
• analyze the political, economic and social changes needed to create analytical and policy frameworks for designing, implementing and monitoring ethically sustainable development policies within a global structure still dominated by models of political economy.
• bridge the philosophical analysis of development with its implications for practice, in particular, concerning individuals, non-human beings, and societies in our era of dominant scientific and technological approaches to problem-solving, learning and monitoring progress and results.
• create a space for the analysis of both the current theoretical advances in the field of development ethics, and specific case studies of good and bad practices in the design and implementation of ethically guided sustainable development planning.
• critically analyze and reflect upon the relationship between academics and practitioners within development ethics and explore the role of IDEA in moving this forward.
• Pay particular attention to the specific challenges of Latin America and the Caribbean with special focus on the host country, Costa Rica such as agricultural sustainability and food sovereignty.

PAPER PROPOSALS [WERE] INVITED ON TOPICS SUCH AS:

• Rethinking the concept of development: Lessons and limits of development ethics
• Global Inequality and sustainability: Are these the main problems of development?
• Global accountability
• Varieties of Capitalism: what are the lessons and what varieties may lead to socially and environmentally sustainable futures?
• Ethically driven transitions to resilient cities and communities: Lessons from the bottom up
• The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
• Development as Freedom, gender equity, capacity building and deployment: defining features of humanism in the 21st Century?
• Development ethics in Latin America
• The Ideas of Denis Goulet in the context of current development trends and challenges
• Who drives development? Considering how and by whom development is motivated, identified, prioritized, implemented, measured and funded
• The role of human rights in shaping development priorities and programs
• Agricultural sustainability, food justice and food sovereignty
• As well as any other theoretical and practical topics within the field of Development Ethics

Papers should examine these issues from diverse theoretical and conceptual perspectives including philosophical argument, empirical analysis, examinations of policy, and action strategies.  The conference will engage scholars and practitioners from around the world and from a wide variety of disciplines and activities (including philosophy and other humanities, social sciences, policy studies, development, social work, NGOs, local and global agencies and organizations, government officials and policy makers).  IDEA particularly welcomes submissions from scholars and practitioners from countries in the global south countries.

CONFERENCE FORMAT

The conference will include the presence of world-class leaders in the fields of human development, justice and equality and the design, implementation and monitoring of ethically sustainable development policies. Academic reflection will be complemented with dialogue and lessons from practitioners and civil society and government representatives. Conference plenary speakers will participate in mixed plenary panels. Concurrent panels will include development ethics, political economy of development, and presentations of case studies (in relation to the above topics). A one-day workshop retreat to discuss the ways forward for IDEA and to visit some communities in the countryside is planned (this is organized by the Maestría en Desarrollo Sostenible, UCR, Sede de Occidente).The official languages of the conference will be English and Spanish, with simultaneous translation in Spanish, limited to the participation of approximately 70 people.

INVITED SPEAKERS AND TENTATIVE THEMES

Alejandra Boni, Associate Professor, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia “University and human development / University for global transformations”

David A. Crocker. Senior Research Scholar and Director of the School of Public Policy’s Ph.D. Program University of Maryland. “Democracy, Development Ethics and Global Justice: Theory and Practice” 

Luis Camacho, Professor Emeritus, Universidad de Costa Rica. “First David A. Crocker Lecture: The Ethics of Development”

Adela Cortina, Professor of Moral Philosophy; University of Valencia. “Applied Ethics and Democracy: New Challenges”

Jay Drydyk, Department of Philosophy, Carleton University, Canada, Nigel Dowel, Honorary Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Aberdeen, and Des Gasper, Dean of Studies at The Institute of Social Studies in the Hague, The Netherlands:  A panel on “Development Ethics: Past Reflections, Current Happenings, Future Directions”

Asuncion Lera St. Clair: President of IDEA; Research Director-CICERO, Oslo Norway: “The four tasks of development ethics in times of a changing climate” (Presidential Address)

Paul B. Thompson, W.K.Kellogg Chair in Agricultural, Food and Community Ethics, Michigan State University, “Sustainability, Food Security and Ethical Development”

Other plenary speakers to be confirmed.

 

Submission of Abstracts.  Proposals in English or Spanish should be submitted no later than April 15, 2014 by email to congresoidea2014.inif@ucr.ac.cr and should include:

1. An abstract of 500 words
2. Name, affiliation, and contact information on a separate page
3. A biography of under 100 words (for the conference program)

*An optional field trip is planned for July 24

CFP: Tenth International Conference of the International Development Ethics Association on Education, Democracy, and Development.

Bamako, Mali January 3-6, 2013

Please note that the CFP is temporarily closed pending rescheduling of the conference.

Organized by The International Development Ethics Association (IDEA) with Residential College in the Arts and Humanities, the College of Education, and the Program in Ethics and Development, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI; and the Institute for Popular Education, Kati, Mali

The goals of the IDEA Conference on Education, Democracy, and Development are in line with the history of IDEA and its vision of development ethics and ethical development.  The conference aims to

• clarify the moral challenges that education reform faces and the practical problems the current system of education poses for individual and social well-being and for democratic governance;
• identify effective responses to these moral challenges and practical problems;
• further the scholarship on development ethics through the process of bringing theory to practice.

In Mali  (and countries facing similar challenges) the combination of truncated educational progress, limited cultural tolerance, economic want, political fragility, rapid demographic change, and the reorganization of higher education has resulted in a set of practical problems at the intersection of education and democracy.  These are the practical problems which the IDEA Conference on Education, Democracy, and Development will address.

Paper proposals are invited in areas such as

1. curricular reform
2. bi-lingual and multi-lingual education
3. indigenous knowledge systems
4. gender and educational opportunity
5. teacher training
6. systematic cheating and plagiarism
7. labor laws, marital laws, tax laws, and property laws
8. moral education
9. democratic citizenship
10. environmental ethics education
11. religion and education
12. interdisciplinary education and research
13. study abroad and international student exchange
14. instructor-student relationships and effective mentoring
15. taxation and the funding of public education.

Papers should examine these issues from diverse theoretical and conceptual perspectives including philosophical argument, empirical analysis, examinations of policy, and action strategies.  The conference will engage scholars and practitioners from around the world and from a wide variety of disciplines and activities (including philosophy and other humanities, social sciences, policy studies, development, social work, NGOs, local and global agencies and organizations, government officials and policy makers).  IDEA particularly welcomes submissions from scholars and practitioners in South countries.

All papers will be given in plenary sessions (no concurrent sessions), but then time will be set aside for smaller break-out discussion sessions in various forms throughout the conference.

The working language of the conference will be French, with simultaneous translation in English.

Papers and proposals may be submitted in English or French.

Submission of Abstracts.  Proposals should be submitted no later than June 1, 2012  by email to Stephen L. Esquith at esquith@msu.edu and should include:

1. An abstract of 500 words
2. Name, affiliation, and contact information on a separate page
3. A biography of under 100 words (for the conference program)

Organizing Committee:

• Stephen L. Esquith, Residential College in the Arts and Humanities, Michigan State University
• Shannon Brown, Fairtrade Canada, Ottawa, ON
• Samantha Noll, Department of Philosophy, Michigan State University
• Petra Tschakert, Department of Geography, Pennsylvania State University
• Maria Diarra, Institute for Popular Education, Kati, Mali
• Debbie Fredo, Institute for Popular Education, Kati, Mali
• Jack Schwille, College of Education, Michigan State University

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2011 IDEA Conference: Gender, Justice and Development: Local and Global

Organized by
THE INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT ETHICS ASSOCIATION (IDEA)
with Centre on Values and Ethics (COVE) at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, and Center for International Studies (CIS), and Department of Philosophy at Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, PA

Plenary Speaker

Naila Kabeer, Professor of Development Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, London University

Plenary Panels

“CARE AND JUSTICE: THINKING RELATIONALLY”

• Joan Tronto, Department of Political Science, University of Minnesota, U.S.
• Jennifer Llewellyn, Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University, Canada

“GENDER AND CLIMATE CHANGE”

• Carolyn Sachs, Department of Women’s Studies, Pennsylvania State University, U.S.
• Petra Tschakert, Department of Geography and the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute (EESI), Pennsylvania State University, U.S.

“EMPOWERMENT: LOCAL AND GLOBAL”

• Barbara Simon, School of Social Work, Columbia University, U.S.
• Patti Petesch, Independent Consultant, International Poverty and Gender Research

The past several decades have brought world-wide agendas about rights and justice to the forefront of international policy debates. Throughout the 1990s, international United Nations conferences opened space for debate on the environment, human rights, population, and women. While it can be said that the economic and political crises of the new millennium have slowed the pace of commitments to the pursuit of equality for all, debates about how best to promote equality and justice in and through the development process continue. Many organizations at the local, national, and global levels now understand gender to be a central factor in policies for alleviating poverty or promoting economic growth. The changes wrought by measures such as improving health care for women and children and increasing women’s access to education, property, and work show the key role that women can play in development processes. Moreover, these processes help to remove discrimination on the basis of gender and to alleviate the inequalities and injustices that discriminatory practices and traditions produce.