Event Date: September 23, 2026 - 1:00pm to 2:30pm
Location: FSS 4004, 120 University Private, University of Ottawa

Presented by CIPS

At a time of multiple challenges to the liberal international order, development has become one of the most contentious areas of world politics. Dominant powers have reduced their assistance and overtly fused development with national and security interests, while rising powers like China have become major donors promoting new models and norms. Advancing an innovative Bourdieusian-inspired analysis of global politics as interaction between transnational fields, this book places development in the context of contemporary transformations in world order. It traces the history of development as a field of struggle from 1945 to the present, and argues that development is central to the emergence, maintenance, and transformation of world order. The authors show how the global field of development is characterized by a specific form of interest—an interest in disinterest—that performs the social alchemy of converting economic and military power into the symbolic power that is crucial for international hegemony. In the current geopolitical context, the ability of development to produce this symbolic power is dissolving and transforming, making the field one of the crucial sites where attempts to build an alternative global order are emerging and will be historically tested.

Learn more about the book here.

Speakers:
Rita Abrahamsen holds the Chair of African Studies at the University of Oxford, and she is the Nelson Mandela Visiting Professor 2025-27 at Rhodes University in South Africa.

Michael C. Williams is Professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa, and a Global Professorial Fellow in the Department of Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary, University of London.

Discussant:
Vincent Pouliot is a professor in the Department of Political Science and holds the Arts and Sciences Chair of Excellence in Global Governance at the Université de Montréal.

Chair:

Alexandra Gheciu is a Professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs (GSPIA) and the Director of CIPS.