Development has received much attention from historians in recent years. New perspectives have been explored on the entangled histories of decolonization and the cold war. Ideas and practices of development and modernization have been studied in their transnational dimension and through their colonial roots. Most of the studies, however, focus on the 1950s and 1960s, i.e. on the years of the symbiosis of development and cold war strategies. As opposed to the previous decades, the 1970s are comparatively neglected. The 1970s are generally identified with a period of crisis in development aid. With détente, aid was not anymore perceived as a valid instrument of political allegiance. It became internationalised and coupled with the rhetoric of the right to development, while the trust in the power of aid to promote progress and equality has been continuously crumbling.

This conference intends to investigate specifically this period, and to analyse how much of this fatigue with development is to be reconciled with an increase in funding, a multiplication of arenas of intervention, and a new emphasis on previously silent issues, like the concern with the environment, or the gender dimension of development.

We are especially interested in investigating continuities in policies, people, and ideas in the strategies for development in the 1970s. We welcome contributions which deal with development aid from the point of view of individual donor countries, from the point of view of the recipient country, from the point of view of governmental (or non governmental) organisations, from the point of view of specific thinkers or think-tanks.

The conference will take place at the University of Trento. It will be organised in form of a workshop, with selected senior scholars commenting on the papers of the invited participants (advanced PhD students or recent PhDs). The organisation will cover accommodation and living expenses for the days of the conference. It will also offer a partial reimbursement of travel expenses.

Please send an abstract (200 to 400 words) and a short CV (100-200 words) to the address
conference.contemporaryhistory@lett.unitn.it
by March 8th.

Selected participants will be notified in the first week of April. Final papers (about 7000 words) are due by May 15th and will be circulated in advance in order to facilitate discussion. The conference organisers plan to publish a selection of the papers presented to the conference.

For any further information please contact the conference organisation at the address:
conference.contemporaryhistory@lett.unitn.it