Cycles of meetings

This cycle includes four workshops on the issue of knowledge mobilization and transfer in the context of North-South mutations: from a dominant unidirectional transfer to diversification and co-construction of the knowledge and its diffusion, from brain drain to brain circulation.

The following results were expected and obtained:

• Workshops work as a catalyst for research projects: new projects have emerged
• The recommendations made at each workshop feed reflection and action
• Work within the network of the different regional institutions is facilitated.

CYCLE PROGRAMME

May 2013 & October 2013: Preparatory sessions, definition of the axes of the debate cycle:

Workshop #1
Major changes in North-South relations’ influences on development cooperation
Marseille, IRD, 25th March 2014
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Workshop #2
The impact of long-term development policies: how to measure them? What lessons to draw from it?
Marseille, Aix-Marseille University, 13th May 2014
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Workshop #3
Towards a pluralistic and innovative model for the development cooperation
Marseille, MuCEM, 4th July 2014
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Workshop #4
A critical reflection on education for development toward a policy of openness to new academic and social actors
Marseille, MuCEM, 3rd October 2014
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This cycle consists of 3 workshops-debates on the issue of professional and scientific practices as a political project.

International cooperation and official development assistance are eminently political concepts whose ideological foundations are rarely questioned in the professional frameworks where development projects are implemented. This cycle has addressed the following issues:

• What political dimension is underlying professional and scientific practices of development cooperation?
• What power relationships does this involve?
• What regulatory mechanisms does it use?
• Is the use of implicit and unspoken a consensual strategy to allow actors ideologically diverse to collaborate?
• Is it a necessary strategy or is it counterproductive?
• Should it be challenged and how?
• Should it be preserved to build pragmatic and diversified projects?

CYCLE PROGRAMME

Workshop #1
Networking and social, professional and political innovation: too much networking kills networking?
Marseille, Villa Méditerranée, 19th June 2015
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Workshop #2
Civil society and democratization in the Maghreb
Marseille, IRD, 23rd March 2017
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Workshop #3
Mediterranean, a case study of the criminalization of migration: Franco-Tunisian crossed views on migratory issues in the Mediterranean and the situation in Libya
Marseille, AAJT, 8th November 2017
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Download the 2015/2017 cycle programme (in French)

The 2018 cycle consists of 2 workshop-debates around the question of ambivalence which the dynamics of cooperation are based on, between the “good intentions” and the reality of implementation.

In the context of international relations where the law of the strongest is still the best, despite a century of efforts to build a supranational rule of law, the dynamics of cooperation and official development assistance unfold on an ambivalence between their asserted ethics aims and their implementation by a complex set of actors and intersecting and competing interests.

From the point of view of professional practices as well as that of academic research, how can we build a coherent, critical and constructive individual and collective positioning within this framework?

The following cycle of meetings will seek to suggest some paths for reflection around concrete case studies:

CYCLE PROGRAMME

Workshop #1
“Poubelles nos vies ?” Myths and realities of the global recycling industry
Marseilles, Les Docks village, 5th July 2018
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Workshop #2
Your aid or your life? Is International Aid merely a balance of power in the game of international relations or is it still the expression of a more complex social relation?
Marseilles, Faculty of Médecine of La Timone, 31st October 2018
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The 2019-2020 cycle will address the themes of “collapse”, “resilience” and “transition”.

These concepts, ubiquitous in today’s world, will be explored through the prism of research advances, sifted through a critical analysis, in the light of professional and scientific practices, and observed from citizen actions.

We will focus more specifically on the challenges of the “collapse” paradigm on research issues and professional practices in the field of cooperation and its sectoral and intersectoral variations (health, education, urbanism, social, political, etc.): how can we grab it?

Upcoming dates and programmes

Préprogramme (in French)