The Impact of Conflict: Recognizing the dangers and searching for solutions

Reimagining development

Dealing with the crises that define our moment – wars, food insecurity, cognitive manipulation and the erosion of social contracts – demands not only analysis but also imagination. The articles in this issue of DevISSues examine these crises, highlighting not only the dangers they pose but also how the search for solutions can encourage us to reimagine  global structures and power relations. 

Visser, Voicu and Bosman examine the links between conflict, geopolitics and food (in)security. They remind us that the weaponization of food is nothing new, and suggest that the intensifying vulnerabilities in the global food system give a new impetus to the ongoing debate about the need to rethink it.

Jayasundara-Smits exposes a new frontier of warfare – cognitive warfare – where manipulation replaces missiles and perception becomes the battlefield. She argues that CogWar threatens our very democratic survival; to counter it will require strong investment in our societies.

In ’A Diseased State’, Creed traces how anti-Blackness continues to shape the foundations of modernity, positioning the United States’ political and health crises as symptoms of a deeper, global pathology. 

And in their lively conversation, Fapohunda and Koch consider the crisis in aid funding and how this has the potential to re-shape power relations between the Global South and the Global North. Whilst not underestimating the immediate negative impacts of the cuts on aid recipients, they suggest that the end of aid dependency has the potential to open space for new forms of accountability and cooperation.

Further in this issue, we highlight ISS’ one-year MA in Development Studies. The programme offers our global students the opportunity to not only theorize about development, it also challenges them to reflect on how to apply this knowledge to real-world challenges such as inequality, climate change and just transitions.

This issue puts a spotlight on the crises we are facing, how are they interlinked and how we can reimagine development to solve them. I hope you enjoy reading it and that it inspires you to embark, with others, on a collective exercise in unlearning, rethinking and building new futures.

Jane Pocock – Editor

Editor DevISSues