Sociology of Development and Change Group
The Sociology of Development and Change group (SDC) focuses on the structures and practices of development and change with a particular scientific interest in inequality, marginalization and political agency. We are a politically engaged and interdisciplinary research and educational centre in development studies, political ecology, anthropology of law and crisis and disaster studies.
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News
Weblog
Our colleagues and students regularly share their research, field experiences, educational journeys, and more. Dive into their stories for an insiders’ perspective.
Research themes
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The politics of nature
Critical in development is how people relate to the rest of nature. Development processes have drastically changed ecosystems, biodiversity, waterways and landscapes around the world, but natural environments also shape how we practice and think about development. This also means that nature is always political: how we understand nature, use or conserve it, depends on power relations that are connected to knowledge, information and heritage.
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Disaster and conflict in times of crisis
Disasters, conflicts and other crises represent major challenges to peoples’ lives and livelihoods. While their ‘shock value’ routinely occupies news headlines, their embeddedness in longstanding patterns of social change, marginalisation, and reorganisation, requires much deeper analysis and context which we are committed to contribute to.
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Inequality and social-environmental justice
Our world is extremely unequal, more so than it has ever been before. Many privileged people see the world as a place of unlimited connection and possibility, making use of myriad national and international opportunities for work, leisure, and (tourist and other) interactions with nature and other people. The majority of the world’s population, however, lives in a world of strict borders, boundaries and a deep lack of possibilities.
Education
We teach courses on a range of topics related to development studies, political ecology, anthropology of law and crisis and disaster studies. Within these fields of research, we offer possibilities to do a bachelor, master thesis or internship.
Latest publications
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Conflicts over periurban green infrastructure : Unresolved social problems with nature-based urban solutions
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Game theoretical analysis of China-India interactions in the Brahmaputra River Basin
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Fostering collective subjectivities : Technologies of the self and resistance in Colombian community forest initiatives