A new generation of heterodox development scholars

Abstract

This report evaluates the significance of a heterodox development economics conference held in Cape Town, South Africa in December 2007. To place this event in proper context, it gives a snapshot overview of heterodox economics, which is basically a plural movement against the monopoly of free-market fundamentalist thinking in economics. However, this anti-orthodox economics trend is defined more in terms of what it opposes instead of a positive alternative set of development proposals. Despite this weakness, there seems to have been a wider reach and deepening of heterodox scholarship among a new generation of African development thinkers. The Annual Conference on Development and Change (ACDC) is making two crucial contributions to this movement. It provides a space to exchange, critically debate and craft alternatives to mainstream theory, methodologies and policies. Secondly, it facilitates the networking between African scholars of the 21st century and their counterparts across the global South and North.