Osgoode Hall Law School presents speaker Professor Ruth Buchanan to discuss the paper “What Gets Measured Gets Done: The Social Construct of Globalized Knowledge for Development” on Jan. 25 from 12:30 to 2pm at the Ignat Kaneff Building Room 2027.
The project of international development can be understood as a way of seeing the world that is both constituted by and interwoven with evolving processes of measurement, comparison and quantification.
Drawing on the sociological insight that regimes of measurement can never be neutral representations of external objects, but are instead actively engaged in shaping what can be known, this paper critically examines the way in which the production of globalized rankings and metrics are interwoven with the very social and economic hierarchies that development as a project seeks to ameliorate.
The paper seeks to illustrate the mechanisms and effects of this co-production of the development project and its practices of quantification through a close consideration of the case of Millennium Development Goal 7 Target D, which aimed to “achieve, by 2020, a significant improvement in the lives of 100 million slum dwellers.”
Buchanan is an interdisciplinary legal scholar whose work spans critical legal theory, sociology of law and cultural legal studies. Her scholarship has frequently engaged with issues concerning legal pluralism, development, and international and transnational legal orders. She is the found and convener of Osgoode’s Law.Art.Culture Colloquium.
All are welcome to attend and lunch will be provided to guests. To RSVP, visit www.osgoode.yorku.ca/research/rsvp.