Blockchain Papers

Aaron Martin, Gargi Sharma, Siddharth Peter de Souza, Linnet Taylor · 10 authors

Debates are ongoing on the limits of - and possibilities for - sovereignty in the digital era. While most observers spotlight the implications of the Internet, cryptocurrencies, artificial intelligence/machine learning and advanced data analytics for the sovereignty of nation states, a critical yet under examined question concerns what digital innovations mean for authority, power and control in the humanitarian sphere in which different rules, values and expectations are thought to apply. This forum brings together practitioners and scholars to explore both conceptually and empirically how digitisation and datafication in aid are (re)shaping notions of sovereign power in humanitarian space. The forum's contributors challenge established understandings of sovereignty in new forms of digital humanitarian action. Among other focus areas, the forum draws attention to how cyber dependencies threaten international humanitarian organisations' purported digital sovereignty. It also contests the potential of technologies like blockchain to revolutionise notions of sovereignty in humanitarian assistance and hypothesises about the ineluctable parasitic qualities of humanitarian technology. The forum concludes by proposing that digital technologies deployed in migration contexts might be understood as 'sovereignty experiments'. We invite readers from scholarly, policy and practitioner communities alike to engage closely with these critical perspectives on digitisation and sovereignty in humanitarian space.

Christopher Mutai

There has never been enough humanitarian funding. Needs have always gone unmet, and the international community has long sought ways to fix this problem. Inadequate information, poor infrastructure and lack of sufficient human and financial resources are hampering the implementation of early warning systems in Africa(Omulo,1998).This is prompted by the sense that inadequate resources are being over-stretched to cover a wider scope of needs, in a greater number of crises. Sustainability must now become a fundamental feature of humanitarian action. This will result in generation of adequate resources to carry out operations; ability to pay own core costs sustainably thereby making Kenya Red Cross Society a more attractive proposition to donors; realization of growth in the society ;funding of programs that are of priority to Kenya Red Cross and additional resources for re-investment. As indicated, sustainability and growth of Kenya Red Cross Society is dependent on its ability to finance its core costs from its own income generating initiatives. The society thus has to internalize the economic engine which involves resource mobilization, funding diversification, grant management, investing in income generating activities thus reducing dependency on donor funding, realizing income from subsidiaries(E-plus and Red Court),lobbying for funding from the government and the general public, decentralizing the resource base and developing a resource mobilization unit The overall objective of the study is to examine the impact of humanitarian funds by the Kenya Red Cross Society on reconstruction and development programs. . This study focused on Systemization of innovative ‘crisis modifier' approaches, and other sustainable financing approaches, to blend and switch between humanitarian and development funding as needed in protracted settings. This study is based on resource mobilization and investment in income generating activities. There is an intense competition for scarce humanitarian funds as the Kenyan humanitarian crises industry comprises many players all competing for limited resources. Resource availability on the other hand dictates the level and intensity of disaster mitigation and coupled with donors' preferences, KCRS as a major player has to continuously demonstrate its capabilities and intensify efforts that ensure sustainable funding

Charlotte Peevers

In a highly readable and often immersively engaging book, Yale law professors Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro have narrated a long history of international law’s ideas about war with one primary goal in mind: using history to excavate the 1928 Paris Peace Pact’s central importance in the building of a New World Order. They seek to protect the gains of this New World Order and to use their method of ‘looking back’ to draw attention to the current threats to the ‘postwar consensus on the illegality of war’ and to ‘chart a path ahead’ (at 415–416). The book’s narrative spans an impressive temporal and geographic range, beginning briefly with a hot summer day in Paris in 1928, then back to a night in 1603 off the Strait of Singapore, right up to the contemporary period, focusing on the South China Sea in 2015, Crimea in 2014 and Iraq and Syria from 2014 to today. The authors narrate the ideas and biographies of ‘fathers’ of the Old and New World Orders including the familiar (Hugo Grotius, Carl Schmitt, Hans Kelsen, Hersch Lauterpacht) and the less well known (Nishi Amande, James T. Shotwell, Salmon Levinson). It is these great men, categorized as either ‘Interventionists’ or ‘Internationalists’ who, through force of will and the faith in their ideas, coupled with elite access and sometimes frenetic writings, changed the course of legal order in the world. This cast of characters is arranged as heroes and villains (‘arraigned’ may be more appropriate for the latter) in the epic, transformational struggle to displace one ‘universe’ with another (at xv). The object of this progressive struggle was the ‘outlawry of war’ – its prohibition, casting it out from the legal toolkit of sovereign state policy, consigning it to a dark past of interstate violence. It is important to bear in mind that this ‘struggle’ is one that is openly engaged with by the authors themselves, not simply the jurists and ideas men they seek to portray. This is history in the service of clear normative commitments. The book’s monumental spatio-temporal reach, epic narrative and archival mastery in the first two parts, and its empirical turn in the final, third part, invite cross-disciplinary dialogue and insights that require us to step outside the comfort of disciplinary enclosures and unnecessarily bounded specialization. The book justifies reflection and debate not just among international legal scholars but also among colleagues in history, international relations and political science. It achieves what its marketing material promises: genuine provocation through the boldness of its vision. Holding these values in the frame, then, I explore in this review essay the authors’ upfront normative commitments to the New World Order, focusing on questions of method and theory in international law’s historical and empirical ‘turns’. Following a summary of the book’s structure and principal arguments, I examine the implications of narrating history in epochal form, highlighting the promises and pitfalls of such ‘progressive’ accounts, and then interrogate the turn to empirical data as a way of understanding the New World Order. I argue that the ‘bird’s eye view’ (at 311) that dominates the perspectival orientation of the book’s third part performs what Donna Haraway identifies as a ‘god-trick’ of appearing to see everything from nowhere.1 I draw upon interdisciplinary insights from science and technology studies (STS) to invite reflection on what is at stake when we use ‘science’ to see the world with this kind of eye. Such ‘scientific’ ways of knowing are attempts to ‘prove’ through ‘attestive witnessing’ and claim to transcend politics, but STS scholars have long demonstrated that there is always a politics to the production of knowledge.2 In the next section, I attend to some of the more obvious gaps in their narrative, focusing on the decolonization revolution and more ‘radical’ world reordering movements and then address the endurance of justifying war through law. I close with reflections upon the following we the authors’ of and of world what a legal revolution and and by is it and we in these questions of from a that its force in in this In the book’s we that the Old World Order was the that war a of was an of (at xv). of the legal the Old World Order with the not is to be the of but also is the of war’ (at of war is with to of in an world. we that in order to the of legal for the of war the This that legal in that to for when was in war (at The also be to be through the of from another the right to its was the and engaged in the not to the legal of the a the to – that interstate by (at the of this the authors us through the Old World Order. In what is a but on of the authors’ mastery of archival is what they argue is a an from their a of the upon war be and the of when – that through (at they first war in justifies the right to war the on the that as one of (at this they that their upon in of and that of international law of (at It that war may have but that to war they that their was in some way (at the authors to a of war – that the to to war always war always the of a (at in they war to the of law and order in the Old World Order, war was law and (at in in this Old World Order it was to these – just and – and to be (at I to the implications of the sovereign right and of in the of this review in this the authors the that from this legal to focusing on the to in war that from an war (at the and legal of the of and the often of as the of In the for this they us that not to be as an – an and upon a of was not the Old World was its was an to the world for seek to of to in the book as (at then to what the of the book, the or the from Old to New World Order. its part, this is beginning with the of the to of and with the in the of in is some of the book’s an of an ‘outlawry of war’ by such familiar as following this book’s to be as James T. and Salmon of the their Old World Order Grotius, the of a of legal but they to often the of and the of to have it in legal we heroes and their not with the of the Paris Peace on a hot summer day in 1928 and the of the of war It was they in their ideas to legal – a – that they the of the Old to New World Order. This was the legal for the not to war the but to an The Pact’s a legal for the in war and a monumental of legal at its are we to see the Paris Peace Pact’s as a of with the was and its was and from a for the and in the that in in what the of the an primary be to the to of The Pact’s of the legal for at the and highly of In their the the of this New World Order (at of the Old World with the the of (at this and the and the the authors draw in of these In the Old World Order, the to use force a to as and the of in the New World Order, the on force as a the of and the illegality of in form, the of to us that this legal or to these the authors clear that it is not the legal but also legal that the In we the of the New World Order, and this third part heroes to their and upon an ‘bird’s eye view’ of and (at The authors argue that not the the was The not by is it is to a law and not with the of a law. They with (at The revolution through the of the of and empirical to the of this In this part, from the of and of this order ‘prove’ the by this ‘outlawry (at the book with the of and the of its of world It is an that the narrative of is as the of the with a of the world and not the of the and Old World Order, but This Old and New World Order is not by the of but also by and China as a to the of also a but not in the of the on the of the to to a central in the legal order in the of these the to the New World Order from to this and turn the is the world order by the to and its their to the and that (at The authors that there is a but it is the of by the 1928 and and and a (at The world order by the Paris Peace and by the they was on an understanding that be more and with one another in of their this order is it about of and (at In this world will to not as a of but also as a for (at The use of as a to the force of that the authors argue is important in the of state by The is with a two war is either legal or with the for and we have faith that the New World Order, with of its is to (at The that the authors have in their history is that and it and ideas the – as the of their – we (at in a normative for an international law in these dark of international law’s are to the They are by or upon international law’s order ‘turns’. in of it was with the of World I that the way to a law of international for contemporary World I demonstrated that the Such of the world we the of these we that the at the of an by the of to use force was is this but it be by the that law the of the international of we are a part, and on we a and international The of these is and that World I have the of that force to world order through the on the use of The book a of international law to the Paris Peace and the by the ideas and of that in the Such was not or but it are with a history, the of first in book of a history of by and heroes Such through of in the past and a is the not the of the this the of narrating is not by The it is simply the force of the Paris Peace the more of in the of the authors that the was they argue that it less of a an to the by the a more that out of the of World one that the of In the war as a of law’s The war to the it the of In it the of was and the of its This was by the movements that in the movements not to war but also the war as and The of these not be from they and to by reordering and in the of Such a the of World I implications for the way we the of more one of a a of from this book’s we are to and in the of international law’s this is by the of the it changed international law for the it the beginning of a from the Old to the New World Order, the of legal is as the Paris Peace and its in another part of this faith in is through the of the narrative of the book for the the ideas and of the Old World Order and the of that world This is a history that with the of with a is in order to legal to the use of force the book back to the of and the of ideas in of international law through at the authors the of the form, demonstrated by their use of at the close of of these parts, the part of a or It is in these two that the of their narrative and it is the of the of such the narrative the of men is by by the of and often are the of their and more of when they of what they are of is the of such for be as we that there one is but attempts to the to the have an of historical one to this book an at a history is an from the book’s the of the authors the Old World Order as legal in the and the next on the of the (at then, is the of a narrative, and this claim that the narrative its there are to the that this narrative the to a history, not the that the authors to the of ways of and understanding the including and contemporary I the to on an that in the book and that be by international the or the to the of by the of the science of the This by to the of the narrative in the of the In the book’s turn to in to the from Old to New World Order be as an to the past of history by to be in accounts, It be in in that this of a of is at the of claim of the book from this then, is that it of a to the narrative but one that with the science of the the empirical method a progressive of past Such an be to be the of past the from narrative as part of a of in historical in the and the is in an of and with the they on the of its ideas, and the this the consensus about the and of their be and international law’s of and this another for engaging in a dialogue about the is the service of the of interdisciplinary is as a disciplinary a of what the important questions are to in international law. The book’s turn to the empirical as a to us to about the implications of such a – in the upon an and the to ‘scientific’ ways of knowing the world. we are to the of science to a of Old and New World we is and to that it is it it is It through and The of STS to what – – about this of science and the through empirical the politics of the through and In a of the of the STS Donna Haraway attention to the of everything from to the of and this is as it to the of data the of and and The empirical data to the in the New World Order of the of the revolution It is such a of it is in of the of the force of and of their and in contemporary of and that and that and the of have to be by a on and as of and to the world they the of this are the of the or are by not at such data an and appearing to ways of knowing the the politics of their and such ways of knowing the world are a – a – of the to and Such ways of knowing the In the of this book, this world the revolution for its heroes to be the narrative, then, the turn to attention to the of a and their politics of when and are we that such of method by the narrative of the of this such coupled with narrative, the of they the of a of the their Haraway we from a of that not but also the and and In there a on the to see from the and the we not to such they are in they are to of the and of They are to of through and The have a to be on to the and its – – are they to more of the not simply to have or in The turn to a eye of the world its and the of knowing from a of and an a kind of history such is to and of a we to the that be and through such ways of and The book’s third part and the turn to the empirical is then, not we of the ideas, or heroes of to the of war a legal but we also this New World Order as with of its we narrated some of the ideas and of the 1928 and and – we on the authors’ faith in the New World Order of these and movements have the of the international legal and they have in sometimes that have with the revolution in legal more a in this book – the decolonization This is the narrative to a that justifies a of the and of the New World Order, is we are that of the and an impressive of (at and of great and we are with an that decolonization as of and by It is as to the World and The legal of this that a in the of international the was a of for legal in the New World Order. ideas and their a from the world of great and as scholars are was not or and the struggle the of and the of by as a force for the of of legal scholars to the struggle for decolonization and that the that the its and the of such to the authors’ is the of – as or – that the book’s and narrative of the of in the Old World Order to the the of by the World out an path for legal order that for to legal the on the use of The for great to war the an and to be the of not as an of but also as a of the force of of and to be to history by the of the with in a for the of to of the in the and of such – – not with the of the on it was the that and the for what – the that from international of and the of use of the from the of the the The to be to the international of the and World it as that the of their In was an of the of legal order and This was by the of great to with in the for and in the The right to force on the of coupled with the to of World the have the of to their in their with the world. the was not just by at of legal order and but also by the often of an that to as such a be two to be the of an international the of a of international for the and the a the for that the not of The the with the international on and have such the of the that their international with often a for the of and in the international to the this of law an of in the World – from the of the decolonization revolution the to the the of and the of law as a James that in the of war a for as they have to and to the of the of international In these then, decolonization not and its the force of legal order The of international law that in what often as an of and the of be as of the transformational politics of attempts to the New World Order from the of the The out of this is part of the narrative of the New World Order that not its heroes and villains a – in that this order also through its faith in and legal Such a narrative the of ‘Interventionists’ ‘Internationalists’ and the of that be by and another – that it was not just the of but also the that to be – was with the ‘outlawry by in this book but as and of This of a that and was at and movements that this the and of and attempts to war’ as part of the to the and from the book’s They not to the following World I but the of and and today. ideas and ways of understanding revolution and legal that the of what the authors revolution to for international of these and their to the politics that the of war the New World legal the to the of I to the authors’ that their right to we this that to the authors us to that the transformational the Old and New World Orders is by the of a war as legal and war as its the to use force is to the on not to at this that international law be that the of the be as to be in we as out in of the structure of legal we there is – the are – law it is on – to with have to and in the of and The normative force of as clear as an of the is there is always the about an The that justifies the about also justifies it by the of the that as to protect the In we that the that on this and authors the for this of the by the and the current and its law two one that is and to be to and the that is it is of a of the of this is not some or faith on the part of legal it from and to that legal will the for they The of legal will not just themselves, or but also and law this we are with a that is always also a what is not and the the prohibition, the more the the authors the to the New World Order of the up the this is as an when up to the – the their always as to use then the on war (at but also we to with this and with we are back to the of war the authors’ clear commitments to international and the of the of their us the of the authors is a when force is and is when force is is a of is its or it be to and appropriate us for the but the New World Order is by as as the the of these be the for or we that the of a of the New World Order, but a through legal and upon the but the of also be to its of the legal order or to a in such it out that a of force is to a – the of the – the the use of force to the of the state an what as in the Old World Order. It will be and its will on the politics of international law – its – in It also out that not and not have a when we the or of the not questions of the authors’ and of legal we another of the of international law and their in the authors’ that the of is the of an international legal (at and in order to the Old World Order, be on on interstate a of the the of international – of order is among sovereign as we to the of another of the Old World Order, we that not at this at the of in the – of a of law that for relations as to two the of the of a structure the sovereign and the and international law is of as a of the The is with and is of and by the law of and be to of to with The of the be and with of the through disciplinary of This of to international law in not in the that in up to the international law and the of order as one about interstate relations and the of then, us to about the of was and and to be and sometimes or through of war or In with on the of international law is to be to the of – that what is for of to history from the of the to international law and are to the to the of with the and of such in us to the authors’ part of the book about the disciplinary force of the of and the of the world order of the and of the Old World Order that with the New World Order. is in this it an not as a of but also as a for (at the authors are clear international law is a one and the and the two legal for (at The of the New World Order be through from legal The in as its are not and it is from from the of sovereign order that the international legal Such not require the disciplinary of war for as of disciplinary are to world of – not war but not but on prohibition, it war the of legal order and it the of through a and of the of and is not just up by villains Schmitt, but it also in the that the book’s narrative to for dark to be obvious by The is a of we to we are and we to It important questions of theory and method in the historical and empirical that their sometimes in It also reflection on the of and on the politics of normative in a in the of law and as the of its the book a for this of for the we to and the ways we the through law. This narrative is an of heroes and villains cast in a struggle for the of the international legal order and its In this epic it is and a that us a it is empirical and This also a claim to and the progressive of and in that the of method is always we one historical for the of law and legal we one path to the and we one for understanding the about war we are from or that on another be the The of an the or of some ideas The is not a that is to and we not have to turn in to the politics and of method for the with legal for in legal by not simply the of order among but also the of that international law and The authors that world from (at but they that it is what and what on international law’s This with its of of the of the of and the of The ideas may be but the – to – its and a close to the politics of by some of the villains of the Old World Order. the of not for the by such of a of The is and its is the force of This also be of the authors’ of the politics of the The authors see the by the the but this is the of the by – or – by and the of the or the use of force the of the The in the right to and the of their and a on state the of a to the be as a of war and long as be by This about the force of the to of an of the authors’ vision. that they as a to international relations that (at in and it and ideas we (at In we also that that law and law ideas and that in of is at then, is not just the of the commitments of the New World Order, as the authors at stake is the to law to transformational we this – of or law – to see the struggle not the of and on their – when and This we are not or the that this book that we are to for the ways we to see the world and the we in of the we this us back to Haraway and for an of in the world through is always a of the to see and of the in

Konstantin Sonin, Centre for Economic Policy Research (United Kingdom)

In a federal state, political leaders of constituent units might protect their enterprises from the federal center (e.g., allowing them not to pay federal taxes). The effectiveness of such protection depends crucially on the ability of local authorities to extract rents from enterprises. They can easily do so, if there are a small number of enterprises with large employment, and local monopolies can be effectively sustained. They cannot do it so easily if regional industry is competitive, political opposition is strong, and the federal center has enough means to enforce payment of taxes. We build a simple model to argue that it is the industrial structure of constituent units that determines political relations between them and the federal centre. The theory is supported by the recent experience of Russia, China, and Argentina.

B. Balamurugan, T. Poongodi, M. R. Manu, S. Karthikeyan · 5 authors

The moving image archive of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) includes a copy of the film The Double Day (1975), cataloged in the series Moving Images Relating to International Development Programs and Activities, 1979–1991, a collection of more than eight hundred titles “created to provide information on assistance programs supported by the Agency for International Development (AID).”1 Yet, The Double Day does not, in fact, directly depict or engage with any specific development or aid initiative. Instead, the film—directed by US-based Brazilian filmmaker Helena Solberg as part of the International Women’s Film Project collective and described as “the first Latin American feminist documentary”—examines the gendered dynamics of paid and unpaid labor through the testimonies of women from Argentina, Bolivia, Venezuela, and Mexico.2 Its presence in the USAID archive is likely a consequence of its funding history, having received support from the Inter-American Foundation, a USAID-affiliated entity; the development agencies of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden; the United Nations Development Program; and US philanthropist Calvin Cafritz.3These transnational funding structures not only enabled the film’s production but also determined its archival destination, which renders legible its place within the history of international development.4 The Double Day’s institutional trajectory reflects the shifting configurations of aid, gender, and media during a historic moment when women were being repositioned at the center of what Arturo Escobar has described as development’s “regimes of visuality.”5 Especially relevant to The Double Day’s production and exhibition was the international institutional framework of Women in Development (WID). Emerging in the early 1970s and culminating in United Nations’ proclamation of 1975 as International Women’s Year, WID emphasized women’s participation in the global economy as both an index and mechanism of development. Indeed, The Double Day premiered at the World Conference of the International Women’s Year, held in Mexico City.6 Within this context, the film forms part of a broader trajectory of media use by international organizations that intensified during the 1970s—as best exemplified by Media Habitat, a collection of 236 documentary films commissioned by the United Nations to represent urban and rural development initiatives for the 1976 Habitat Conference on Human Settlements in Vancouver. As a policy-shaping initiative, Media Habitat primarily featured films from the Global South intended not only to illustrate but also to help codify standardized audiovisual markers of “underdevelopment” that determined access to the emerging global economic order and to international aid.7Framed in relation to these international institutions and their operations, The Double Day could similarly be considered “development media”—exemplifying the type of nonfiction media produced and distributed outside of the commercial film circuits whose aspects and subcategories have been variously described in scholarship as nontheatrical, useful, sponsored, institutional, industrial, educational, or nonprofessional/amateur.8 Scholars working in this area have emphasized the institutional contexts of such media’s production and exhibition infrastructures as shaping its instrumentalized effects. From a feminist perspective, such an approach is crucial to grappling with the broader question of how “gender impacts [these works’] shape, content, and trajectories.”9 Yet we also argue that, taken in isolation, the institutional and infrastructural contexts are insufficient to account for the complex relationship between media and development, potentially not only limiting our understanding of the reach and impact of development but also distorting our interpretive conclusions. For example, to categorize The Double Day as “development media” is to overlook the film’s place within Solberg’s directorial oeuvre, as well as within the histories of both transnational women’s filmmaking and radical Latin American documentary cinema to which it simultaneously belongs. Such exclusive framing is especially limiting given that women globally were disproportionately engaged in nonfiction production throughout the twentieth century—sometimes by political choice but more often due to structural exclusions from fiction filmmaking. Even in nonfiction historiography, however, institutional media has remained particularly marginal, reinforcing hierarchies that separate such works from the aesthetic and authorial frameworks through which film history has been constructed.10 This marginalization not only tends to erase women’s contributions but also presumes a “weak” or derivative authorship, rendering these films unworthy of the interpretive attention needed to apprehend their aesthetic and political complexity.11 The same dynamic is likely to structure assumptions about “development media” as well.Categorizing The Double Day exclusively within this category would further prompt us to assume top-down institutional analyses that have been characteristic of both institutional media methodologies and the scholarship on development at large. This, in turn, would risk obscuring this film’s radical Marxist approach to women’s labor as well as its concrete contribution to activism and its attendant grassroot structures. In Mexico City, The Double Day became a catalyst for feminist solidarity in practice when one of the film’s protagonists, Bolivian activist and trade unionist Domitila Barrios de Chungara, was invited to participate in the Tribune of Non-Governmental Organizations held alongside the official UN conference.12 There, Barrios de Chungara challenged Western feminist priorities by reframing the debate around labor, class, and imperialism, helping to articulate a shared Third World feminist agenda that significantly departed from the developmentalist vision of the United Nations and USAID.13 Seen through the lens of activist media, The Double Day helped forge transnational solidarity networks by enabling information exchange across the diverse voices that shaped its making—from the women featured in the film to the activists who circulated it—revealing a considerably more dynamic interplay between institutional and grassroots or contingent media practices.Moreover, the film’s Latin American context—reflected in Solberg’s formation in Brazil as the only woman in Cinema Novo, its focus on women from across the region, and its premiere and key reception in Mexico City—requires grappling with the regional specificities of the very notion of development in its multiple iterations.14 Far from being an epistemological and political framework imposed solely by the Global North, both the practices of development and the theoretical foundations of developmentalism (understood as a broad and polysemic set of discourses) were shaped through the active participation of Latin American economists.15 Within this iteration, underdevelopment, as a constitutive notion of developmentalism, became central to a distinctly critical strand, which by the late 1960s became known as the dependency theory.16 This same approach is reflected in some of the best-known Latin American radical film manifestos of the time, arising precisely from the same milieus to which Solberg belonged.17These various considerations of the film’s history illustrate the methodological challenges confronting feminist scholars seeking to assess the impact of development on media projects, theories, and practices. To disregard the developmentalist context of such works by emphasizing their political aesthetics and affects risks reproducing a romanticized narrative of heroic resistance (albeit from a feminist perspective). Yet to engage exclusively with their institutional and material infrastructures risks naturalizing developmentalism’s political and epistemological foundations at the expense of the goals and beliefs of the many women who participated in these projects. The contradictions and ambivalences that animate such histories call for feminist frameworks capable of holding both institutional complicity and radical possibility in view.This challenge resonates with ongoing debates about the politics of the archive and what Allyson Field has termed “the practice of informed speculation.”18 As she reminds us, feminist, queer, and decolonial methodologies have long taught us to “press at the limits” of the archive to “inoculate our scholarship against our evidence’s afflictions.”19 The concern that the evidence we draw on in our analysis reproduces the very structures and blind spots of the dominant ideology and therefore shapes and delimits our interpretation becomes particularly urgent when engaging the developmentalist media corpus. Informed speculation offers an alternative by inviting the experimental, creative, and speculative rewriting of history, mobilizing the archive “in a project that runs counter to the original purpose, or the imperative to preserve, or the conditions that led to erasure.”20 Yet, as Field cautions, such speculative gestures must remain grounded in a deep and “intimate familiarity with the archive” that we are working with and against. Building on this imperative, we suggest that the developmentalist archive, in particular, demands expansion and critical reconsideration in ways that unsettle the very disciplinary frameworks through which it has been studied as well as the larger institutional contexts for such knowledge production.Our focus on The Double Day in the opening of this introduction thus foregrounds the entanglements of institutional and grassroots forces, local and international contexts, structural and interpersonal relations, and creative and economic factors that have shaped not only this film but the broader ecosystem of development media projects—and their preservation—over time. Addressing such a constellation involves transgressing methodologically entrenched divisions between political economy and aesthetics, between material infrastructures and affective regimes; reckoning with divergent periodizations across film history and world economics; and situating these within the local specificities of women’s movements and international institutional programs. It also demands attentiveness to the coexistence of multiple, and sometimes competing, understandings of development—each historically, geographically, and ideologically situated.We imagine this special issue as an opening toward a critical dialogue, not only about how such an approach might be enacted in practice but also about the far-reaching ways development paradigms have shaped both our objects of study and the contours of the field itself. The decision to center institutionally sponsored films across all the essays in this issue is deliberate and enables us to highlight institutional critique as a vital methodological imperative within our analytical framework. Created within the frameworks of international organizations, state agencies, or NGOs, these films’ histories make legible the institutional logics that underwrite their production. Yet our critique does not stop at these specific entities. Rather, we argue for a broader interrogation of the political conditions and institutional infrastructures that shape media and knowledge production more generally. This includes contemporary corporations embedded in the digital platform economy, from streaming services to the rapid expansion of AI. Equally critical is a reflexive examination of academia itself, where departments of economics, political science, and centers for development have played a formative role in producing and legitimizing developmentalist theories and policy frameworks. While the humanities and arts have at times offered critical alternatives, they have also frequently mirrored and reinforced many of the same developmentalist assumptions. A feminist analysis of the nexus between development and media must therefore unsettle not only dominant archives but also the institutional and disciplinary foundations of our own scholarly practices.As scholars, we share the complex position of navigating the same tensions between institutional complicity and emancipatory aspiration as many of the media-makers whose work we study. Mirroring our subjects is also the transnational, collective mode of this special issue’s own production as it emerges from an ongoing informal working group we have sustained over several years. While relying on institutional and disciplinary affordances—such as university funding for conferences or access to academic publishing platforms—we have been working toward creating a community that exceeds, and often resists, the prevailing logics of our academic institutions. Our aim has been to create a space for shared inquiry and mutual support that pushes back against disciplinary siloing and technocratic neoliberal assessment modes of both labor and knowledge production—and this certainly extends to our experience collaborating with the journal editors throughout the publication process. Our goal has been to examine both the persistence and variability of developmentalism, understood as what Gustavo Esteva calls a “powerful but fragile semantic constellation,” as a conceptual formation that has historically inspired, legitimized, and mobilized media projects across Asia, Africa, and Latin America.21 And gendered biopolitics, from population control to gender mainstreaming, have remained integral to development policies and media practices, recurring across formats from institutional newsreels to film festivals.We share the conviction that, far beyond the history of nonfiction institutional media, development (as both a broad ideological project and a network of material and institutional practices) and developmentalism (as a set of discourses and theoretical models associated with development) have exerted a far-reaching influence on film and media cultures at large. As such, they must be treated as a major force in shaping global film and media systems and also the many ongoing assumptions behind their critical discourses. The discipline of communication studies was founded on modernization theory governed by Cold War goals of dissemination of Western liberal democracy around the world, while “an area studies framework allowed compartmentalizing Western and non-Western outcomes of technologies that were always claimed to be universal.”22 Despite critique from postcolonial and critical race studies, many of these frameworks have remained foundational for media theory.23 In historical scholarship, as we increasingly move beyond “modernity” as a dominant conceptual anchor, engaging with practices and discourses of development opens more precise analytical pathways. These film and media’s entanglements with the logics of and economic and the associated with as well as their conceptual underdevelopment, and impact in as diverse as and of media aesthetic and paradigms in film and film and funding are developmentalist assumptions to the they to underwrite the narrative and logics of and global media from the structure of the film to the cultures of argue that a examination of the historical entanglements between film and developmentalist aesthetics, modes of as well as infrastructures and critical the and that our contemporary media is a of the historical contours of development as a field of inquiry embedded within a of some of the methodologies by the featured in this special a of this complex history, to the larger at in media, development, and gender all its development a it as an of be with practices as divergent as and in In as we work on this the of the of the USAID the ideological that have the history of international the and of this on the global its a from development as a global practice and as an institutional and which over the has as a with its own media Yet or does not erase the historical impact of these the contradictions they have reflected and over the as the of development several crucial to the economic theories of development initiatives to and through the of the development an international policy framework at from the Global to the of the Global the by the political role of and the of the International the on was challenged by dependency theory and at development as global structural the neoliberal of the the Programs by the and World imposed and as conditions for and forms of assistance became known as the major markers for international development development has moving beyond economic to such as the Human Development and the Development and from international organizations such as the United Nations to a broader network of These frameworks increasingly of and liberal of and with what in many ways to various while the of the to development’s epistemological more scholarship has toward a of its and material the field has to a of and critical by and scholars, which development as a dynamic of conceptual and political to these the studies in this special issue call for sustained analysis in place of In we draw from a of and that in of of gender and to this special issue engage that and from Mexico to contemporary specific local historical of global distinctly feminist methodologies as well as attention to studies that this issue a in the global history of development on and documentary work in Mexico how early women infrastructures as of while US films an early of state and transnational on a outside the Global as the of developmentalist both the and markers of development media, its to the and Latin central grounded in archival also women’s in transnational and the methodological of archives on study of the series to a a digital media not by but by women not as but as subjects and within circuits of neoliberal and the aesthetics and of how development’s has models of to contemporary neoliberal paradigms of and analysis how digital and gender and practices, discourses on and their of these essays the of some of the historical of developmentalist as the question of the role of the state within such on a notion of economic as a and the dominant of development that the state as the for and through infrastructural projects. This understanding of development was shared across both of the as well as in the Third The United and the increasingly mobilized international in the of the modes of international at the postcolonial of policy and ideological These programs were at the expansion of their and of while with the and decolonial of The conceptual between modernization and development that the Cold in of and hierarchies of that long and As an of postcolonial their role as of international aid concern about the of Western development projects. In alternative across the Global South that to structural between and through policies of and In many they were further the global structures. In Latin for example, this approach was through organizations such as the United Nations for Latin and the both developmentalist projects and their have taken many forms historically, and they have and they have been to a of projects, and postcolonial and development has been and in ways and with frequently political While many of these alternative frameworks the embedded in dominant Western they often technocratic and assumptions. gender and gender as for the of to be shaped by This becomes particularly in the media that of development where women frequently a crucial associated with and women were as both the subjects and of their participation in the and labor often as the index of In this study of from the 1970s how women were as of this as these about women’s urban and recurring and of a within the own of and critique that official examination of archives and enables a feminist interrogation of their mobilizing a of the in the of contribution to this issue similarly the of a dynamic within as well as across ideological the of women’s and the media of the and as active in labor and as integral to the technocratic women became of as their labor remained a of and analysis and archival with attention to the specific of and It also transnational that as a and affective a nexus of and practices through which gender, media, and developmentalism one film not as a but as part of the of alongside and work a broader concern of this special media as a of developmentalist projects. The debates the World and which international such as the United Nations and a critical historical for such primarily by postcolonial and of the for the of media and communication infrastructures in as to counter Western The a between and economic how systems of media and reinforced global hierarchies of and in an agenda that supported and alternative media infrastructures across postcolonial contexts, the framework gender as an analytical This “gender in the 1970s by of the Women in Development in relation to The Double its political critique of with its broader to center women in development policy through and This was also in of media, which was shaped by its international reach and audiovisual production and and and Yet, as WID institutional it also to the and of the women’s development programs often by in These were by a of studies, and on and the to of women’s presence and through the of their economic and In this on the filmmaker this history directly by the and of for women by the WID framework during the with and agencies the of and against Women in at the of the neoliberal turn, when institutional media often the only to access and support to projects. The an by this dynamic as of the from the Global South are to engage with the developmentalist assumptions funding models that their similarly the as a in developmentalist media history by the of and centers on the Film a between of and the attention toward the and labor by and work was foundational the of and the of audiovisual aid, as both a of development projects and a critical for their the in this issue argue for a with media, gender, and developmentalism as an field of that is and shaped by feminist and methodologies and that challenge the entanglements between academic knowledge production and and technocratic development And while methodological these dynamics at the structural the of feminist in media and cinema by this the very a