Blockchain Papers

Michael Schillig

Abstract Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) can replicate certain features of the modern business corporation—notably a crypto-asset “capital lock-in” and participatory governance based on token-holder “democracy.” The history of corporations can be traced back to Roman law and beyond. However, with increasing industrialization, the nineteenth century was to become the century of free and general incorporation, leaving behind the restrictive charter system. Rampant abuse and speculation as well as widespread fraud and corruption at the beginning did not prevent limited liability corporations from being hailed as “the greatest single discovery of modern times” only a generation later. This chapter seeks to ascertain whether and to what extent the history of corporate law can provide valuable lessons for the design and implementation of adequate legal frameworks for capturing the DAO phenomenon. It argues for an incremental approach that gradually seeks to accommodate the concept of DAOs within existing legal frameworks. This will more readily allow for fostering innovation whilst curbing the propensity for abuse.

Nina Reiser

Abstract The assignment of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) to concrete legal company forms causes enormous difficulties around the world. That is why some states have recently taken corresponding legislative initiatives. Although existing, nonspecific legal forms of certain jurisdictions, such as the Cayman Islands’ foundation company, Guernsey’s Special Purpose Trust, or Switzerland’s association are commonly used by DAOs, they are not completely tailored to the features and needs of DAOs and their future development, providing the necessary legal certainty for DAOs and their participants. The DAO Model Law created a well-founded basis for the legal structure of DAO companies based on functional and legal equivalence. Depending on the peculiarities of the respective jurisdiction, selective adjustments and/or the implementation of specific company forms for DAOs are conceivable and necessary. Consequently, there is a need for further research in this area.

Barış Cantürk

Abstract The socio-economic developments and the volume of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (“DAO”) are increasing day by day. However, debates in the field of law regarding the DAOs are still vigorous. One of the most crucial issues pertaining to DAOs is liability, which is related to their legal nature. Hence, this work first briefly reveals the current liability regime of DAOs within the context of the current landscape of German and Turkish Company Law. Particularly ordinary partnerships, joint-stock companies and limited companies will be examined. Then, the new liability regime for DAOs will be proposed, as a part of the recommendation of a “New Code”. Finally, this work will be concluded with the outcomes and recommendations.

Catherine Martin Christopher

This article analyzes emerging U.S. litigation that attempts to bring decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) into traditional court systems by grappling with questions of legal personhood and procedural norms. The author examines how courts and litigants have confronted the fundamental issue of whether a DAO can be recognized as a sui generis legal entity capable of being sued or must instead be treated as an unincorporated association or other traditional form. The piece highlights the procedural complexities of serving process on DAOs that lack centralized leadership, identifiable agents, and conventional corporate infrastructure. The author situates these procedural and doctrinal challenges within broader debates about how existing legal frameworks adapt (or fail to adapt) to decentralized digital organizations. Ultimately, the article assesses how recent cases reveal both the flexibility and limits of current law in accommodating novel organizational forms, with implications for future DAO litigation and governance.

I.M. Sopilko

Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), novel organizational structures governed by smart contracts on a blockchain, present a profound challenge to established legal paradigms. Designed to be borderless, transparent, and autonomous, DAOs operate in inherent conflict with a global legal system predicated on territorial jurisdiction and centralized authority. This article provides an exhaustive analysis of the treatment of DAOs under private international law (PIL). It begins by examining the fundamental crisis of legal categorization, where „unwrapped” DAOs face a default classification as general partnerships, imposing unlimited personal liability on their members—a risk starkly illustrated by landmark litigation such as CFTC v. Ooki DAO. The analysis then delves into the core tenets of PIL, demonstrating the inadequacy of traditional connecting factors for determining jurisdiction and applicable law in a decentralized context and exploring the formidable challenges of enforcing judgments against on-chain assets. Through a comprehensive comparative analysis of emerging regulatory frameworks in the United States (Wyoming), the European Union (MiCA), Switzerland (DLT Act), Liechtenstein (Blockchain Act), and the United Kingdom (Law Commission proposals), this article maps the fragmented global response. It argues that the adoption of „legal wrappers” is not merely a corporate structuring choice but a strategic PIL maneuver to preempt legal uncertainty. The article concludes that the legal landscape is evolving from a simple question of „what is a DAO?” to a complex, second-generation PIL problem of „which DAO law applies?” It posits that the future lies not in the triumph of code over law, but in a hybrid synthesis, and calls for international cooperation to develop coherent principles that can guide the integration of these transformative entities into the global legal order.

Chang-hsien Tsai, Ching-Fu Lin

Over the last few decades, advances in transportation and production technology, in conjunction with economic globalization and the emergence of multinational corporations, have consolidated fragmented production processes into long and complex supply chains across jurisdictions. While there are benefits to such global supply chains (“GSCs”), the prevalence of human rights violations attributable to information asymmetry, as well as rule of law gaps between different jurisdictions, has been a constant challenge. Modern slavery, child abuse, harsh working conditions, low wages, and other problems have reoccurred in the factories of upstream suppliers in the global South and have been systemically ignored by buyers in the global North. As such, how to alleviate human rights abuses along GSCs is indeed a daunting problem. Today, various public, private, and hybrid approaches have been designed and implemented at different levels by different actors to address GSC human rights challenges, such as the United Nations’ Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (“UNGPs”), the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (“OECD”) Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, the United Kingdom’s Modern Slavery Act, the United States’ Dodd-Frank Act, the Responsible Business Alliance Codes of Conduct, and the Social Accountability 8000 International Standard. However, these public, private, and hybrid governance mechanisms have grown more ineffective and inefficient due to—again—information asymmetry, and rule of law gaps. A stronger approach that is premised upon transparency and traceability in the GSC is urgently needed. To fill these gaps, the recent emergence of distributed ledger technologies (commonly referred to as blockchain) may offer a promising disintermediation step toward a “technological fix” to GSCs’ human rights challenges. To assess such a possibility from both a theoretical and a practical perspective, we first examine in Section II the characteristics, benefits, and cross-border spillover effects of GSCs, as well as human rights violations by multinational corporations and their power and responsibilities. Section III illuminates the ineffectiveness of existing governance models and regulatory measures, at both the international and national levels, and identifies information asymmetry and rule of law gaps as fundamental flaws. This finding leads us to examine the extent to which blockchain can serve as a governance tool along GSCs. Section IV discusses how the key features of blockchain—transparency, traceability, data consistency and security, authenticity, and completeness—can alleviate problems of information asymmetry, rule of law gaps, and corporate compliance along GSCs, further helping to ameliorate transnational human rights issues. Nevertheless, while “blockchainizing” GSCs seems to have the potential to overcome challenges of public and private governance, some normative and technical limits and risks remain to be addressed, such as adequate infrastructural support, scalability, cybersecurity, and the “garbage in, garbage out” conundrum.

Eddy Wymeersch

No abstract is available for this record.

Sandeep Thomas Chandy, Prakhar Bhardwaj

Abstract Taking Venezuela’s complaint against the United States at the World Trade Organisation (“WTO”) as the inflection point, this Article will explore whether a characterisation of cryptocurrencies as a ‘currency’ (similar to a fiat currency) would ensure that cryptocurrencies are not covered by WTO disciplines on goods and services. Despite customary international law principles such as ius cudendae monetae and the persuasive argument that a ‘currency’ is neither a good or service – the Article answers this question in the negative. It will divide issues that can arise during such a WTO dispute into three categories: threshold, substantive and compliance issues. Threshold issues would involve interpretative challenges to determine whether the General Agreement on Trade in Services (“GATS”) and General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (“GATT”) regulate cryptocurrencies. Since the GATS Schedule of Commitments has historically been interpreted in a technologically neutral manner, identifying cryptocurrencies as a ‘service’ may not prove to be insurmountable. However, the claim that cryptocurrencies are barter goods that will be subject to disciplines of the GATT deserves critical scrutiny – more so because the GATT regulates tangible products and contains specific provisions relating to balance-of-payments. The Article also undertakes a theoretical analysis of the heterodoxical nature of the cryptocurrency to evaluate whether it can be classified as a ‘security’ within the meaning of the GATS’ Annex on Financial Services. These threshold issues are, however, the tip of the iceberg. Once a WTO Panel commences its analysis, the substantive issues for consideration would involve determining whether a unique product such as cryptocurrencies has a ‘like product’ in the respondent Member’s market. Further, the Panel’s analysis would involve a consideration relating to ‘general exceptions’ under Article XIV, GATS or Article XX, GATT which would entail an examination of whether the measure was necessary to achieve, amongst other regulatory objectives, either compliance with domestic regulations or the maintenance of public order. If the measure adversely impacting cryptocurrencies is determined to be WTO-inconsistent, issues of compliance and suspension of concessions are imminent. WTO Panels have historically estimated the . quantum of suspensions of concessions by determining the trade volumes affected by the WTO-inconsistent measure and factoring it for a future time period. The decentralised nature of the distributed ledger technology underlying cryptocurrencies complicates any country-specific quantification of the impact on trade volumes of cryptocurrencies affected by the WTO inconsistent measure. Accordingly, determining suspensions of concessions in relation to cryptocurrencies would require significant judicial innovation by the arbitrator. Adjudicating Cryptocurrencies at the WTO: Potential Threshold and Substantive Issues.

OECD

The digital economy has had a profound impact on society, including the global business landscape and market dynamics. New phenomena such as online platforms, social media, distributed ledger technology (such as blockchain), big data and online service providers affect business models and our understanding of what a “business” is. The links between digitalisation and Responsible Business conduct (RBC) are manifold. New digital tools can help firms accelerate their contribution to sustainable development, and enable businesses to strengthen their efforts to meet standards of RBC. At the same time, digitalisation can also cause business to violate human rights, or contribute to social and environmental harms in new ways. This paper discusses the links between RBC and digitalisation. It aslo summarises the key issues and findings emerging from the stocktaking and analysis of current initiatives.

Gregory Shaffer, Henry Gao

<table><tr>\n <td><p>China\n is incrementally developing a new, decentralized model of trade governance\n through a web of finance, trade, and investment initiatives involving\n memorandum of understanding, contracts, and trade and investment treaties,\n supported by an indigenous innovation policy that is transnational in its\n reach. In this way, China could create a vast, Sino-centric, legal order in\n which the Chinese state plays the nodal role. It is a hub and spokes model,\n with China at the hub. In this article, we first examine China’s export of an\n infrastructure-based development model, implemented through Chinese\n state-owned and private enterprise investments and commercial contracts (Part\n B), before turning to China’s development of a complementary web of free trade\n and investment agreements (Part C), and an indigenous innovation policy (Part\n D). The paper theorizes and empirically traces how these Chinese initiatives\n shape the evolving ecology of the transnational legal order for trade.<br></p></td></tr></table>

Jonathan C. Lipson, Steven O. Weise

In honor of the seventy-fifth anniversary of The Business Lawyer (TBL), we reviewed the roughly 400 papers published in TBL on secured transactions since inception, in 1946. We find that, while TBL has always provided excellent coverage of secured credit, earlier works were more likely to focus on questions of policy than those published more recently, which tend to be more technical. This is curious, both because secured transactions have been the subject of sometimes ferocious academic debates in other journals about their distributive effects, and because TBL often includes policy-oriented scholarship in other business-law fields (e.g., corporate governance). We argue that TBL should actively seek papers on secured credit policy, in part because technologies like distributed ledgers may threaten to render all secured transactions . .. academic.

Christopher M. Bruner

Review of Traceable Shares and Corporate Law, 113 Nw. U. L. Rev. __ by George S. Geis (forthcoming 2018)

Carla Reyes, Nizan Geslevich Packin

No abstract is available for this record.

Gefion Schuler

Botnia S.A./Metsä-Botnia Oy's construction of the Orion pulp mill in Uruguay raised concerns regarding violations of national, regional, and international law with regard to social and environmental protection. On 18 April 2006, the Center for Human Rights and Environment (CEDHA), an Argentinean non-governmental organisation, submitted to Finland's National Contact Point (NCP) a “specific instance” regarding the possible non-compliance of Botnia S.A. (a Finnish enterprise) with the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises (OECD Guidelines for MNEs, Guidelines) when building the envisaged pulp mill in Uruguay. According to the Center for Human Rights and Environment, Botnia S.A. violated the OECD Guidelines for MNEs especially with respect to Chapter II “General Policies”, Chapter III “Disclosure”, Chapter V “Environment” and Chapter VI “Bribery”. Specific instances concerned with related issues were filed by the Center for Human Rights and Environment with the Swedish and Norwegian NCPs against Nordea, a leading financial services group of the Nordic and Baltic Sea area, for possible financing of Botnia S.A.'s pulp mill project and against the Finnish state bank Finnvera for providing export guarantees to Botnia S.A. Other fora that have in the meantime become involved in the issue are the International Court of Justice and member institutions of the World Bank Group, the International Finance Corporation and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency.

Authors unavailable

1 Arbitration — Applicable law — Relation between concession contract, bilateral investment treaty and ICSID Convention — Dispute with provincial authorities relating to interpretation and application of contract to be submitted to administrative courts Economics, trade and finance — Bilateral investment treaty — Argentina-France bilateral investment treaty, Article 8(2) — “Fork in the road” provision — Relevance to Tribunal’s jurisdiction over treaty claim — Relevance to merits of claim Arbitration — Jurisdiction — Jurisdiction issue joined to merits — Failure to designate or consent to application of ICSID Convention to province under Article 25(1) and (3) does not deprive Tribunal of jurisdiction — Local forum clause in concession contract does not divest Tribunal of jurisdiction for claims against State State responsibility — Imputability — Attribution of responsibility for actions of political subdivisions — Responsibility not limited by federal or decentralized character of State — No factual basis for attribution — State’s obligation under bilateral investment treaty to pursue in good faith and with reasonable efforts the resolution of the dispute — State’s constructive role in renegotiation process Relationship of international law and municipal law — Impossibility of separating claims for breaches of contract from bilateral investment treaty violation without prior resort to administrative courts — Claimant required under contract to assert its rights in proceedings before administrative courts prior to invoking ICSID procedure — Claimant not precluded from asserting its rights in administrative courts — No evidence that courts lacked independence or fairness or would have denied claimant’s rights procedurally or substantively — No principle of exhaustion of remedies Claims — Exhaustion of local remedies — Requirement incompatible with Article 8 of bilateral investment treaty and Article 26 of ICSID Convention — Resort to administrative courts required under contract for purposes of interpretation and application

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