Description:

Speaker

Alden Young, Dexel University

Title

Transforming Sudan: The Economizing Logic of Decolonization

Abstract

At the heart of Transforming Sudan: Decolonization, Economic Development and State Formation (Cambridge University Press, 2017) is the concept of an “economizing logic.” Professor Young develops the concept of an “economizing logic” in order to explain how Sudanese policymakers even working with the best of intentions and using state of the art decision-making frameworks could develop and enact development plans and budgets that upheld racial and regional inequalities. Without relying on narratives about corruption or ethnic and religious chauvinism, he uses the case of Sudan to emonstrate how mid-twentieth century concepts of development and international relations made it inevitable that Sudanese policymakers and many of their global contemporaries would emphasize catching up more than equality. His research is based on extensive archival work in the National Records Office of Sudan, British and American archives as well as international financial institutions, such as the World Bank.

Biography

Alden Young is a political and economic historian of Africa. He is particularly interested in the ways in which Africans participated in the creation of the current international order. Since 2014, he has been an assistant professor in African History and the Director of the Africana Studies Program at Drexel University. He received his PhD in 2013 from Princeton University. He then served for two years as a Dean’s Mellon Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow in the Department of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.