The Flawed Economics of Resettlement and its Impoverishing Effects: What Can Social Scientists Do?

CHAIR: CERNEA, Michael M. (George Washington U)
ORGANIZED BY: the International Network on Displacement and Resettlement (INDR)

ABSTRACT: Development anthropologists and sociologists have made the strongest contribution to analyzing and understanding not only the social and cultural traumas caused
by forced-displacement, but also to identifying the mechanisms of sheer economic impoverishment, decapitalization and destitution of most people caught in the jaws of
displacement. Economists have been by and large noticeably silent. Compensation for lost assets remains even today the single instrument employed to re-establish those
displaced, and this instrument is being proven as insufficient and subject to distortions. The session aims to discuss research contributions towards analyzing the insufficiently
studied economics of displacement, to examine critically the economic theory of resettlement, the contradiction between economics and ethics in displacement and to identify
not only proper recommendations, but also areas of further research for anthropologists, economists and other social scientists.

Session Participants:
CERNEA, Michael (World Bank)
DEAR, Chad (U Montana)
OLIVER-SMITH, Anthony (United Nations U Inst for Env & Human Security)
KOBUS, Elizabeth M. (S. Methodist U)
TURTON, David (U Oxford)
DISCUSSANT: DOWNING, Theodore (U Arizona)

Session took place in Memphis, TN at the 68th Annual Meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology in March 2008.