Public Lecture by Tania Murray Li 
Date: 21 MAY 2025 16:00–17:30
Venue: The assembly hall, SLU, Ultuna Campus 

Title: Development-imposed harms, differentiated citizenship, and access to redress: Towards a comparative account

Abstract: In the Global South, development programs are usually presented as interventions that improve peoples’ lives, notably by providing infrastructure and generating jobs. Yet all too often such programs also cause harm to particular social groups who may be displaced from their land, robbed of water and other resources, or affected by pollution. While the harms are consistent, people in different corners of the Global South have different approaches to seeking redress, and radically different capacities to achieve any sort of justice. In many contexts, distinctions established in the colonial era continue to expose nominally-equal citizens to uncompensated harms. Drawing on collaborative research with colleagues at UMR-SENS, this talk sets out a framework for examining these differences. Why are recourse to law and the courts, or mass mobilizations, or media campaigns so prominent in some countries and virtually absent in others?