Development as life-making

• Explores debates on Global and International Development from the viewpoint of feminist political economy. • Reveals the limits of productivist readings of Development and political economy. • Redefines Development as ‘life-making’ drawing from plural strands of social reproduction feminism. • Rethinks Global Development as a primarily reproductive process. • Reset International Development priorities towards reproductive labour, life-sustaining sectors, surplus populations. Building on critiques of Development as both immanent and intentional process, this contribution advances a vision of Development as life-making , grounded in a global feminist political economy approach centred on the concept of social reproduction. Moving beyond the methodological nationalism of many productivist paradigms, it redirects Development toward the regeneration of social, economic, and ecological conditions that sustain life; the dismantling of intersectional and existential inequalities; and the pursuit of social and economic justice. This new vision and definition restructure Development priorities along three axes: reproductive labour, life-sustaining sectors, and surplus populations. This reframing brings theoretical, political, and policy agendas into alignment with a project of planetary social justice, drawing on the diverse legacy of social reproduction feminism.