The globalisation process coupled with the changes brought about by human activity affecting the balance between people and their environments have dramatically transformed contemporary societies in both the Global North and South. These processes have triggered multiple social changes, with social, identity and territorial reconstruction, greater mobility and movement of people, goods and ideas, increased inequalities, new forms of exclusion and social achievement, and new forms of violence and conflicts. This social restructuring in turn influences the stability of societies and the sustainability of systems, as well as the safety and well-being of populations. It also reveals different vulnerabilities and varying capacities for resilience.
Understanding contemporary societies in the Global South while analysing the dynamics, transformations, adaptations and resistances that underlie and drive them is a major area of research for IRD.

The ‘Societies and Globalisation’ department brings together the majority of IRD’s social science researchers. Anthropology, economics, geography, demography and sociology are the main disciplines represented. The department also includes archaeologists, historians, legal experts, urban planners, political scientists and linguists, as well as several environment and life science researchers (agronomy, ecology, pedology, hydrology, health, remote sensing, modelling and geomatics). 

IRD thus conducts multidisciplinary research in eight main subject areas:

• governance, relationships with power and institutions;
• inequalities, vulnerability and adaptability;
• gender relations;
• interactions between nature and societies;
• affiliations, resources and territories:
• migrations, mobility, movement and social reconstruction;
• education and knowledge;
• urbanisation, cities in the Global South and development.