Development Studies cannot become an apology for the status quo

By Alfredo Saad-Filho

Development Studies must always be critical, or it becomes just an apology for the status quo, for exploitation, for the reproduction of inequality within and between nations, and for the destruction of the conditions of life on Earth.

We live in times of converging crises, across the economy, democracy, health, the environment and more, with sprawling implications for ways of living around the globe. These crises and their mutual relationships offer the opportunity for new understandings of the problems of development and possible ways forward, which will inevitably be contested. These debates can be examined historically, focusing on the implications for our discipline.

Continue reading “Development Studies cannot become an apology for the status quo”

How ethical can research relationships be in Development Studies?

By Isis Barei-Guyot

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted research practice, and where research was possible to continue nevertheless, researchers had to ask themselves how it could do so ethically. The context of the pandemic meant that many of such ethical considerations were new to researchers, and we witnessed a moment of overcoming and adapting that produced changes on a scale and at a pace that would have been previously inconceivable. However, these extraordinary efforts to keep research moving during the pandemic highlighted the inequalities that had become normalised within research practice, and particularly within research relationships.

Continue reading “How ethical can research relationships be in Development Studies?”

What is Development Studies? 

Development Studies is an established area of scholarly enquiry, which implies some consensus over what the study of development entails. Does such a consensus exist?

Andy Sumner of King’s College London explores this question further in a new discussion paper

The Debate Revisited

Although there is some common understanding on Development Studies being about ‘development’ and inter-disciplinary as well as normative in orientation, there is a set of quite different approaches to Development Studies is or what Development Studies should be. 

Continue reading “What is Development Studies? “

Development Studies and the Manufacturing of Consent

By Tara van Dijk

Why should we “think SDGs” in Development Studies?  This model of development (getting countries, corporations and other institutions to champion a list of non-binding goals and arbitrary targets) should be an object of analysis and critique. Yet this and similar messages adorn Development Studies departments’ websites, events, and curriculum.  And what do these messages preclude and promote?   They promote consent for this brand of development by precluding dissent and abstention.  Here I delve into why and how Development Studies, in effect and since its inception, manufactures consent for mainstream development thinking and projects. Continue reading “Development Studies and the Manufacturing of Consent”

Questioning development: What lies ahead?

By Christiane Kliemann | EADI/ISS Blog Series

Development Studies requires “an epistemological and ontological change” write Elisabetta Basile and Isa Baud in the introduction to the recent EADI volume “Building Development Studies for a New Millennium”. The planned sequel of the book will take this analysis one step further and explore viable ways to build on both the critique of development as such, as well as the growing demand to decolonize knowledge production. The plenary session on “Questioning Development – Towards Solidarity, Decoloniality, Conviviality” at the recent #Solidarity2021 conference hosted a discussion by four contributors to the book which is currently in preparation for publication in 2023. The discussion is summarized here. Continue reading “Questioning development: What lies ahead?”