Development Studies – Page 2 – Debating Development Research

14/10/202516/12/2025

Transforming the International Development Cooperation System – Mission Impossible?

Interview with Aram Ziai, Chair of Development and Postcolonial Studies, University of Kassel, Germany / part of our “Share your Decolonising Story” project

Professor Aram Ziai is an academic who has been writing on Post-Development for over 20 years. His work is all centred around decolonising the sector – and on how colonial injustices are still effective in our day-to-day life. He is also Executive Director of the Global Partnersh i p Network, which has been explicitly set up to try to decolonise international cooperation and knowledge production as far as the structures of the ‘development industry’ will allow.

22/07/202502/12/2025

Universalisms and their Discontents

By Brendan M. Howe

The contemporary inter-paradigm debate in Development Studies can be characterised as between advocates of a ‘universal’ global development experience (both positive and negative), and those advocating the centrality of discriminatory practices experienced by the Global South as obstacles to development. Aspirations for universality have faced the challenges and charges of neocolonialism, racism, cultural relativism, exceptionalism, Eurocentricism, and exclusion.

04/06/202502/12/2025

Is Postdevelopment a Theory of Development? Situating Postdevelopment in Social Theory

By Aram Ziai

Four decades after its beginnings, postdevelopment (PD) has become an established approach in development theory. Its core claim that we should ‘reject the entire paradigm of development’ and look for alternatives, has become well-known. However, is postdevelopment still part of development theory or is it something else? This post, based on a longer, more nuanced article in the EJDR tries to address this question.

27/05/202502/12/2025

EADI at 50: Thinking Through the Winter, Looking to the Spring and the Next Chapter

By Andy Sumner

We marked EADI’s 50th anniversary with a conference last week. As EADI president I reflect on this jubilee moment drawing from my opening remarks.

Anniversaries are an opportunity for both reflection and anticipation. As EADI marks its 50th year, we find ourselves, once again, in difficult global times. In the mid-1970s, amid oil shocks, the collapse of Bretton Woods fixed exchange rates, and a crisis of the post-war development model, EADI was founded. Today, the international order appears equally unstable—fractured by a resurgence of nationalism, institutional retreat, and weakened global cooperation. The past and present resonate uncomfortably.

15/04/202502/12/2025

Global AND International Development against all Inequalities

By Alessandra Mezzadri

Development: Contested Categories

Since its inception after World War II, Development Studies has been deeply intertwined with the socio-economic transformation of formerly colonized countries. Initially, the discipline was tasked with addressing the question of how these newly independent nations could be integrated into the world system. This integration was closely linked to the process of modernization, a goal shared by many of these nascent governments. However, the object and subjects of development have always been contested.