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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.

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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. 

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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”

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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?”

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Teaching in a Fast-Changing Environment – The Case of Development Studies

By Basile Boulay

Following years of austerity budgets and a fast-growing managerial culture within academia, social sciences and humanities have been under growing pressure for some time.  Simultaneously, the assumptions behind the teaching and research of entire disciplines have been heavily criticized , giving rise to movements -often supported by students- calling for wide academic and curricula reforms. Development Studies, which draws on many fields from social sciences and humanities, is no exception and is undergoing such profound changes. Continue reading “Teaching in a Fast-Changing Environment – The Case of Development Studies”