Debating Development Research

21/02/202304/01/2024

Understanding epistemic erasures of local & indigenous communities:

Decolonizing research and re-imagining alternative partnerships in Development Studies

By Yafa El Masri, Melis Cin, Kitty Furtado, Paola Minoia and Rahime Süleymanoğlu-Kürüm / New Rhythms of Development blog series

Epistemic erasures continue to exist in a wide range of institutional designs at the local, national, regional, European and international level. Bringing up a debate on this topic not only opens the possibility to raise awareness on the concept, but also motivates research to shed light on alternative partnerships of resistance to these erasures. As Sharon Stein and others have pointed out, partnerships that arise collaboratively between actors from academia, civil society and politics can contribute to recognizing, repairing and re-imagining new decolonial futures.

06/02/202301/03/2023

Ecocentric pedagogies and green scholarships: Towards green academia

By Sayan Dey

In 2006, the Ministry of Education in Bhutan launched what is officially known as the Green School System. One of the many purposes of introducing this green education system was to counter the mainstream modern/colonial knowledge systems that are anti-ecological, self-profiting and capitalistic in nature, and to build knowledge systems that are centered on the existential and functional values of the natural environment.

23/01/2023

Decentralised Development Cooperation: potential and practices from an international perspective

By Jorge Gutiérrez Goiria

What role should municipal and regional governments play in international cooperation? For some time now, the processes and results of traditional development cooperation have been under scrutiny, and its main parameters are being reconsidered with regard to its own objectives, agents and instruments, which prove to be insufficient to face global challenges.

Decentralised development cooperation (DDC), promoted by local governments, offers a promising approach here. Its practices can promote relations of cooperation and solidarity with greater horizontality and reciprocity, as they naturally involve different actors while responding to problems close to the citizenry.

09/01/202326/06/2026

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.

13/12/202220/12/2022

Unsolicited representation of others happens in international development, so let’s talk about it!

By Margit van Wessel / New Rhythms of Development blog series

It’s not a popular idea, but I want to express it nonetheless: many development organizations engage in representation, here conceptualized as ‘acting on behalf of others’. They articulate rights for groups, advance problem definitions important to particular groups, and advocate solutions for specific groups’ problems. However, it seems very few scholars or organizations want to acknowledge or even think about this. Why would that be, and is it right not to think of civil society roles in terms of representation in the first place? And is the more popular ‘solidarity’ a better option? Let’s compare and highlight some points for further reflection.