Knowledge on Development:

Conceptual history and approaches

C Shambu Prasad
DT class 3, Jan 11-13, 2022
 Contents
• Self Introduction
• Introduction to Development Studies
– What is development studies?... Sumner
– Fifty Key Thinkers - ‘town versus gown’ divide between
academics and practitioners
– Nature of development studies… Robert Potter
• Introducing Assignment 1
• Nonconventional theories of development : Marxism,
Dependency and world systems
• Post-development theories; Gandhi and post-
development
Andhra Pradesh 12
Assam 3 United Colours of
Bihar 8
Chhattisgarh
Delhi
3 PRM42 (20)
10
Gujarat 33
Haryana 17
Jharkhand 6
Karnataka 6
Kerala 14 Agriculture and allied 91
Madhya Pradesh 12 Any other 13
Maharashtra 12 Arts and humanities (BA) 6
Odisha 10 Commerce and BBA 14
Punjab 5 Engineering (BE or BTech) 65
Rajasthan 6 Sciences (BSc etc.) 17
Tamil Nadu 6 Grand Total 206
Telangana 9
Uttar Pradesh 23
Uttarakhand 6
West Bengal 5
 Multiple meanings of development
State
1 3
7 1
2
2 1

1 11
2

4 4
3 1
3

Andhra Pradesh Assam Bihar

Chhattisgarh Delhi Gujarat
Haryana Jharkhand Kerala
Madhya Pradesh Maharashtra Odisha
Rajasthan Tamil Nadu Telangana
Uttar Pradesh Uttarakhand

Sec C: Basic, better, life, positive, people, change,

condition, improvement, livelihoods, social
 Multiple meanings of State

development Sec D 3 2 3
2 1

5 4
1
1
1
3 9
3
4 3 3
1
1

Andhra Pradesh Bihar Chhattisgarh Delhi

Gujarat Haryana Jharkhand Karnataka
Kerala Madhya Pradesh Maharashtra Odisha
Punjab Rajasthan Telangana Uttar Pradesh
Uttarakhand West Bengal

Degree

5
21
16

5
1 2

Agriculture and allied Any other

Arts and humanities (BA) Commerce and BBA
Sec D: Development, living, people, standard, process,
sustainable, growth, life, society, change, basic, better
 Multiple meanings of
State
development 2 2
1

1 5 3

2 6
1
2
3
7
2
3 1
1 1

Andhra Pradesh Assam Delhi Gujarat

Haryana Jharkhand Karnataka Kerala
Madhya Pradesh Maharashtra Odisha Punjab
Rajasthan Tamil Nadu Telangana Uttar Pradesh
West Bengal

Degree

19
13

4 2
1

Agriculture and allied Any other

Sec B: Development, people, change, better, life, living, Arts and humanities (BA) Commerce and BBA
standard, process, standard, economic, positive, quality Engineering (BE or BTech) Sciences (BSc etc.)
 Multiple meanings of development
States
1
1
2 4
2 3
3 1
2
2 4
1
3 4
4 3
3
1

Andhra Pradesh Assam Bihar

Delhi Gujarat Haryana
Jharkhand Karnataka Kerala
Madhya Pradesh Maharashtra Odisha
Punjab Rajasthan Tamil Nadu
Uttar Pradesh Uttarakhand West Bengal

Degree

18
15

2 4
1
Sec A: Development, people, life, standard, living, society,
growth, basic, social, needs, improvement Agriculture and allied Any other
Arts and humanities (BA) Commerce and BBA
Engineering (BE or BTech) Sciences (BSc etc.)
 What is Development?
• Trigger further debate, diversity
• Contested, discussion rather than closure
 Development Studies
• Unlike DE, DS is
interdisciplinary in nature,
(sociology, political science
etc.)
• Area studies, third world
studies, international
development
• Young field of study – post
WWII, decolonisation of
1950s- 60s
• ‘Econ’ vs ‘Develops’ early
phase… 18th C anthropology
too
Cross-disciplinary nature of DS
 History of DS?
• Intellectual and political context of 1960s and 1970s
• ODI and IDS (1966), 1973 East Anglia- 1st undergrad prog
• Product of the colonial and post-colonial eras.
• India has its own variations https://icssr.org/research-institutes-0
• 1940s – post WWII, Truman’s speech of 1949
• 1950s – reconstruction, liberalising trade, ‘new geography’.. Western, top-
down
• 1960s - European events in 1968 a resurgence of Marxist socio-economic
theory, Revolution was in the air.
• Latin America – ‘dependency theory’ – delink from west, follow alternate
model
– ‘African Socialism’ Nkrumah’s book Neo-colonialism: The Last Stage of
Imperialism (1965)
– Nehru’s leadership of the non-aligned movement together with Gandhi’s
pacifist philosophy and anti-colonial standpoint
– influential civil rights movement in the USA, Vietnam war
 History of DS?
• 1970s- Development geography as a sub-discipline, dissatisfaction
with quantitative revolution to more humanistic approaches,
subjectivity of phenomena and knowledge. “another development’
critique of urban-based, top-down, centre-out NC models,
environmental movements
• 1980s – New right and neoconservatism. Neoliberal agenda
(‘Popular capitalism’ & Reaganomics’ )

• 1990s – ‘postmodernism’ – rejection of meta-theories and meta-

narratives, Eurocentric stand

• 2000s - loss of the central paradigms, new heuristics civil society,

social capital, diversity and risk (Schrumann, 2000); Mixed
economies (Sachs, 2009), Future Positive (Michael Edwards, 1999),
MDGs- SDGs.
 Development theories and paradigms

‘tendency of social science paradigms to accumulate rather than fade away’

evolutionary rather than revolutionary change.

1 the classical–traditional approach;

2 the historical–empirical approach;
3 the radical–political economy–dependency approach;
4 alternative and bottom-up approaches.
 Purpose of Development Studies
• Research on development… … seeks to make a difference. This
makes it even more loaded and contested than other kinds of
research. (Mehta et al., 2006: 1)

• Development Studies is research committed to improvement.

Knowledge generation is not an end in itself … An implication of
this is that Development Studies addresses current, actual
problems, focusing on solving them – it tends to be applied and
action – or policy-orientated. (Molteberg and Bergstrøm, 2000: 7)

• Who are we – who am I to intervene in other people’s lives when

we know so little about any life, including our own? (Rahnema,
1997: 395)
 Purpose of Development Studies
• Development Studies has been accused in recent years of
being irrelevant, of being hopelessly evolutionary, of being
colonial in intent, of being masculinist, of being dirigiste, and
of being a vehicle for depoliticisation and the extension of
bureaucratic state power. It stands accused of being the
source of many of the problems of the so-called Third World.
(Corbridge, 2005: 1)

• Development Studies crucially involves issues of positionality.

Those studying development must be critically aware of their
own position: the ‘viewpoint’ from which they are
undertaking their analyses. It is important to recognize the
difference between studying processes of change as though
they are ‘out there’ and studying processes which we are
involved in. (DSA, 2006: 1)

https://www.devstud.org.uk/about/what-is-development-studies/
EPW, IJRM, Development in Practice etc.
 Audience for DS?
DS community ‘practical thinkers’ and ‘reflective doers’
‘detectives’ (data collection, analysis and interpretation), ‘translators’ (reframing
given ideas for diverse groups) and ‘diplomats’ (negotiation, conflict mediation,
deal making) (Bernstein, 2005:, 55).
 Readings
• What is development Studies?
Sumner & Tribe
• Development in Practice
1. What is development studies?
(i.e. what is its focus, aim and
approach?)
2. What constitutes rigorous
research in development
studies? (i.e. what are the
characteristics of ‘high quality’
development research?)
• The overall aim of this book is to
address these two questions.
 What is Development?
• “Development’ is a concept which is contested both theoretically and
politically, and is inherently both complex and ambiguous … … Recently
[it] has taken on the limited meaning of the practice of development
agencies, especially in aiming at reducing poverty and the Millennium
Development Goals. (Thomas, 2004: 1, 2)

• The vision of the liberation of people and peoples, which animated

development practice in the 1950s and 1960s has been replaced by a
vision of the liberalization of economies. The goal of structural
transformation has been replaced with the goal of spatial integration.… …
The shift to ahistorical performance assessment can be interpreted as a
form of the post-modernization of development policy analysis. (Gore,
2000: 794–5)

• Post-modern approaches… see [poverty and development] as socially

constructed and embedded within certain economic epistemes which
value some assets over others. By revealing the situatedness of such
interpretations of economy and poverty, post-modern approaches look for
alternative value systems so that the poor are not stigmatized and their
spiritual and cultural ‘assets’ are recognized. (Hickey and Mohan, 2003:
38)
• One of the confusions, common through development
literature, is between development as immanent and
unintentional process… … and development as an intentional
activity. (Cowen and Shenton, 1998: 50)

• If development means good change, questions arise about

what is good and what sort of change matters… Any
development agenda is value-laden… … not to consider good
things to do is a tacit surrender to… fatalism. Perhaps the right
course is for each of us to reflect, articulate and share our
own ideas… accepting them as provisional and fallible.
(Chambers, 2004: iii, 1–2)

• Since [development] depend[s] on values and on alternative

conceptions of the good life, there is no uniform or unique
answer. (Kanbur, 2006: 5)
• Positionality
• What are the big changes in development?
• Robert Chambers’s Advice for Life
 A
framewor
k for
Developm
ent
theories
(Potter)
Knowing Development through Article
Review
• EPW at 50 Documentary Trailer
• https://www.epw.in/journal/2020/50
• https://www.epw.in/review-rural-affairs
• Choose group of 3 by 17th Jan, enter topic
online 21st Jan 10am
• Review submission by 3rd February – summary
in OWN words with a handwritten reflection
on your learning about development (700 –
850 words)