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- science vs development studies : evolution vs revolution
- ideologies, theories, strategies.
- examples of ideologies - normative vs positive; economics vs holistic.
Theories, strategies, and ideologies
Different development related discourses can be classified as pertaining to development theories, strategies, or ideologies.
- Development theories are dissertations about how development has occurred in the past, or could or should happen in the future. Theories can be positive in nature, mostly studying what has occurred, or may occur, but most development theories tend to be normative, also prescribing a particular goal and path to development. Development theorizing tends to be concentrated in academic circles, and hence is contentious and evolutionary in nature.
- Development strategy refers to practical organizations, movements and state framework to achieve development, whatever it may be defined to be. This is the realm of the practice of development, and although guided by theory concerns itself with achieving agreed upon goals in a medium time-frame.
- Underlying both development theories and strategies are development ideologies, bodies of opinions, moral standpoints and normative assumptions that form the context for development discourses. There are many development theories, with varying degrees of purchase on development scholars and practitioners, but only a handful of ideologies that have evolved over the last century and shaped the underlying paradigm of debate and practice.
Development ideologies
There are a few ideologies that have held sway over the past century. Within each ideology are many theories and many strategies aligned with the ideologies.
- normative-economic: The traditional development paradigm which focussed simply on economic growth and prescribed pathways to achieving the “optimal” growth for development nations.
- positive-economic: Historical eco-political analyses that shed light on pathways followed in economic growth of nations so far, and project into the future, possibilities of growth from present context.
- normative-holistic: Various Marxist and Dependency theories that intend to broaden the reach of development to a wider range of population in the developing world and prescribes ways to achieve this via many counter-proposals to liberal economics.
- positive-holistic: Various alternative development proposals that highlight importance of non-state actors and grass-root efforts at self determination of the meaning and approach to development. This paradigm remains positive because it accepts a large variety of efforts as long as the efforts are holistic and tolerant of opposing views.
Science vs Development Studies
Science and development studies differ in how the fields develop.
- Progress in science is revolutionary. Paraphrasing Kuhn: At any given time, a clique of contemporary scholars and their paradigms hold sway and most research and progress happens within the framework set by this invisible college. Thus there is incremental progress of normal science, until the point when the number and quality of evidence confronting the status quo grows to a point where a fundamental shift in paradigm becomes necessary. Thus there is a flurry of tectonic shifts in the scientific approach. Thus, extraordinary science revolutionizes scientific thinking to a new normal where incremental progress once again resumes.
- On the other hand, progress in development studies in particular, and humanities in general, is evolutionary. When a major paradigmatic challenge unseats a theory with great purchase, the theory just finds different quarters to continue to hold sway in, or it organically fuses with the replacing theories. Theories, paradigms and discourses in development theory never die, they live on in one form on another, intermingled and stacked on top of each other. Thus, conflicting ideas often co-exist, and the field accords each its own following and applicability.
These tidbits are observations from the essay “Theories, strategies and ideologies of development” from The Companion to Development Studies.