Development research has been dominated by two contrasting conceptions of knowledge. The first may be best described as knowledge-for-practice. It was the dominant mode in the first decades of development research. Knowledge of devel-opment was fostered largely in academic settings and then transmitted to practi-tioners. This had its parallel in development management, where planners operated in isolation from managers. In both cases, however, the reigning assumption was that theories and plans were superior. Practitioners and managers had to comply with what they demanded.
Much rested on a mechanical notion of how development works. It assumed func-tionality in closed systems that could be controlled and managed to reach the stat-ed goals. None of it, however, could capture the complexity that reality poses. Even-tually the link between research and policy broke down. Academics were accused of
‘armchair’ approaches; practitioners, in turn, were called ‘tool peddlers’ and the like.
The second conception goes under the label of knowledge-in-practice. This is the notion that there is a special ‘craft’ knowledge inherent in development policy man-agement. This second notion has emerged since the 1980s to shape development research. Our knowledge of development, as suggested above, has increasingly been shaped by how it is designed, managed and assessed. Research has become a means to an end focused more on improving the process of managing develop-ment than on substantive issues stemming from underlying structural conditions.
The best evidence for this is the enormous growth of the evaluation industry that nowadays serves as a major source of income for development researchers. This is what keeps King Practice in power. It is why we are stranded on his estate.
So, is there a third conception of knowledge that can lead us in a new direction? I believe there is, and I label it knowledge-of-practice. This is a process of systematic, critical and collaborative inquiry between researchers and practitioners aimed at generating knowledge on a participatory basis. It brings the best aspects of the other two conceptions together in a catalytic effort to learn about the practice rath-er than taking it for granted. The intrath-eresting thing hrath-ere is that is exactly the collabo-rative context in which Ole Therkildsen’s study of water development in Tanzania – the White Elephants publication – occurred. Labelled fölgeforskning in Danish, it aimed at demonstrating the value of examining development programs in their broader national context.
The call to problematize development practice in order to improve outcome, there-fore, is not completely new. It led to calls for a ‘learning approach’ to development, for example, by prominent development researchers like David Korten (1980) and Robert Chambers (1983). It is significant that, despite their persuasive arguments, it was soon abandoned in favour of approaches that reduce practice to an end in it-self. Methods and techniques have come under criticism again, which is why the knowledge-of-practice notion is once more applicable to development research.
Knowledge-of-practice does not reject existing practices altogether but aims at put-ting them in their proper perspective as tools that may but also may not work as intended. The hammer is not always the most useful tool; the knife requires regular maintenance; which screwdriver to use is a matter of choice, and so on. Practice requires its own analysis to ensure that it is suitable. There are at least three issues that development researchers in Practiceland need to question: (1) empiricism, (2) reductionism, and (3) mechanism.
Social science in its positivist form privileges knowledge in which the observer de-taches himself from sense impressions and subjects them to systematic analysis before arriving at conclusions. It is based on the logic of the material as identified in the physical sciences – the notion that objects have their own solidity and distinct-ness. This assumption, however, is nowadays being questioned in the hard scienc-es. Quantum Theory holds that nothing is solid, separate or independent of its envi-ronment. Dense physical objects exist in constant relationships with things around them. Against this background, it is surprising that the positivist logic of the materi-al still holds ground in the socimateri-al sciences, especimateri-ally since it faces non-materimateri-al forms such as emotions and ideas. The empiricist basis of social science analysis becomes especially illusory in contexts such as policy designs or policy evaluations where frameworks like log-frame and specific methodologies are prescribed in ad-vance rather than subjected to scrutiny and debate. For example, if log-frames be-come subject to participatory analysis they lose their precision as positivist evalua-tive tools, and in the minds of the principals, that is, those who call for their use, it is typically the exact numbers that matter most.
Reductionism is another product of the physical sciences which has also taken root in the social sciences. It presupposes that the whole is nothing more than the sum of its parts, that it can be fully understood based on the properties of its smallest parts, and that causality always goes from the part to the whole. This emphasis on the study of change at the micro-level has led to a gradual specialization of disci-plines and fields similar to the division of labour in industry. It has produced its own undeniable progress in both the physical and social sciences, but it also has its
drawbacks, which are usually ignored. This reverse side is the drive to compartmen-talize knowledge and narrow the range of questions asked, as well as place an em-phasis on the disaggregation rather than aggregation of knowledge. Clamping everything into rigidly fixed forms and apparently unchanging external factors be-comes especially questionable in policy contexts, yet it still flourishes there as much as it does in conventional academic research.
Mechanism here refers to the tendency to treat reality in mechanical terms – yet another loan from the physical and biological sciences. Mechanical necessity rather than purposeful choice determines progress. This view of reality has taken root in the social sciences largely thanks to the influence of economics – more specifically Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’, which promises impartially to generate maximum benefits to people. This mechanistic view has reduced human behaviour to the task of seeking a stable equilibrium between supply and demand in the market place, identifying marginal utility, respecting the law of cost and following other ‘natural laws’ of economics. The idea that values are exogenous, that is, given in advance, as implied in the ‘rational choice’ theory underpinning this mechanistic notion has gained ground in other social science disciplines, and despite (or thanks to) its de-ceptive simplicity it flourishes in the policy world.
The solution in a knowledge-of-practice perspective is not to dispense with rational-ity but to widen it by challenging the dogmatic assertions associated with reigning conceptions and methods. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts; knowl-edge formation rests not only on specialization but also on integration and inclu-sion; not everything that counts can be counted, nor does everything that can be counted count, and so on.
I believe that these and related challenges to conventional wisdom are present in Ole Therkildsen’s work. It highlights in its modest ways what is wrong with much of what goes on in development research, especially when pursued in Practiceland, but also what can and should be done to redress these shortcomings. The battle to find the relevant middle-ground between evidence and relevance in the publication emerging from the EPP project (Whitfield et al. 2015) is only the most recent exam-ple of Ole Therkildsen’s efforts to move beyond knowledge-for-practice and knowl-edge-in-practice in order to broaden our understanding of the complexity that deter-mines development policy outcomes.
Conclusions
Ole Therkildsen is not alone in trying to transform Practiceland from being an estate dominated by short-term horizons and disaggregated knowledge that privileges do-nor interests in accountability into using holistic knowledge to foster understanding of broader social and political processes of change. Apart from his EPP colleagues, other projects such as the African Power and Politics Program (APPP) and the Tracking Development project at Leiden University, to mention just a few, have emerged in a similar reaction to the narrow scope of conventional donor concerns.
As long as development research is primarily funded by donor agencies, there may be a limit to how far researchers can change the policy world in the direction of greater openness to ideas other than those already in use. The reason for making the case right now for broadening the perspectives on how policies are designed and implemented, however, comes from the donor community itself. With the polit-ical declarations issued in the name of the United Nations (the post-2015 Agenda process) and the OECD (most recently the 2011 Busan Statement), the political compass points in the right direction: greater diversity in approaches, more respect for contextual variation, better learning, more sharing of approaches, and so on.
Nobody is better placed than the development research community to take the lead in this brokerage role. Knowledge formation is not just a matter of practitioners be-ing informed by academics, nor of ruminatbe-ing about specialized craft knowledge. At this point, it is above all a matter of generating knowledge that integrates the two into a critical and collaborative inquiry.
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