Is Development Studies still relevant? A discussion with Sam Hickey, Heloise Weber and Winnie Mitullah

The latest episode of our podcast brings together Sam Hickey, President of the Development Studies Association UK, Heloise Weber, President of the Development Studies Association Australia and special guest Winnie Mitullah from IDS, University of Nairobi. The three discuss the relevance of development studies in the current climate.

Sam Hickey is President of the Development Studies Association UK. He is Head of the Global Development Institute, Professor of Politics and Development and Deputy CEO of the African Cities Research Consortium. His research examines the links between politics and development, including issues of state capacity and elite commitment, natural resource governance, social exclusion and adverse incorporation, citizenship participation and NGOs and the politics of social protection and social justice.

Heloise Weber is President of the Development Studies Association Australia. She is Senior Lecturer in the School of Political Science and International Studies, The University of Queensland, Australia.  Her research addresses how knowledge-production and representation shape and justify framings of 'development' at a macro-political level, and what this means for people

Winnie Mitullah is a Research Professor of Development Studies at the Institute for Development Studies, The University of Nairobi (IDS) and UNESCO UNITWIN Chair. She has researched and consulted in the areas of governance, in particular in the area of provision and management of urban services and the role of stakeholders in development.

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Intro music Anna Banana by Eaters

Transcript

Sam Hickey So hello, I'm Sam Hickey. I'm the President of the Development Studies Association for the UK, also a professor of politics and development at the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester, where I actually recently became head as well. And today with me for the discussion around the relevance of development studies at the current juncture are Winnie Mitullah and Heloise Weber. So I'll let Winnie and Heloise introduce themselves.  

Winnie Mitullah Thank you Sam. I'm Winnie Mitullah. I'm a research professor based at the Institute for Development Studies, University of Nairobi. I have been in that institute for almost 30 years doing research on development studies. Thank you.  

Sam Hickey Thanks, Winnie. And we'll go to Heloise now.  

Heloise Weber Thank you, Sam. I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands from which I speak in Brisbane, Australia. They are the Turrbal and Yuggera peoples and I pay my respects to their elders, past, present and emerging. My name is Heloise Weber, School of Political Science and International Studies, the University of Queensland. I serve as the President of the Development Studies Association Australia and I’m pleased to be here.  

Sam Hickey Great. So we're combining views around development studies from a truly global reach, we hope today. And we hope to really just have a fairly informal conversation about the relevance of our subject area, development studies, also of the development studies centers that we're involved in, and the broader associations that we're also involved in and that give development studies its institutional form across universities and countries. And to also explore what role they have.  

So I won't talk for long about the current juncture, but it does seem like, I think, [there are] a few things. What many people have referred to as an 'era of poly-crises' involving the climate emergency, perhaps first and foremost, the threat of future pandemics on top of recent ones, tensions and potential new conflicts emerging from the geopolitical and geo-economic context, that some have referred to as the 'second Cold War', rising levels of debt for poor countries, food and fuel prices driven by conflicts and migration.  

Now, this is a contested discourse, a 'poly-crises', not least because not all of these would be considered crises, by some. For example, migration might be considered a natural response to global inequalities, a crises of inequality rather than migration per se. And for others, the language of crises distracts from the sense in which these are the inevitable outcomes of a particular system of global capitalism rather than unforeseen or unforeseeable crises.  

But what does seem sort of less contested, I guess, is that there has been a big shift. We can probably argue about when we would locate the origins of development studies back before the Truman Project in 1948. But since that particular moment, which led to decades of Western hegemony, we have seen a significant decline. The growth of the idea that the West... [indecipherable due to loss of audio]. We're seeing significant technological changes around a huge number of areas around health, new materials, carbon capture, breaking down of barriers through digital developments and communication flows. And all sorts of promises that arise from that [are] yet to be fully grasped within a development space.  

I guess the third thing I'd just like to draw attention to, which I'm sure will come up, is the decolonial challenge that development studies faces. The extent to which development studies is facing a major reckoning with its colonial past and allegedly neo colonial present. Not only in terms of development policy. The lens has certainly been turned inwards on development studies itself and the Eurocentric nature of development theory and the inequalities built into North-South research relationships within development studies.  

So is this a period of crisis for development studies as well as crisis more generally in the world? Or does development studies remain even more relevant given this kind of context? Winnie, what do you think?  

Winnie Mitullah Development studies remains relevant, and I think sometimes we call it a crisis just because of the new issues. Because I guess if we flash back into the early years of real development studies of the sixties there were issues, equally there were issues, but there were different issues. So I see development more as a process. So every other phase comes with new challenges and these are really the challenges that development gets involved in.  

Of course we can critique how development studies rolled out. You know, the conceptual binary approach of you are always comparing two regions. Looking at the developed and developing, the poor and rich. You know, all that binary thing was the distorting perspective at that early stage. But I think over the years we see that development issues are not limited to this binary kind of conceptual framework, and that's why we look at development from the national, regional and global. And what we are looking at is the interconnectivity of all those terrains. Trying to see at what point if you are in the South, like some of us, what are the issues that we need to engage with more? Some of them, you know, cut across beyond our entities. 

We have to grapple with the elements that cut across, like if you look at trade. Issues of trade have always been looked at. You cannot look at trade at a local level and stop there. So I think those are then now the new areas that become more global, no wonder we have international development studies. Whatever that implies, it’s still development studies, although it's called sometimes international development studies. And when I look at it, I had a glimpse of York University just as an interest to look at what they are offering, and it was more focusing still on the developing countries. The angle one takes really depends on the context, but the issues remain the same. And I don't think that development studies has outlived its usefulness. It is even becoming now more needed.  

The only issue is that if you look at resources being put in research, the resources tend to flow from the north. And I think this is really where the issue is. Not just the resources, sometimes also the agenda might be set from the north. So that is the aspect that one can argue that could be distorting what it is. But then the South over the years are in a position now to take a stand. Pick what you need, cut the cake that you need. If you think poverty is what you need to engage with, then that is what you should put resources on and hack it out. But the conceptual framework of development studies has changed over a period of time, and I think we are in an era where we should see development studies as change, irrespective of the context. But how it is handled in each context is what differs.  

I don't think in terms of offering, when it comes to teaching for example, when it comes to teaching development studies, probably we need to strengthen the approach because if you look at the traditional approach, it was seen more as a social sciences thing. But right now the issues confronting us like climate change, you know, we need to go beyond just the traditional social sciences that anchored development studies. This is something that higher education is struggling with in Africa right now. And I think there is some scheduled higher education forum coming late this year. Hopefully they will also look at those aspects of multi-disciplinarity. That was the strength of development studies, which now need to go beyond the social sciences.  

Sam Hickey Thanks Winnie. Some important points that we'll come back to I'm sure, particularly these themes of interconnectivity and what should be the proper spatial focus of development studies. Your argument that it remains relevant, but faces significant internal challenges of how resources and influence are held within the area and extending the interdisciplinary challenge. Let's see, and we may come back to some of these, depending on where Heloise takes us next.  

Heloise Weber Thank you Sam and thank you Winnie. I’d like to pick up on your reference to comparativism, Winnie. I think that’s really important and has relevance for the point Sam raised about the decolonial challenge that development studies faces.   

Yes, I agree Sam, the origins of development studies are debatable and to some extent at least, contingent on how we approach development. If we were to take the post-1945 context that the Truman poject, as you put it, then that project rested ideologically on a comparative logic that disarticulated colonialism and its legacies in the making of unequally connected relations and the unjust structures of the global political economy.  

So the framing of post-colonial states simply as ‘under-developed’ or under-developed ‘areas’ as if they were originating conditions, rather than outcomes of colonial exploitation, has been a colonial project. And this of course was corrected through the historical method of analysis associated with dependency theory for example. But such critical thinking was not as successful in challenging the organization of international development premised on this highly problematic comparative method. Acknowledging this and its deep implication since 1945 I think still comprises a key aspect of the decolonial challenge.   

So on the question of the relevance of development studies, I concur with Winnie that development studies is still highly relevant, particularly with the decolonial challenge. There is still repair and restoration to be done to redress structural inequalities rooted in colonialism, and its extension through the Truman project. 

I think that is a really important aspect that development studies must address. Working through this decolonial challenge can be done whilst recognizing the significance of development studies for the challenges we face globally; from the ecological crises to poverty, inequality and injustices. These are of course intersectional. We can look at class, race, gender, disability and take all of these intersectionally.  

So absolutely, I think development studies is relevant at this point because of the decolonial challenge but also because of the broader implications of the field given its frame of reference.  

Even just the concept ‘development’. It implies social change and is conventionally associated with progressive social change. While it doesn’t refer to exploitation, to which capitalism has been realized, and more accurately colonial capitalism, it does imply social change. And social change and notions of progress, and the kind of sensibilities associated with these, is something that all fields or disciplines operate with implicitly, or explicity. 

So I think development studies somehow centres on this notion of progress but at the same time its not as straight-forward as I’ve already noted. The decolonial challenge and the challenges of global capitalism are deeply political. For all these reasons, a reset of development studies is highly relevant.  

Sam Hickey Hmmm. No I'm struck [with] the issue of the origins. I think what tended to take over in the post-war era that you mentioned after Truman's declaration, was a focus on development as an intervention on how to correct cultures, correct inappropriate market structures and administrative structures in in the global South through the wisdom of Western technology, technical assistance and financial power. Whereas an earlier starting point for development studies, according to Cowen and Shenton and others, is back in industrial capitalism, the heyday of industrial capitalism in the 19th century. And the sense in which this underlying processes of capitalist development that are highly disruptive, potentially transformative, to which development responds. And it seems from a series of critiques in the last 20 years that development studies got distracted with trying to find the technical fixes to problems and [paid] insufficient attention to what global capitalism was doing, and to whose benefit. And as you say, colonialism and capitalism are heavily entwined.  

And to me, the relevance of development studies today lies in its ability and willingness to really grapple again with what's happening with underlying processes of development, of global capitalism, and what forms of progressive social change are possible within that. Potentially in a sort of Polanyian sense, re-embedding these really intense processes of commodification which have left us in a very difficult position, both environmentally as well as socially. So I think that there is a relevant future for development studies, but it needs to needs to grapple with those underlying processes.  

But both of you have referred to the biases within development theory and the ways it goes around understanding the world; whether that's in terms of binaries or in terms of a northern bias. And there have been moments within development studies where Southern voices and perspectives have seemed to come to the fore. Initially, perhaps the Bandung conference in 1955, a meeting of Asian and African states that came together and put forward a series of ideas around economic and cultural cooperation across Africa and Asia, an alternative kind of vision of what the development might be. Strategic partnerships that might lead to that. And then Heloise you mentioned dependency theory, which obviously came out of Southern thinking, and seems to be enjoying a resurgence as well, there's a growing number of publications on dependency theory. But what do you think about this potential for a resurgence of a Southern based perspective on development?  

Heloise Weber May I come in here, Sam? I'm not sure it's just a Southern based resurgence, but rather it's a resurgence of the historical method, I think, in terms of analysis. And its perhaps no coincidence that it's aligning with the decolonial, post-colonial pushes against conventional development analysis. It is a counter point to the comparatist logic I mentioned earlier, which disarticulated colonialism in explanations of development and inequality. 

Consequently, post-1945 you had this kind of narrower version of the development project that both disarticulates that colonial history and then moves into this form of intervention I guess. So that resurgence going back to dependency theory and that historical method, I think is absolutely relevant. Not least because, as I mentioned, the importance of repair and restoration. We can recall here that Bandung already set the scene for debates and discussions of reparations. The New International Economic Order (NIEO) in the 1970s called for nationalization of key industries and public services in the global South, including a restructuring of the inherited colonial division of labour. 

So the project of third worldism comprised regimes more oriented towards a social democratic ideas, and I’m thinking here of Julius Nyerere’s approach for example. Efforts to repair colonial violence and bring about the kinds of welfare regimes that the West for able to put in place. Not least as a result of colonial expropriation.   

Sam Hickey No, very much. There is some very interesting new work. I think nearly all UK institutions are going through a bit of a historical reckoning, including universities, liberal journalist outlets like The Guardian. There's a book, Empire Land by Sathnam Sanghera, which goes through this and shows really how our post war institutions cannot be understood without, you know, even if they were re-distributive internally within this country, they were built entirely on wealth generated through Empire. So, yes, that that type of reckoning is happening now. Whether it relates to the types of reparations that are being called for, I'm not sure about. It was, I guess, encouraging that in the environmental space that the language of reparations or at least moving in that direction was in the last CoP declaration, which went a bit further than the usual attempts to wrap climate finance up with aid, etc.  

But Winnie, what do you think of the prospects? I mean, we had the Bandung conference, we had the Non-Aligned Movement. There was a moment of potential unity between countries, a shared political project, in the global South. We seem a long way from that now. If countries are having to decide between themselves, between whether they align with the United States or with China. I think there is a growing critique. I think many African leaders and also in South Asia are using the decolonial critique against any new Western influence. But is that helping within the space, or the academy, to generate new theories of development from a southern perspective or potential for new partnerships based on voices that shape this?  

Winnie Mitullah I think what's going on, all these different alliances and collaborations and different, whether you call them BRICS or whichever, the alliances that Africans are going to, or whether you are moving to China, I think the whole idea is that there are more options now. But still Africa, whether is African in the context of development studies or policy makers, there has to be something that is internal also, that is a strength that should be carried on.  

And I would want to just, you know, piggyback on Heloise's mention of Nyerere. Because if you look at Nyerere, and Nyerere really tried to build an indigenous system, and building an indigenous system need not necessarily mean that you don't interact. I think this is where I have a problem with the conceptualisation. Having indigenous perspective, or having theories that locate in Africa, need not necessarily mean you don't interact with other regions, with other thoughts, and with other ideas. You need to have your strength. Just like we see the Chinese have their own strength, which they are trying to sell or give away [what they have] constructed. They are selling that idea and bringing on board alliances, whether it's in terms of trade or whether it be in terms of just other sources of support or investment, which they are doing across the globe. But still they have some fabric that you can call Chinese and that's why we continue to talk about the Chinese and their way of development.  

In Africa now we are beginning to see countries like Rwanda and Ethiopia, which are being viewed as coming out with something that is local. And really this is what people are keen on. Trying to look at development in a way that it borrows from local knowledge and local perspectives. Then we need to look into some of these.  

Nyerere's case fizzled out at the end of the day, and unfortunately I remember I think Nyerere did mention that given another chance, he would have done things differently. Probably that is what encouraged people who followed, to kind of not leverage much on African socialism which he built. But still, Tanzania has some fabric that is a little bit different, but they fell of it a bit. Its not like you would see now in countries like Rwanda.  

But look at Rwanda. To a large extent people didn't like the West; didn't believe that Rwanda was up to something that is going to generate a positive. But today Rwanda is becoming a direction, and a country, to look into in terms of moving forward. So I think, yes, we can talk about decolonisation under the critical thinking on decolonising development and all these are a very good debate. But that debate will only work if some local strengths, we are able to leverage on local strength. And sometimes I talk of informality as an example because it brings home some elements that we need to have leveraged on, but we have not.  

Today, informality has always been seen as the parallel line which should be brought into the mainline, the formal. And that's even the ILO argument of trying to formalise the informal. But probably the informal bears some framework of reference that could be kind of coined back into formality. But you shouldn't do away with informality per se, because it seems that people find it easy to operate under that fabric. We can call it illegal or anything, but the fact [is] that [the] majority [of people] operate easy on that. And now even when we talk about political settlements. In recent times, the framework, the theory is political settlements, everybody wants to use a political settlement lens. And that lens of political settlement is just close to informality for sure. If you look at it critically, its just part of informality as well. And yet it's now coined in a concept that looks more progressive than if you are talking about informality.  

So I think the whole debate about, you know, the bias development and where we should be; it is an important debate, but it doesn't take us too far to deliver it. What is important is what can we pick from the various strands of development perspectives that are running around and collaborations and alliances, to ground our development in our context.  

Sam Hickey That point about informality is interesting because we've hinted at the importance of taking development studies beyond just a pure focus on the global South and looking more at interconnectivity. And some people, including colleagues at GDI, but also much more broadly, trying to reframe development in terms of 'global' development, away from 'international' development, as you put it Winnie. And I think there's quite a few progressive possibilities there. Including reversing, you know, avoiding that gaze the north to south gaze, where all the problems really exist in the global South and are of the global South, and opening up to a broader perspective on that.  

But if informality is something which is a defining difference between industrial, post-industrial countries, where you have formal economies, where the majority of revenue raised up and spent comes through a formal system of taxation because of the nature of the economy; whereas we've had processes of de-industrialisation or stalled industrialisation in the global south. Many countries where the majority of the economy remains informalised. Is it possible to think of an area of studies of global development that could look at both? That could take global capitalism as its central problem and explore the inequalities and exclusions that arise from that in any territory, global North or South? Or is that going to be hamstrung by the differences, the formal-informal differences that may still, despite the problems with binaries, have some sort of traction when coming to explore these countries. I'm not sure what either of you think about this prospect of a global development studies in that light?  

Heloise Weber Thanks Sam. To your specific question about focusing on global development as an analytic and taking global capitalism as its central problem, I think we have already acknowledged the global challenges of development; whether in terms of the ecological crisis or inequalities and injustices. And any critical approaches to global development must take capitalism as a central problem, but this should be done whilst keeping the decolonial challenge in focus. That is, by also accounting for the enduring legacies of colonialism and their differential impact and implications. 

I also just has one clarification if I may Winnie. You made a really interesting point about informalisation. I just wanted to clarify, were you suggesting that informalisation is more prevalent in the global South and that we should probably work with the informal sector? Is that what you were trying to suggest or encouraging us to think about?  

Winnie Mitullah Yeah, just to take it into consideration, because many times you seem like it's been almost 40 years with a struggle to formalise it, but it is so resilient, it remains. So the issue is what is the need that can be picked to live and to build on locally? There must be something in it. Because if we just conclude that informality stays because of poverty, we miss the point. There are some that are operating informally that are actually not poor. So the generalisation that informality equates to poverty is not necessarily true. And we can still start from informality, including even in terms of taxing. We just need to be innovative in thinking and not use the frameworks, the existing frameworks, of how we've always done the things the formal way.  

I give an example of social protection. There is some study we did very recently on this, published on social protection and informal organisations. It is very clear that the people who are working under those informal organisations; we looked at construction, we looked at transport, we looked at micro trade. And we found that the monies that they generate in their small associations and they share among themselves in total a month is much, much higher than the 500 Kenya shillings that the government requires them formally to pay towards health insurance and which they don't pay. But the argument has been that they don't pay because they don't have the money, they are poor. So there are some leveraging, some connectivity, that need to be done in between this. That is the typical example of social protection and how you can fund it, because countries are now all looking into universal health care in Africa. Kenya wants to go that way, and has begun it. But where do you get the money? You need everybody to pay, but the majority are in the informal sector, so you can't trap them in the formal employment. So how do you do it? Research is clear that they can pay it, but the processes involved, the bureaucratic processes in that process and how you design their kind of payment because sometimes their money is irregular is what one should concentrate on. Just a typical example.  

Heloise Weber Yeah, thanks Winnie. Obviously I'm not you know, I don't have the expertise that you do about the context that you're speaking to. But from my own work on poverty and informalisation and microcredit and indebtedness, I don't see the informal sector necessarily as just an originating condition, but actually, you know, a condition that was already incorporated into colonial capitalism. And, you know, people taken off their livelihoods and subsistence. And so they're in a very different context. And, you know, since the 1980s and structural adjustment programmes, for instance, the informal, what we call the informal economy, expanded rapidly. I'm thinking about the Mike Davies’ Planet of Slums or Walton and Seddon’s Free markets and food riots and of course similar logics are experienced in the global North as well, including people being cut off from water services. There are also struggles for a living wage or appropriate labour conditions and so on and so forth.  

And I would just caution or I personally would would just based on my own research and understanding caution against accepting accepting inequality as as somehow given, because development is ultimately political. It's a political project. And we've seen different development projects across our times. You know, I'm just thinking about Amartya Sen’s work and, you know, he's his no radical, but, you know, even in Development as Freedom he's made the point that you actually don't need high GDP to ensure that, you know, people can live in dignity. That's a political commitment to public policy. And he uses examples from Sri Lanka and China to demonstrate how, you know, people, people's welfare to some extent were met and enabled them to live in dignity. So I would I'm not suggesting here that we go, you know, industrialisation without thinking about the environment, but that there are the other alternatives small scale, intermediate technology, green approaches, La, Via Campesina, you know, the global peasant movements. And they're not they're not totally outside of modernity, but there are ways to be more inclusive and to have more just social and political relations, I think.  

Winnie Mitullah I agree with you, too, because then you need to cater for this pool of people that are not you can't top them. You can't top them in the formal employment. If you go through the register, you are not finding them and you are meant to be like, for example, the president of these people. You are in charge of their development and they're like 60% or 70. So the injustice and inequality is falling on them somehow. But how do you cater for them? That's why we need this pool of people. And that is the pool the development study set to focus on. Originally, all through it was always inequality and the marginalised. And of course, I do understand that this is all big. Is it really? You have to look at capitalism in its holistic nature and all our states operate under capitalism. So if and we also know that today you cannot take informality as a neat area, there is so much intersection between just the you a concept which you used intersectionality. There is a lot of intersectionality between informality and formality. So my issue, or rather my concern is how do we in development studies work, how to support nations to get that intersection right so that when you have policy interventions, that interventions really end up reducing inequalities that exist between these two still in a binary form, but in reality the binary is not there because this informality failed also in the in the formality discourse.  

*** 

Sam Hickey So is development studies as currently institutionalised in a good position to grapple with some of these? To move beyond boundaries, to understand the highly differentiated contexts within which inequality and exclusion persist. To maybe move beyond binaries of north and South? Most development studies in the UK occurs within centres of development studies, which were established as training centres in the aftermath of independence to train colonial administrators and so on from South Asia and African countries in particular. And they are often a little bit poorly articulated with mainstream disciplines and perhaps with the natural science disciplines that when you've mentioned development. So this needs to be more closely connected to how does it how does it work within your contexts? Development studies centres. Well connected enough, well resourced enough to have significant to the status required to tackle some of these bigger issues. I'm not sure if it will be about ideas in Nairobi. If you could tell us a little bit about how ideas was established and where it sits within the academic landscape in Kenya. And then Heloise, from an Australian perspective, it'd be interesting to hear from your side as well.  

Winnie Mitullah Well ideas. It's good. You were mentioning that the ones in Europe were more established to train the administrators, and indeed they were. But unique enough ideas, Nairobi was actually established to support government at that time in 1965, I think IDS Nairobi and IDS Sussex are one the separate. I keep wondering who conceptualised which probably the ones that came to establish the IDS Sussex in 6 to 6 that come from from Kenya to get out there to do the it was to establish that second one. But the whole idea was that IDS would provide consultancy services to the government. It would feed into policy and practice. That was the conceptualisation, you would almost call it today, a think tank for the government. And indeed it did that up to almost seventies eighties. Then of course, we know the whole discourse about when capital gets this kind of loses faith with governments and public entities and starts establishing this parallel think tanks all over Africa, our regions. So the think tanks, then quite most of these consultancies started being diverted to the think tanks and not universities. Of course, come 2000 plus there is again resurgence back into people now bringing back work to do development studies, institutes and universities. So we we were rolled out as a directly supporting government, but over the years that's really not us singly. I think that the most recent we did was about 2004, 2000 to 2010, working with the United Nations Development Programme, UNDP to produce the Kenya Human Development Report, and that was done through IDS in collaboration with the UN. Getting back, getting us almost back to our original mandate of being called upon. Now what we see today is either individuals being called as consultants to join teams or individuals joining committees, technical committees addressing a particular development programme or a sectoral approach to development, because there are sectoral themes that address development. Of course, we have our development projects, which most of them are collaboration projects, working with our partners from all over the all over the world, all regions, depending on the area of interest, likely it will be around the areas that we work on, you know, which, which vary quite including climate change and all that. But that is that those are collaborative projects and they are not necessarily feeding directly into government processes like we did years back when we were first established. Whether you remember the ILO, the famous ILO report of 1972, it was produced in our institute by a team of technical people, both local and foreign, to produce that report, because at that time we were seen as really the knowledge generators, especially if you want in influence development at practice. But over the years you saw us now changed. We are still there. We make that contribution, but it's not as as large, as large or remarkable as it was in the earlier years of our Constitution. And that is more to me because of the very many institutes, think tanks, research agencies that are out there. So states are free to to get to access the knowledge from any party they dare do. But we also know how states are very closed about getting knowledge from research. This is like academic debate about how do we put our contributions to the state so that some of the research that we generate this connection between research and policy is a discourse that is endless. And not all states are the same, but most states are really not consuming enough of development research that is going on in the world, whether they are collaborative research or whether they are local research. But research is that the commission, whether to universities or to think tanks they do consume or might sometimes influence their processes directly.  

Sam Hickey Postel, which is really interesting and has quite a few bits of your history that I hadn't previously heard about. And it's striking the the degree of relevance that you've had to two major interventions in independent policy and if you like, on the on the more social democratic side of things, on human and social development perspectives. But I wonder with  different development studies centres, like yours and like ours. So we've sometimes been accused of being a bit too close to policy in practice and maybe not critical enough. So for those on critical development studies, including Heloise, I guess one query would be whether if we learn so much the relevance of perhaps also the the contracts and deals which come along with consultancy work, do we risk becoming too close to big D development and we're not able to take a step back and work out what's happening with the underlying processes of development and not able to, you know, take a step back from that now, liberalising projects of developments and that I'm not directing this purely at IDS Nairobi It's a much bigger challenge that we have that is lodged at the relevant studies institutes in general. Heloise Where do you stand on the relevance and role of centre development studies from a from an Australian perspective, which I think has got maybe more than one approach to that and.  

Heloise Weber Yeah, thank you, Sam. That's a, that's a really important question and I'm glad you raised it because as Winnie was speaking in my mind, what's going on In my mind I was exactly thinking about has the research agenda changed, right? That, you know, what kind of research is being commissioned, what kind of research is being accepted and which, you know, what what is privileged and what is not. So Winnie you mentioned the 1972 ILO report and it you know, I would love to know what report that was, but, you know, I'm assuming it was about labour rights, etc., etc.. So that would be excellent. Yeah, right. Very different to the kinds of research that's being commissioned at this point. And Sam, you can correct me if I'm wrong because you've done, you know, work in this field as well. And I've read most of your work that has come out, and I think you've successfully made a distinction between perhaps the policy work or maybe or maybe you haven't made a distinction, but you've you've done research that has been critical. Right? So I think if that kind of research can feed into policy frameworks, that would be great. But, you know, I'm not I'm not 100% certain that that this is what happens, you know, my time in the UK. And at that point I was around, you know, those who were doing research on micro-credit with the DFID and so on and so forth. And and we are all aware of the insider, you know, the inside knowledge about what goes into the final document. So for me, the context has changed over time. And this means that and I mean context to me is the political context that we are working within. And does that make a difference? And how can those of us who really care about the subject matter doing it rigorous, intellectually rigorous, but also keeping in focus, you know, the points made about marginalisation, injustice, inequalities, etc., you know, keeping that in focus, is there a way to  bring back research that is relevant to that, but not just research relevant to the neoliberal agenda? You know, I'm thinking of the Sustainable Development Goals. I have not seen anything more explicitly neoliberal, and yet it's centre, it's centred on, you know, on almost every single development framework. Of course they be challenged like everything else, you know, I'm not saying it's inevitable that it would go down, but this is a reproduction of the possibilities for conflict rather than repair and social justice.  

Sam Hickey No, I think we're both within the United Kingdom and Australia are caught in a tricky position because the majority of financing for development research in both contexts has come from the overseas development elements of governments. Yeah. A And then for a brief for a period, the fact that both countries have had cuts to aid the kind of reconfigurations of the aid architecture, which is seeing programs for, for those flows of finance at the moment in either the mainstream funders of social science research, at least in either country, have filled that gap. So there's a bit of a difficult problem for development of these institutes that are seeking to maintain a space for perhaps more radical agendas in terms of where to go for the financing for that research.  

Heloise Weber Sorry, Sam, I didn't I didn't pick up in your question about the Australian context. So the previous white paper was very much focussed on the region and, you know, the Asia-Pacific region and security linked security. Of course geopolitics and China part of that. But the new government has actually recently called for submissions for its new white paper on international development. And there's been you know, we submitted one from the Development Studies Association Australia, which is, you know, I think it's publicly available. And so you know, that that I think put forward, I wouldn't call it a radical, but I would say, you know, an interesting alternative social justice oriented set of propositions. So fingers crossed that things might change. We thought with with the new government. We're still awaiting the release of the new white paper. I don't think they've got a date out yet, but you know that there is potential for things to change now.  

Sam Hickey So we will wait and see what happens on that front. I think the key thing for me about sensitive development studies in a UK, but also northern European perspective, we shouldn't forget that the first place to teach development studies wasn't the UK, it was actually the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague.  

Heloise Weber .. I thought so…. 

Sam Hickey Colonial officials and the Department of Education and ISS got assessed. But yeah, I think was it Donald, Forget the type relation, which is I think but there's a it's a, it's a fairly colonial tradition. The idea of having development studies centres on the problem of development it's grappled with elsewhere in the US you don't find this, you find development looked at in, say, schools of international public affairs perfectly. What's common across them is this idea of bringing multi and interdisciplinary perspectives on problems of poverty and inequality that most mainstream disciplines have moved away from. I think politics, economics, sociology, to some extent anthropology. And you've all drifted a little bit away from a comparative focus from an in-depth study of Within within the Global South and Development Studies in the UK has been a place where that's been kept alive. Most obviously, I think that is very, very important potentially for issues of informality that Winnie raises the  boundaries between state market, society and so on remain less firmly drawn in many countries in the global South. And so an interdisciplinary perspective is really essential that I think Winnie you are right to draw attention to the challenge that the social sciences can't do all the heavy lifting by itself, when you when we're thinking of the the health and climate crises and the technology advances now, there's a need for much stronger links between the hard and softer sciences here. There are topics, you know, I wanted to sort of put on the table here, making it within the institutional Architecture for Development studies, but moving in to development associations. So I've been at the UK Development Association for about three years alone. I think you what you're starting with with you with your turn for the Australian Association, one thing that we've been grappling with and I'd love to hear your thoughts about how you might be handling in Australia. And Winnie, from your perspective, what Global North based Developer Studies Association should be doing with regards inequalities between North and South researches and what role scholars, diplomats that scholars based in the Global South should be playing within development studies, associations based in the UK, Australia or wherever. And it seems this kind of two options. One is for those better resourced, better connected developments, development associations to be. As inclusive as possible of Global South members and to draw them in and to their activities and the conferences and making as much the connectivity online as possible. But there is a risk that that then becomes a kind of neo imperial project dragging in global South Asia and ideas into a northern circuit, whereas perhaps a stronger role could be played by working with associations in the Global South to build up strong expectations of development of cities in Kenya, across the East, Africa, in Ghana or across West Africa, or whatever it should be. So I'm not sure these are contradictions or or alternatives. It's possible to do both. But so I was wondering, Louise, what's what you're thinking with your association, whether you have that type of issue and security as to whether this is a relevant debate for you on what advice you would have for people in our positions.  

Heloise Weber Thanks. Thanks. It's absolutely a relevant debate and it's one that we've been having actually quite recently, particularly since Development Studies Association Australia now edits the journal Development in Practice. And so it's trying to get, you know, scholars and submissions from from from the Global South so that there is a big commitment, you know, to to to support that and to work within the region more, more, more generally. But I do I do have to say, Sam,I think that, you know, you probably have more context than me and some of us, you know, because the Development Studies Association Australia is still fairly new, although we do have it's interdisciplinary, so we have, you know, anthropology. So Tania, Jakimow was the first, you know, president is is a political anthropologist. And so it's it's in that sense very, very interesting. But I do think that there is this amazing stuff going on in the Global South, amazing scholars and I mean, amazing, amazing political activism and, you know, really interesting research coming out of some of those centres, even just thinking about, you know, the farmers protest in India. Right. That that compelled Modi to change to to to actually retract his legislation. You know, and they've had, for example, a nationwide general strikes, including Winnie, you know, making a case for those in the informal economy. Right. To have to have a decent living wage. Now, we have discussions about universal basic income. Right. But so it's really interesting that, you know, the things that are going on in the global South. I you know, I think I think they're all there. It's just making a connection and recognising that the resource base is not the same, but that, you know, the innovation, the commitment, the talent, the struggle is there.  

Winnie Mitullah Okay. Just to pick it up from her point of view as well. I think associations are very important in the debate that we are undertaking. They remain crucial and I think our associations are very weak or just not there, because if you have strong associations, associations will always articulate this, you know, the issue , which was being raised by some earlier about stepping back, you know, so that you support policy, but you don't get swept in there and become part of them. So associations have that  strength to do that. And yet we look at the African region. I know South Africa has a development studies Association. I haven't assessed how strong it is, but I don't think associations are that strong. So if if we were to have strong associations, we would make better contribution. I think through using the association as a platform vis a vis the university, I know that  we can use university as well. Universities are neutral, but sometimes you find that you don't leverage beyond that university. So if you have associations that cut across universities, that's the first step to strength. And I want to use an example. Most of you know Afrobarometer network, Afrobarometer network collect  every two years data across Africa and have been coordinating that within the Eastern African region. So on behalf of a broad barometer and we get data and we are able there is a protocol of how we engage the public and states with that knowledge. And often that knowledge is a radical knowledge because it can tell power that for sure you are going the wrong direction. The economy is not going the right direction. This is the state of health. And that's the kind of input I see associations bringing in because they are not very different from networks. And that is and then the South can also have partnership synergy, partnerships that do not undermine, you know, not, not, not the aspect where you are operating like you are on the lower end. And I was glad to just peruse through the website of DSA, the Development Studies Association, Europe, and I saw that they have a window there, like for some members to also be part of it. And I think the synergy must be created between the different associations, whether they from Australia, that there is a lot to learn in academic, even if we want to look at the power power issue and see north and south. But I want to look at it just in terms of learning on how issues of development are being handled across continents and even collaborative research. Collaborative research, when designed in an appropriate way, does not necessarily undermine it is how it is designed and how it is conceptualised. It is conceptualised the ready coming readymade where the self becomes like research assistants are a different case. But we have had research where we have conceptualised research together so that we are able to articulate our region's needs as well. And that kind of engagement, I think associations have a better platform to do it as opposed to just a single university or a single development studies entity.  

Sam Hickey Yeah, I think the art is I think the world's only regional Development Press Association, the European Association of Development Institutes from across Europe. And it sounds like they're trying to incorporate more broadly as well. So there's many, many potential pathways forward from here with national developments. So these associations within African countries and under regional ones and even perhaps rising upwards to even broader international associations, of course, across different regions as we as we find in other discipline areas, but we're perhaps behind on that from. So that's one thing to discuss it. It's also interesting to me as to what's the best direction of travel for development studies. Is it through closer connections with development study centres in different regions, or is it with trying to incorporate or build partnerships with disciplinary associations to deepen? Are use of of mainstream social science theory to reach out perhaps to natural science associations? It's a strength of not connections that weigh on Weatherill. So if the optic shifts from being just one that looks at problems in the Global South to also looking at problems in the global North, from a global development perspective, what does that mean for the types of associations we form? That's more than we have time to discuss today. So let's let's leave that one. And so I think that's been a really interesting discussion around the relevance of development studies we didn't discuss before this. I was not sure at all whether one of you is going to proclaim the irrelevance of development studies of confined development in association with history. I should probably guess that you wouldn't. But it's been very interesting to hear your very different perspectives on where the challenges lie. But it seems we have plenty to play for. Some things we're guessing, right? Many of other things to work on. So let's keep the conversation going in this and other forms. And just to say thanks very much for your time on this and look forward to re-engaging with you down the line. Thanks, Louise. Thanks, Winnie.  

Winnie Mitullah Thanks so much. So thank you.