THE CRITICAL ROLE OF DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH

Research is, by definition, critical—in the academic sense. This often includes questioning the underlying, often implicit, categories, values and perspectives of established disciplines, such as economics. Disciplines that are more sensitive to context—such as anthropology—face a different challenge: that of dealing with unprecedently rapid social and environmental change, and of conceptualising complex global power relations. There is a danger that not only the thematic agenda, but even the theoretical tools of analysis, may be taken out of the hands of researchers if they engage in the networks of policy-makers entirely on the premises of the latter. Within development research there is an important place for basic, critical research. And it is researchers, and not policy-makers, who are best able to initiate, undertake and assess the merits of such basic research.