The Limits of Development Research

Abstract

The scope and the limits of the use and transfer of development research are discussed and the question is raised what social, political, philosophical and moral problems arise when scholars from rich countries, with well-endowed centres of learning, carry out research on and in substantially poorer countries. The charges are examined that have been made by developing countries against research on their problems and in their territory, and in particular the charge of intellectual imperialism. Different arguments for collaboration in research between rich and poor countries are distinguished. The question is raised whether research in rich countries should confine itself to the ‘interface’ of rich-poor relations or whether development research is an indivisible whole.

From: World Development, vol. 2, no. 10–12 (October–December 1974), pp. 11–34. I have benefited from comments and criticisms of an earlier draft by Irma Adelman, Peter Balacs, Ronald Dore, Edgar Edwards, Unni Eradi, Michael Faber, Anne Gordon, Keith Griffin, Seev Hirsch, Jill Rubery, Ernest Stern, Frances Stewart, Hugh Stretton, B. R. Virmani, Gordon Winston and Howard Wriggins. To these, and to a research seminar at Queen Elizabeth House, I am very grateful. I am also grateful to the Economic Development Institute of the World Bank and its director, Mr Andrew Kamarck, for having provided the facilities and stimulating atmosphere for the early stages of this work.

An earlier version of this paper was presented at a conference in Bellagio on the financing of social science research for development, 12–16 February 1974, sponsored by the Ford Foundation, the Canadian International Development Research Centre, the Rockefeller Foundation, USAID and the World Bank.