Is the Study of Development Humiliating or Emancipatory? The Case Against Universalising ‘Development’

Abstract

There are increasing calls to universalise the study of development to include the study of countries outside Asia, Africa and Latin America. This paper argues that there are reasons to be sceptical of such calls. This paper highlights that a surprising alliance has emerged between neoclassical economists (especially those who have long rallied against the need for a separate field of ‘development’ economics) and post-development scholars (who argue that the study of ‘development’ denigrates the Global South) in making the case to universalise the study of development. Global Development proponents tap into popular decolonisation narratives, which focus on the humiliating nature of ‘development’ and ignore any ‘emancipatory’ potential development may have. By only focussing on the humiliating aspects of ‘development’, the case for universalising development binds post-development scholarship and neoclassical economists in a common universalist focus on development challenges. This marginalises scholarship concerned with reducing inter-country inequalities in structural transformation and combatting dependencies between industrialised and non-industrialised countries.

Full text

Vol.:(0123456789)
The European Journal of Development Research
https://doi.org/10.1057/s41287-024-00674-5
SPECIAL ISSUE – THE FUTURE OFDEVELOPMENT STUDIES INEUDR
Is theStudy ofDevelopment Humiliating orEmancipatory?
The Case Against Universalising ‘Development’
PritishBehuria1
Accepted: 19 November 2024
© The Author(s) 2024
Abstract
There are increasing calls to universalise the study of development to include the
study of countries outside Asia, Africa and Latin America. This paper argues that
there are reasons to be sceptical of such calls. This paper highlights that a surpris-
ing alliance has emerged between neoclassical economists (especially those who
have long rallied against the need for a separate field of ‘development’ economics)
and post-development scholars (who argue that the study of ‘development’ deni-
grates the Global South) in making the case to universalise the study of develop-
ment. Global Development proponents tap into popular decolonisation narratives,
which focus on the humiliating nature of ‘development’ and ignore any ‘emancipa-
tory’ potential development may have. By only focussing on the humiliating aspects
of ‘development’, the case for universalising development binds post-development
scholarship and neoclassical economists in a common universalist focus on develop-
ment challenges. This marginalises scholarship concerned with reducing inter-coun-
try inequalities in structural transformation and combatting dependencies between
industrialised and non-industrialised countries.
Keywords Global Development· Development Studies· Sustainable Development
Goals· Decolonising Development· Post-Development· Global South
Résumé
Il y a de plus en plus d’appels à universaliser l’étude du développement pour in-
clure l’étude des pays en dehors de l’Asie, de l’Afrique et de l’Amérique latine. Cet
article soutient qu’il y a des raisons d’être sceptique à l’égard de ces appels. Cet
article souligne qu’une alliance surprenante a émergé entre les économistes néoclas-
siques (en particulier ceux qui ont longtemps milité contre la nécessité d’un domaine
distinct de l’économie du ‘développement’) et les chercheurs post-développement
(qui soutiennent que l’étude du ‘développement’ dénigre le Sud global) en plaidant
* Pritish Behuria
pritish.behuria@manchester.ac.uk
1 Global Development Institute, University ofManchester, 1.007 Arthur Lewis Building, Oxford
Road, ManchesterM139PL, UK

P.Behuria
pour l’universalisation de l’étude du développement. Les partisans du développement
global connectent avec les récits populaires de décolonisation, qui se concentrent sur
la nature humiliante du ‘développement’ et ignorent tout potentiel ‘émancipateur’
que le développement pourrait avoir. En se concentrant uniquement sur les aspects
humiliants du ‘développement’, le cas pour l’universalisation du développement lie
la recherche post-développement et les économistes néoclassiques dans une focali-
sation universaliste commune sur les défis du développement. Cela marginalise la
recherche préoccupée par la réduction des inégalités entre pays dans la transforma-
tion structurelle et la lutte contre les dépendances entre les pays industrialisés et non
industrialisés.
Introduction
Debates about how development should be studied and what those within the field
should study are now taking centre-stage in development studies (or what is now
increasingly called Global Development). As these debates have evolved, a Global
Development consensus has emerged that castigates the use of binaries such as
Global North/Global South or developed/developing. This Global Development
consensus now argues that the study of development should take on universal
approaches rather than being focussed exclusively on the Global South. While this
consensus may not have emerged globally, it has become increasingly visible in
development studies conferences in the UK and elsewhere in Europe. Globally, too,
there is some degree of alignment between the Sustainable Development Goals and
universalist positions within development studies.
A surprising alliance has emerged between neoclassical economists (who have
often questioned the need for a separate field of ‘development’ economics) and
post-development scholars (who argue that the study of ‘development’ is insulting
to the Global South). Global Development proponents tap into popular decolonisa-
tion narratives, which focus on the humiliating nature of ‘development’. This strange
consensus has gained popularity because it has highlighted a single ‘origin’ story
of development: tied to Harry Truman’s speeches of 1945/1949, which is currently
characterised as an aid-driven project to eradicate poverty. Truman-inspired ‘Inter-
national Development’ is presented as a villain. Yet Global Development propo-
nents, while distancing themselves from aid-driven, top-down projects, do not stray
away from dominant conceptions of what development is, how to solve it and mobi-
lise against it. In doing so, they focus, like the World Bank has since the 1990s, on
poverty reduction. Such arguments ignore the structuralist and Global South-origin
stories of development, which argued for the necessity of structural transformation
to obtain more economic autonomy for former colonies. In this way, they ignore
the emancipatory prospects for development in Global South (Mkandawire 2011;
Wiegratz etal. 2023).
The next section describes the evolution of development studies, which began
with prioritising the inter disciplinary study of economic transformation. This con-
cern has since been marginalised. It then describes the strange alliance between
neoclassical economists and the anti-economics concerns of post-development

Is theStudy ofDevelopment Humiliating orEmancipatory? The…
scholarship, which finds unity in their common arguments that the study of devel-
opment should encapsulate all countries. Next, the paper describes three compet-
ing forms of studying development—Global Development, International Develop-
ment and Development Studies. Global Development proponents argue for the need
to marginalise international development while ignoring structuralist or classical
development studies, which is in danger of becoming increasingly marginal as sus-
tainable development concerns gain more prominence. The last section then ques-
tions whether the study of development can be ‘emancipatory’ rather than ‘humiliat-
ing’, arguing for more critical attention to what the field’s names represent.
The Emergence ofaSeemingly Impossible Alliance: The
Unity ofNeoclassical Mono‑conomics andPost‑Development
Anti‑Economics
For decades, there has been discomfort with the colonial heritage of the interdis-
ciplinary field of development studies. In its initial years, development economics,
the central field of development studies, was characterised by a remarkable outpour-
ing of fundamental debates regarding economic development, which dominated the
new field and generated controversies that contributed to its dynamism (Hirschman
1982). Early Development Economists became key advisors to newly independent
colonies about how to embark on ‘catch-up’ development. The new field of ‘devel-
opment’ economics argued that a single understanding of economics could not apply
to both ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ countries. Keynes had argued that there were
two kinds of economics: one where the economy was fully employed and the sec-
ond where there was substantial employment of human resources.1 Paul Rosenstein-
Rodan (1943) suggested that the concepts of indivisibilities, externalities, comple-
mentarities and economies of scale were more relevant to developing countries than
developed ones. Arthur Lewis (1954) made the case for development economics
through his ‘dual sector’ model, arguing that developing countries were character-
ised by rural underemployment. Development economists were soon presented as
being tied to the aid-driven project of examining how ‘developing countries’ could
industrialise or embark or sustain growth. During the same period, Raul Prebisch’s
(1959) attention to unequal terms of trade directed attention to the hegemonic rela-
tionship between the centre (in the Global North) and the periphery (in the Global
South). Prebisch’s theories, as well as the arguments of other dependency theorists,
called for a ‘substantial transfer of resources from the center to the periphery’ (Preb-
isch in Love 1980, 45). Both development economists and structuralists (including
dependency theorists) have argued that developing countries (including all former
colonies) were subject to different challenges than industrialised countries.
By the 1970s/1980s, derision of development economics increased. Hirschman
(1982) was among early development economists who complained about the attacks
the new discipline had endured from neoclassical economists and dependency
1 See Seers (1963).

P.Behuria
theorists. Yet Hirschman was among those who advocated a broader inter discipli-
nary study of development problems. By the 1990s, this inter disciplinary field of
‘development studies’ was growing in the United Kingdom and was increasingly
a home to heterodox scholars who studied development challenges from a cross-
disciplinary perspective (Harriss 2002). Yet the existence of ‘development’ eco-
nomics (and studies) has always been under attack from a large share of neoclassi-
cal economists who dominate the Anglo-American economics discipline and have
informed decades of International Financial Institution (IFI) development policy
(Fine and Milonakis 2009). Post-development theorists have also criticised develop-
ment policies in the post-independence years for ignoring the varied realities and
politics of different contexts (Ferguson 1994; Scott 1998). More recent scholarship,
which aligns with post-development perspectives, has criticised development studies
for the ‘white gaze’ of development, ignoring the voices of the poor in the Global
South, the Euro-American dominance of the field and the lack of inclusion of Global
South academics (Bhambra 2014; Kothari 2005 2006; Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2020; Pai-
ley 2020; Patel 2020). Some post-development scholarship (Gulalp 1998) has even
argued that the dependency theory notion of peripheries is Euro-centric in its under-
standing of modernity. Yet post-development continues to be criticised on numer-
ous counts (Corbridge 1998; Kiely 1999). Most troublingly, many post-development
scholars side-step the issue of capitalist transformation in late developing countries,
often equating all capitalist development with ‘neoliberal’ development.2 They pro-
vide no solution for how countries in the Global South can overcome their subor-
dinate position in the global political economy and instead romanticise traditional
subsistence communities, ignoring that many such communities do not reject devel-
opment but rather demand access to it (Storey 2000).
The mono-economics position of influential segments of neoclassical economics
and the ‘anti-economics’ position of more prominent post-development approaches
or what Ziai (2004) refers to as ‘neo-populist’ approaches characterises dominant
development discussions today. There is a surprising (and inadvertent) alignment in
the positions of post-development scholars and neoclassical economists, both call-
ing for development studies to take on the ‘universalist’ study of the world rather
than simply the study of former colonies. In doing so, there is an emerging consen-
sus around the need to recast development studies as ‘Global Development’. Global
Development proponents rarely recognise that the unease of studying ‘development’
remains whether you remove ‘international’ (as a prefix) or ‘studies’ (as a suffix).
To some extent, Global Development proponents implicitly suggest that including
‘global’ as a prefix washes away the troubling characteristics of development. Post-
development approaches have long criticised development studies for ‘othering’
former colonies and for Northern scholars studying ‘objects’ in the Global South.
2 This is not true of all post-development scholarship. Ziai (2004) highlights two conflicting discourses
within post-development. The first ‘romanticises traditional culture, portraying cultures as static and
rigid, is based on a complete rejection of modernity and promotes the return to subsistence agriculture’
(Ziai 2004, p. 1054). The second takes a more sceptical stance and is more cautious in celebrating local
communities, criticising modernity and avoids proposing models of societal transformation.

Is theStudy ofDevelopment Humiliating orEmancipatory? The…
This taps into the humiliation and underlying racism associated with differentiat-
ing between the supposedly ‘superior’ Global North and the ‘inferior’ Global South.
Within development studies, this takes on a popular argument that learning in multi-
ple directions would be a preferable alternative to the characterisation that develop-
ment studies only assumes that the South should learn from the North (Leach etal.
2021). This is presented as emancipatory because it goes against popular main-
stream assumptions that developing countries should mimic the IFIs’ representation
of how Europe and America developed. Yet this caricature of the development stud-
ies literature ignores that influential heterodox political economists agreed that IFIs
have told false tales of how the West developed (Chang 2002; Reinert 2007). The
development studies literature has long highlighted evidence of South-South learn-
ing, with Korea learning from Japan’s industrialisation and within Africa, many
government officials consistently visiting other African countries to learn lessons
(Amsden 2009; Behuria 2018).
Neoclassical economists and post-development theorists take opposing positions
on most things and live in quite separate worlds.3 There is perhaps very little aware-
ness that they are acting in unison, although some literature has attempted to align
these perspectives more explicitly (Leach et al. 2021; Gillespie and Mitlin 2023).
This strange alliance has developed a consensus that there is no need to distinguish
between ‘developed and ‘developing’ countries and that most development chal-
lenges are universal. Yet, their arguments tend to focus on the universal elements
of experiences associated with poverty, unaffordable housing or deprivation. Such
experiences have always been associated with capitalism everywhere. It should not
be a surprise to discover that poverty exists in the Global North, as it always has
even during the industrial revolution (Reinert 2007).
However, it is striking that there is less attention to macro-experiences of struc-
tural transformation (that have usually been associated with addressing poverty)
and more analysis of the micro-experiences associated with poverty. The alliance’s
focus aligns with the World Bank’s strategy to reduce poverty since the Millenium
Development Goals (MDGs) era: to focus on primary education, health, social pro-
tection and capability enhancement. This has been a feature of humanist approaches,
influenced by Amartya Sen’s capability approach, which have become central to
influencing strategies to address poverty (while marginalising more productivist
understandings targeting employment (Andreoni and Chang 2017). Instead, Amsden
(2012, p. 114) argued that heterodox or classical development theory argued that
“Poverty is caused by unemployment, owing to a scarcity of jobs that pay
above bare subsistence, but grass roots poverty alleviation measures are exclu-
sively designed to make job-seekers more capable although no jobs are avail-
able. The appropriate technologies of the grass roots movement that dominates
3 This charge is similar to the one Hirschman (1982) made about neoclassical economics and segments
of dependency scholarship inadvertently aligning in a consensus to marginalise early development eco-
nomics scholarship.

P.Behuria
antipoverty policies are oriented towards consumption, ignoring production
jobs.”
Thus, the alliance aligns itself with the neo-populist form of post-development,
hoping a universalist focus can ‘inform transnational solidarities by identifying
commonalities between place-based struggles in both the global North and South’
(Gillespie and Mitlin 2023, p. 436). While attacking the binaries that character-
ise maligned versions of ‘international development’, they retain the World Bank-
aligned focus on characterising development as poverty reduction. They neglect the
Southern-origins of development (including Bandung versions), which focused pri-
marily on how former colonies can achieve economic autonomy from subordinate
positions within the global economy (Mkandawire 2011; Fischer 2015, 2019; Sud
and Sanchez-Ancochea 2022; Wiegratz et al. 2023). The narrative that ‘develop-
ment’ humiliates rather than empowers the global South has become divorced from
understandings of inter-country inequalities and structural vulnerabilities.
International orGlobal Development: The Power toIgnore
‘Development Studies’
There is currently a great deal of optimism around the renaming of the field from
‘development studies’ or ‘international development’ to ‘Global Development’. This
may seem meaningless to most observers. In the UK, there is a growing consensus
around ‘Global Development’ and this has long been the case in the rest of Europe.
Since the most well-funded universities with development studies departments are
in Europe, the Global Development consensus is likely to shape the future direc-
tion of the field. The consensus that has developed around Global Development,
which proposes that development studies covers the study of all countries rather
than just ‘developing’ ones, has gained momentum because it found an easy target:
the aid-driven international development paradigm. Even more nuanced proponents
of Global Development, which do not recognise convergence between the North of
South, justify the proposal of universalist development studies by arguing that rich
countries have poverty too.4 As the previous section shows, while Global Develop-
ment proponents target the aid-driven proponent, they retain the World Bank-aligned
focus on poverty analysis. Global Development proponents have used this ‘humiliat-
ing’ focus on poverty to enhance their case for universalist analysis by highlighting
that poverty exists everywhere.
‘International Development’ is the most pre-eminent and most widely criticised
representation of development studies. In geography, international relations and
among critics of development studies within the field, international development’s
origin story is highlighted as Harry Truman’s inaugural address in 1949 in which
4 Yet, this simplistic understanding of capitalist accumulation ignores that there was all capitalist trans-
formation has historically been characterised by poverty and inequality. Also, it is not new that individu-
als in the Global South may be among the world’s wealthiest if you consider a longer span of history
than the last century.

Is theStudy ofDevelopment Humiliating orEmancipatory? The…
he highlighted his programme for development interventions in the Global South.
More recently, many UK development studies departments changed their names to
departments of international development after the UK Department for International
Development was created in 1997. Newly founded Departments for International
Development competed (and sometimes collaborated) with each other to gain access
to UK-funded development research. More recently, ‘international development’
has also been characterised as being associated with a neoliberal aid programme
given that donors made conditional on adopting market-led reforms for most of the
last 40–50 years. Within new ‘international development’ framings, development
became much more closely focussed on the objective of addressing poverty through
growth, as well as health and education programmes. International development’s
framings marginalised any discussion of how developing countries could obtain
more economic autonomy through structural transformation.
Global Development is presented as a morally amenable alternative to Interna-
tional Development. Its universalist arguments align with the ‘monoeconomics’
arguments of many neoclassical economists (Krugman 1994; Lal 2000). However,
they also tap into popular decolonisation arguments, which only focus on one aspect
of decolonisation: the ‘humiliation’ associated with colonialism. Horner and Hulme
(2019) made the case for ‘Global Development’ as a new development paradigm
replacing international development, arguing that there was convergence between
the Global South and North. Horner & Hulme’s arguments have been part of sus-
tained momentum to no longer use binaries such as North/South and developed/
developing. Muti-lateral organisations such as the World Bank, as well as post-
development scholars, have called for the end of such distinctions.5 However, Horner
& Hulme’s work was widely criticised for its minimalist definition of development
(particularly ignoring structural transformation), data and categories used, as well
as their alignment with neoliberal approaches to development theory (Fischer 2019;
Ghosh 2019; Sumner 2019; Ziai 2019). Since then, more nuanced arguments for
Global Development have focussed on the potential of universalist approaches to
encourage ‘horizontal learning’ between the South and North, avoid infantilising the
Global South and argued that since poverty exists everywhere, ‘development’ must
be a focus globally (Leach etal. 2021; Gillespie and Mitlin 2023).
Global Development proponents, even where they make more nuanced argu-
ments, ignore Southern-based origin stories of development, the political salience of
terms such as ‘Global South’ and ‘developing countries’, and persistent hierarchies
between most of the Global South and the Global North. Ignoring Southern-based
origin stories of development not only does a disservice to the Global South but
also encourages amnesia within the field (Fischer 2019; Wiegratz etal. 2023). Most
Global Development proponents largely fail to acknowledge the existence of plural-
ist approaches to economics. Like many neo-populist versions of post-development,
they fail to recognise that a long tradition of heterodox scholarship has highlighted
the specificity of economic development trajectories, the centrality of politics in
shaping variable economic outcomes and that most structuralists highlight the
5 See Eckl & Weber (2007), Farias (2019) for a discussion of this.

P.Behuria
importance of structural transformation rather than focussing exclusively on eco-
nomic growth (Gerschenkron 1962; Khan 2010; Chang 2010). In contrast, most
structuralists or heterodox political economists are primarily concerned with exam-
ining structural transformation (and associated domestic redistribution).
Development Studies, characterised by the literature working in dependency and
earlier structuralist traditions, is currently the most marginal. Yet inter disciplinary
development studies is the classical way the study of development as an interdis-
ciplinary field was initiated (Harriss 2002). Bernstein (2006) argues that develop-
ment studies is mostly concerned with the study of historical processes of social
change in which societies are transformed over long periods.6 Development studies,
in this form, was rooted in political economy and examining the challenges of late
development from a subordinate position in the global economy. It was also at its
core historical and interdisciplinary. Though not all versions of development stud-
ies had Southern Origins, some of the most influential scholars within it (including
those from a dependency perspective) were from the Global South. Also, though not
always considered significant and often forgotten, was the Bandung Origin story.
The Bandung Conference was held in Indonesia in 1955. Twenty-nine Asian and
African states met to oppose colonialism and neo-colonialism. Bandung framings
were closely associated with goals of ‘catching up, emancipation and the right to
development’ (Mkandawire 2011, p. 7). The task for development (and by associa-
tion, development studies) was to reclaim social and economic sovereignty through
a process of ‘Third World Developmentalism’ (Adesina etal. 2021; Temin 2022).7
The ‘Global South’ and ‘developing countries’—or continental groups such as
‘The Africa Group’—remain important lobbying identities within multi-lateral trad-
ing for and climate negotiations. North American and European countries have con-
sistently argued against the usage of terms such as the ‘Global South’ in climate
change and trading negotiations to demobilise Global South solidarity. Those who
have called for a removal of distinctions have highlighted the complications aris-
ing from increased growth among Rising Powers or the position of median coun-
tries such as India, South Africa, Brazil and China. To some degree, it is true that
median countries and Rising Powers are likely to gain the most from being absolved
of responsibility for carbon emissions or of gaining differential treatment at the
WTO (Okereke and Coventry 2016; Weinhardt and Schofer 2022). Yet they are also
a significant voice for the rest of the majority world and common Global South posi-
tions in trade negotiations have resulted in positive benefits for the majority world
(Clapp 2006; Hopewell 2016). At the same time, very few countries have sustained
economic transformation and achieved catch up in the last 70years. Wade (2018)
places this number at less than ten. Quibbling over whether India or Brazil should
be characterised as ‘developed’ or whether Southern and Eastern Europe should be
included as ‘developing’ countries is a distraction from the continued salience of
6 Bernstein relies on one of three of Thomas’ (2000) definitions of the term ‘development’.
7 Temin (2022, p. 245) argues against the common misconception that developmentalism ideologies
were Euro-centric, highlighting that ‘developmentalism became one of the primary languages through
which actors contested and reimagined anticolonial futures’.

Is theStudy ofDevelopment Humiliating orEmancipatory? The…
North–South divides. Inevitably though, as has been seen through the work of some
Global Development proponents, cases are being made to compare Nairobi with
Manchester rather than use this as an opportunity to include countries in Eastern or
Southern Europe or other median countries (Gillespie and Mitlin 2023).
Global Development proponents also draw some support from those who argue
that there is increased policy space for developing countries after the 2008 Finan-
cial Crisis and because of the influence of China and other Rising Powers as donors
(Mawdsley 2012; Jepson 2020). There is also widespread exuberance about the
return of industrial policy and increased policy space in the Global South (Alginger
and Rodrik 2020; Hopewell 2024). Yet such arguments ignore the continued finan-
cial subordination of most of the Global South, with several countries facing debt
crises (Laskaridis 2021; Kvangraven 2021). After the pandemic, most of the Global
South has struggled with several crises. Though crises have not hit all countries in
the same way, much of their incapacity to address domestic development, as well as
current economic challenges, can be explained through analysing production-centred
dependencies. Such analyses are at the core of the mission of classical ‘development
studies’. They are largely ignored by neo-populist post-development scholarship,
which fails to acknowledge pluralist approaches to economists. Neoclassical scholar-
ship, while recently focussing on industrial policy (World Bank 2024), argues that
the pathway to sustaining growth is through adopting market-led reforms, ignoring
the historical evidence that highlights the importance of state intervention in pro-
moting structural transformation (Lin and Chang 2009).
Conclusion: Can ‘Development Studies’ be Empowering’?
There is reason to be sceptical that ‘development studies’ can be an arena through
which research and development policy in the Global South can be empowered.
There are representation challenges within development studies, with minority eth-
nic groups remaining on the margins of most prominent North American and Euro-
pean social science departments. There have been consistent criticisms of inequities
in knowledge production (Mosse 2014; Demeter 2022). In the 1980s, IFIs structur-
ally weakened higher education by defunding it in several African countries and
elsewhere, with politicians eager to follow such advice to counter the rebellious
potential of university students (Mkandawire 2011). All of these realities contrib-
ute to villainising binaries (like developed/developing) and sharpen the feelings of
humiliation associated with post-war development experiences. At the same time,
Heterodox political economy also continues to be marginalised, as ‘academic capi-
talism’ (Jessop 2018) in many UK and European departments encourages more
teaching and research on the environment, often from an increasingly technical per-
spective. Global Development proponents encourage more of a focus on universal-
ist issues rather than examining historical processes of socio-economic change from
an interdisciplinary perspective, which focus on context-specific analysis (Wiegratz
etal. 2023).
Yet most social science disciplines including economics, political science, geog-
raphy and sociology all primarily focus on Global North research. Most research on

P.Behuria
‘other’ parts of the world are less prioritised within the mainstream of these disci-
plines, with most Global South-oriented researchers (especially those doing quali-
tative work) often focussing on publishing in area studies or development studies
journals. Development studies, until recently, was exclusively devoted to the study
of Global South. Unfortunately, Global Development proponents, who are increas-
ingly aligning the ‘mono-economics’ approach of neoclassical economists and the
anti-economics approach of neo-populist post-development, have sought to make
development studies a field to study all countries rather than the Global south exclu-
sively. They fail to recognise that in a Global South-focussed development stud-
ies, there is at least an opportunity to bring together contrasting perspectives (some
Euro-centric, some more inductive) on how historical and current development pro-
cesses are taking place. In that way, there is no field like it. Though higher education
is characterised by inequities of all kinds, there are also progressive currents that
can bring new diverse visions of development studies into focus so that dialogue
between different visions might be intellectually and politically productive even if
painful (Sumner 2024). Yet as calls for universality increase, we must remain on
guard if any progressive future for development studies is to avoid co-optation from
orthodox currents within social sciences.
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