What role can pragmatism play in development studies research?
Pragmatism is a philosophy that emerged in the late 19th century in the aftermath of, and as a response to, the destructiveness of the US Civil War. It has subsequently fractured into a number of different shards but at root it “emphasizes practical consequences and real-world outcomes as the criteria for evaluating the truth or value of beliefs, theories, or actions”[i].
At present, it plays little overt role in development studies research, at least to judge from recent literature searches (using “pragmatism” and “pragmatist” as keywords):
- A title search in eight of the top development studies journals produced six papers discussing “what works” in policy or development approaches, and contrasting this with more dogmatic or ideological approaches. While their worldview might have been consistent with philosophical pragmatism, these papers made no reference to it or its literature.
- A full-text search of World Development, Development and Change, and the Journal of Development Studies likewise threw up many papers but again referencing the everyday pragmatism of development actors or approaches but not the philosophy of pragmatism.
- A general literature search adding the keyword “development studies” produced hundreds of hits. The vast majority of items reviewed were unrelated to international development or used the term pragmatism in the lay sense of a practical approach to politics, economics, healthcare, education, etc. There were just three examples of explicit engagement between development studies and philosophical pragmatism[ii].
What these searches do highlight is the relevance of pragmatism to development studies because of the general orientation of the discipline towards practice. The specific value of using pragmatism is that it provides a foundational rationale for the following in development studies research:
- Prioritising the practical outcomes of research so that the “development” in development studies does not get lost
- Being sensitive to the specificities of context, and steering away from deterministic and universalistic grand theorising
- Orienting towards participative methods that value and respect the knowledge and experience of local stakeholders
- Undertaking an iterative dialogue and learning process between theory and practice
- Flexibility in use of theory and methodologies and methods
Of course, one could just do all these things in one’s research, but pragmatism provides a coherent basis for them.
Pragmatism has, though, been criticised[iii]. That sensitivity to context means its findings may not readily be transferable between contexts, severely limiting generalisability of research. Pragmatism has an agenticism that can mean it fails to recognise the deeper structures of power that need to be transformed if inequality, marginalisation and oppression are to be addressed. And pragmatism tends towards an ethical relativism: its focus on “what works” provides no inherent judgement around “issues of whose problems are attended to, of who wins and who loses from practice”.
Given these three are all points that are addressed by critical realism, we are currently working to understand how pragmatism and critical realism might usefully be combined to inform development studies research.
Follow @CDDManchester[i] ChatGPT (2023) What is pragmatism? Dec 15. https://chat.openai.com/
[ii] The three examples are:
– An excellent overview of the potential role of pragmatism in development studies: Farahani, A. F., & Esfahani, A. H. (2020). Exploring possibilities for a pragmatic orientation in development studies. In The Power of Pragmatism, J. Wills & R. Lake (eds) (pp. 244-264). Manchester University Press.
– A paper focusing on organisational research but which uses international and community development NGOs as its sample: Kelly, L. M., & Cordeiro, M. (2020). Three principles of pragmatism for research on organizational processes. Methodological Innovations, 13(2).
– A series of chapters and papers emerging from a research project on citizenship practices in East Africa, starting with: Holma, K., & Kontinen, T. (2012). Democratic knowledge production as a contribution to objectivity in the evaluation of development NGOs. Forum for Development Studies, 39(1), 83-103 and particularly in Holma, K. & Kontinen, T. (eds) (2020) Practices of Citizenship in East Africa: Perspectives from Philosophical Pragmatism, Taylor & Francis.
[iii] Heeks, R., Ospina, A. V., & Wall, P. J. (2019). Combining pragmatism and critical realism in ICT4D research: an e-resilience case example. In Information and Communication Technologies for Development. Part II, P. Nielsen & H.C. Kimaro (eds), (pp. 14-25). Springer International Publishing.
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