How is transformation understood in international development, and what are the implications for digital-transformation-for-development (DX4D)?
An earlier blogpost pointed out that digital transformation is not the goal of DX4D, “Instead, development transformation is the goal and starting point”. That blogpost considered what transformation means under different development paradigms, and what role digital would play in helping deliver those different meanings of development transformation.
In this blogpost, three active perspectives on transformation in international development are analysed – structural transformation, transformational development, and transformative development studies – and some DX4D implications drawn out.
1. Structural Transformation
“Structural transformation is defined as the reallocation of economic activity across three broad sectors (agriculture, manufacturing, and services) that accompanies the process of modern economic growth”[i].
That reallocation is associated with a steady decline of agriculture in terms of share of employment and share of GDP, a steady increase in services, and a more mixed picture (e.g. an inverse-U of relative growth then decline) for manufacturing. This is transformation that is readily measured and that is associated with other developments: urbanisation, economic growth and rise in incomes, changes in income distribution, etc[ii].
For DX4D, structural transformation offers a very tangible and big picture vision of what transformation means, and it supports the idea of technology being not merely an enabler but one of the main driving forces behind (this form of) transformation[iii]. Indeed, it is sometimes argued that emergence of what has variously been known as the information economy, or knowledge economy, or digital economy represents a fourth main economic sector that emerges directly as a result of digital innovation[iv]. From this perspective, DX4D would be analysed through an economic lens and in terms of its contribution to sectoral change.
Adhering to a modernisation paradigm of development, structural transformation would be criticised for its techno-centricity and its preoccupation with economic growth. However, it does argue that more than just technology is required for transformation: for example, change in processes such as growth in trade, and wider structural changes such as development of formal and informal institutions[v].
2. Transformational Development
“Transformational development is a process through which children, families and communities move toward wholeness of life with dignity, justice and hope. The scope of transformational development includes social, spiritual, economic, political, and environmental aspects of life at the local, national, regional and global levels”[vi].
This definition of transformational development gives a limited sense of its core values which derive from its origins in a 1983 conference of evangelical Christians, from which one derived definition is: “Transformation is to enable God’s vision of society to be actualized in all relationships, social, economic and spiritual, so that God’s will may be reflected in human society and his love be experienced by all communities, especially the poor”[vii].
The terminology of transformation was specifically embraced by the conference in opposition to a prevailing view of development that was seen as “intrinsically related to a mechanistic pursuit of economic growth that tends to ignore the structural context of poverty and injustice and which increases dependency and inequality”[viii]. It thus sets itself in opposition to the ideas of structural transformation and, notwithstanding its strongly anti-secular and evangelical core, its social action strand has many affinities with the human development paradigm given concerns to address poverty, health, education, injustice and inequality[ix].
While there is a big-picture vision (e.g. the attainment of the Kingdom of God), the actual focus tends to be much more human-scale. Transformation in practice focuses on the personal transformation of individuals within their communities to “facilitate the acceptance and application of the values of the kingdom of God” including “freedom, stewardship, generosity and selflessness, reconciliation, grace and compassion for the excluded”[x].
Of relevance to DX4D, transformational development takes a balanced view of technology, recognising that “technology and science are an inseparable part of working for human transformation” but that technology must not be fetishised as it is “a false god … that speaks to us of power, not limits; speaks to us of ownership, not stewardship; speaks to us only of rights, not responsibilities; speaks to us of self-aggrandizement, not humility”[xi]. Transformational development thus argues for technology to be seen only as one tool among many, and that central to transformation should be development of individuals, their values, and their relationships. That transformation of relationships extends to a need for change in wider “social structures that exploit and dehumanize”[xii].
There is also criticism of bandwagon-jumping: widespread and inappropriate adoption of the transformation label without staying true to its underlying values (“a vision of society where God’s will was done and his love experienced”): “many organizations adopted and used transformation to describe any and every form of mission and involvement with poor people from welfare based development backed by a spiritual message, to plain economic growth without any spiritual input at all”[xiii]. The same risk occurs with DX4D: that incremental digitalisation initiatives are inappropriately labelled as “digital transformation”.
One possible reason this mis-labelling has occurred with transformational development, however, is because it has been more of “a narrative, a framework, a way of thinking” rather than either a clear theory of transformation (as offered by structural transformation) or a clearly-defined set of practices that can be followed in the field[xiv]. DX4D similarly could benefit from strong theorisation underpinning clear guidance on practice.
3. Transformation Studies
“Transformation studies, also known as transformative studies, refer to an interdisciplinary field of research and scholarship that focuses on understanding and analyzing processes of fundamental change in various domains of human life and society. These changes can encompass a wide range of areas, including individual transformation, cultural shifts, social and political change, technological innovations, and environmental transformations. Transformation studies aim to explore the underlying causes, mechanisms, and implications of such changes.”[xv]
As per the quote, transformation research broadly can be seen as interdisciplinary and as covering a wide range of theorisations, research approaches and methods[xvi]. However, a particular approach has arisen in application to development, of what could be called transformative development studies or transformative global studies, that can be related to a post-structural, post-colonial development paradigm.
Where structural transformation is strong on theory with some implications for practice, and transformative development is a-theoretical and focussed on vision-based practice, transformative development studies (TDS) is more of a way of doing research. At root, TDS challenges the way in which knowledge is produced. Study of DX4D would thus begin by questioning the mode of study and seeing “transformative scholarship” as the starting point. Any research should be founded on a “counter-Orientalist, post-Eurocentric … process of de-colonizing knowledge”[xvii].
From a TDS perspective, technology cannot certainly deliver particular transformations and it is thus a direct challenge to the views of structural transformation and even transformational development about technology. Instead, “transformation is an open-ended, highly unpredictable (uncertain) process resulting from the interactions between human as well as non-human actors”[xviii]. The interest here is more in the process of transformation than its outcomes, with the latter part of the quote suggesting DX4D should be studied through lenses such as those of actor-network theory, to understand how networks of transformation interact and build or disperse.
Like transformational development, transformative development studies challenges conventional notions of development, seeing them as associated solely with positive, progressive improvement. Instead, to the extent TDS is interested in the wider outcomes of transformation, it would advocate that DX4D be interrogated for all impacts; asking who benefits from transformation, but also who loses, and why.
Conclusion
These three discourses on development as transformation do not represent the totality of the picture. For example, one can find discussion of transformative development taken to mean generic change to social structures that challenges existing dispositions of power[xix].
In addition, while structural transformation is widely understood within development economics, transformational development and transformative development studies represent limited niches that have yet to be widely recognised within development studies more broadly. However, these perspectives do provide three quite different views of transformation and three quite different intellectual substructures that could be used for future DX4D research and practice.
[i] Herrendorf, B., Rogerson, R., & Valentinyi, A. (2014). Growth and structural transformation. Handbook of Economic Growth, 2, 855-941.
[ii] Syrquin, M. (2006) Structural transformation. In: The Elgar Companion to Development Studies, D.A. Clark (ed), Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK, 601-607.
[iii] Herrendorf, B., Herrington, C., & Valentinyi, A. (2015). Sectoral technology and structural transformation. American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, 7(4), 104-133.
[iv] Berger, T., & Frey, C. B. (2016). Structural Transformation in the OECD: Digitalisation, Deindustrialisation and the Future of Work. OECD, Paris.
[v] Syrquin (ibid.)
[vi] Byworth, J. (2003). World Vision’s approach to transformational development: Frame, policy and indicators. Transformation, 20(2), 102-114.
[vii] Samuel, V. & Sugden, C. (1999). Mission as Transformation. Regnum, Oxford.
[viii] Anon (1984) Social transformation: the Church in response to human need – Wheaton ’83 Statement. Transformation, 1(1), 23-28
[ix] Anon (ibid.), Byworth (ibid.)
[x] Sugden, C. (2003). Transformational development: Current state of understanding and practice. Transformation, 20(2), 71-77.
[xi] Myers, B. L. (2011). Walking with the Poor: Principles and Practices of Transformational Development. Orbis Books, Maryknoll, NY.
[xii] Anon (ibid.)
[xiii] Sugden (ibid.)
[xiv] Sugden (ibid.)
[xv] OpenAI (2023, Oct 31) GPT 3.5: “What are transformation studies?”. Retrieved from https://chat.openai.com
[xvi] Merkel, W., Kollmorgen, R. & Wagener, H.-J. (2019) Transformation and transition research. In: The Handbook of Political, Social, and Economic Transformation, W. Merkel, R. Kollmorgen, H.-J. Wagener (eds), Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, 1-14.
[xvii] Hosseini, S. H., Goodman, J., Motta, S. C., & Gills, B. K. (2020). Towards new agendas for transformative global studies: an introduction. In: The Routledge Handbook of Transformative Global Studies, S.H. Hosseini, J. Goodman, S.C. Motta & B.K Gills (eds), Routledge, Abingdon, UK, 1-10.
[xviii] Alff, H. & Hornidge, A.-K. (2019). ‘Transformation’ in international development studies. In: Building Development Studies for the New Millennium, I. Baud, T. Kontinen & S. von Itter (eds), Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, Switzerland, 141-162.
[xix] Koff, H., & Maganda, C. (2016). The EU and the human right to water and sanitation: Normative coherence as the key to transformative development. The European Journal of Development Research, 28, 91-110.; Kontinen, T. & Holma, K., (2020). Introduction. In: Practices of Citizenship in East Africa: Perspectives from Philosophical Pragmatism, K. Holma & T. Kontinen (eds), Routledge, London, 1-12.
Photo by Suzanne D. Williams on Unsplash
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