Not in isolation: the necessity of systemic heuristic devices in all development practice

✍ Scribed by Simon Bell

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1997
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 75 KB
• Volume: 17
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0271-2075
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-162x(199712)17:5<449::aid-pad975>3.0.co;2-p

✦ Synopsis

This brief essay is a response to the article by Cooke (Cooke, 1997) in which he sets out the case for a clinical model of development practice. Developing the theme that any methodology taken in isolation will become self-ful®lling in its activity and taking up Cooke's `challenges for Development Studies' whilst building off the criticism set out by Blunt (Blunt, 1997) and upon an earlier work, I set out the imperative for inclusive and systemic tools to aid our understanding of development contexts. Paradigms of scienti®c thought (the prisons of Blunt) and tyrannies of methodology are unwholesome and ultimately self-destructive devices. It is argued that only by adopting a holistic systems approach, including the wealth of potential tools for problems solving and developing our creative thinking in partnership, can development studies achieve real understanding of what must otherwise always be seen as remaining an unknowable and mysterious context.