Theoretical review demonstrates evolving frameworks of development studies in the Global South, highlighting the need to dismantle colonial hierarchies.
This thematic issue, 'New perspectives on development', aims to critically interrogate the continued resonance and relevance of ideas about development and how these can be elucidated by bringing into dialogue a range of theoretical, thematic and regional perspectives.We highlight the continued relevance of development in light of pressing and deepening challenges, including the climate crisis, environmental degradation, conflict and displacement, and persistent and worsening global inequalities.We are, though, conscious of the way in which the very concept of development continues to be questioned from a variety of perspectives.Recognising that the interdisciplinary and applied nature of development studies has always been a significant strength, we argue that bringing together distinct disciplinary and/or theoretical perspectives is especially timely in the current era of growing global instability and conflict.Our aim is to promote a deeper and more diverse conversation around the topic's theoretical underpinnings and normative commitments.Through contributions from a range of theoretical, geographical and disciplinary standpoints, this special issue explores some of the historical and contemporary tensions and challenges embedded in the concept and practice of development and considers whether and how 'development' as a set of practices and ideas can respond to contemporary global challenges in ways that both avoid perpetuating damaging colonial hierarchies and inequalities and indeed can help to dismantle these.A critical mass of scholarship now emerging underlines the urgency of decolonising development theory and practice, raising questions around the ways in which we think about, practice and 'do' development, and several contributions to this special issue foreground this concern with where and by whom development knowledges and theoretical frameworks are developed and how these can make a difference to the lives of people living in conditions of inequality and precarity in the Global South.
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Jenkins et al. (2024) studied this question.