Multidisciplinary, Multidimensional and Multilateral: The Evolution of Development Studies and Linkages with Development Cooperation

In the past forty years, the study of development has been transformed. At many universities, multidisciplinary centres for the study of development have been established. To be sure, most university postgraduate teaching departments, including economics, remain firmly focused on the single disciplinary approach. Despite this, however, it is now widely acknowledged that the study of “development” demands a multidisciplinary approach. Although many courses in “economic development”, “political development” and “social development” continue to be taught in single discipline departments, an understanding of the multidimensional process of “development” is seen to require an integrated mix of inputs from a wide range of disciplines. This explains in part the logic behind the establishment of centres of “development studies” where teachers, students, and researchers come from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds including some from the hard sciences. Today, most multidisciplinary courses in development studies, most international development organisations, and most donor agencies now include not just a broadly similar set of topics on their agendas, but also use a broadly similar language and broadly similar interpretation of many of the concepts that they use. It is instructive to explore the process by which such a convergence of views evolved.