Development discourse

Encountering Development

One of the books commonly cited and recommended in critical development studies circles is Arturo Escobar’s Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (1995). Escobar is a Colombian-American Anthropologist, who interestingly started his academic career in chemical engineering. The award-winning book is typically summarized as reframing ‘development’ as a tool of control […]

Tags: #Accountability #Critical Studies #Development discourse #Encountering Development #International development

Thought Provokers Aug 29

Constructing “Development” (Ferguson, 1990)

Quotes on the construction of “development” from Ferguson’s influential Anti-Politics Machine (1990): “The argument, in brief, is the following: “development” institutions generate their own form of discourse, and this discourse simultaneously constructs Lesotho as a particular kind of object of knowledge, and creates a structure of knowledge around that object. Interventions are then organized on […]

Tags: #Constructing Development #Development discourse #Framing Development #Politics of Development

Thought Provokers Oct 9

About me

Logan Cochrane

Associate Professor at HBKU in the College of Public Policy. He is an Associate Fellow of the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences and an Adjunct Professor at Hawassa University (Institute for Policy and Development Research). Over the last fifteen years, he has worked in Afghanistan, Benin, Burundi, Canada, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. Logan acts as a consultant for governmental agencies and non-governmental organizations, seeking to create bridges between research and practice.

Logan Cochrane